Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - Some states are proposing drug tests for welfare

levite · 04-08-2009, 12:06 AM

I'm not going to discuss the addicted and the hardcore user: I'm just going to point out that one can be an infrequent and casual drug user based on what friends may give you during shared usage: you're at a party one Saturday night, someone passes you the bong, Monday morning the State is surprise drug testing you and you're screwed.

I'd also like to say that I'm hearing a certain amount of sniffing high-handedly about the unemployed toking, and I have to say: I smoked some while I was unemployed-- I spent almost all of 2002 out of work-- and it was either my friends smoking me out, or me finishing off what I had left when I was fired from my job, plus maybe one small purchase, using money my grandma gave me for a birthday gift (she specifically said, "have fun with this, and get something that makes you laugh..." you can't blame me for following through on that). Having some herb around to get high with my friends and my girl was a huge lifesaver, because I basically had no other life that year: I didn't go to movies, lost my cable, didn't go out, didn't buy almost anything but groceries and gas. I spent all my time looking for work, and a little toke sure helped pass some otherwise depressing evenings. The implication of all this criticism of the poor using a little money for the drug of their choice is that if you're unemployed and in the shitter enough to need government help, you don't deserve to ever unwind. This, to me, is an utterly American Protestant attitude: we are essentially already condemning the poor as sinful, and wanting to sit back and do a little forgetting of one's misery is just seen as compounding the sin.

I have an enormous problem with the notion that we are essentially saying to our poor, "Bad enough that you're poor, you have no right to try to have a social life, or have a good time while you're poor! You should be spending every waking minute, and maybe every sleeping minute trying to get money!" Never mind that there is little one can do to find work at night or on weekends, and never mind that the poor are not reveling in the experience of poverty, and it might be sheer compassion on our part not to criticize them for whatever it is they can scrape together to chill a little from their miserable existence.

I have no problem with my taxes going to help poor and unemployed people. Frankly, I'm happier with my money going to them than to fund the making of super-secret ultra-invisible Stealth Bombers that apparently anyone can potshot out of the sky, or idiotic schemes to shoot down missiles with other missiles (next time someone fires a gun at you, try defending yourself by shooting the bullet!), or the local congressman's pork project. There is, IMHO, very little excuse for government or taxes if not to help those least able to help themselves. And we help our poor so grudgingly, so uncaringly, so quickly embracing "Not My Problem!" to describe them. We say, "Don't use my taxes to help the poor! Let the Church do it! Let the nonprofits do it! Maybe I'll help the poor, but I'll do it some other way: I won't have my money used to help people by the organization that has the most information about everyone in the country and what their needs are!" And now we're going to go further: "You shouldn't be able to get your few government dollars to eke out the meager crumbs of survival while you struggle to find a job unless you can prove you share the pure moral vision uniformly embraced by 435 members of Congress (a large number of whom secretly take drugs or are addicted to alcohol)!" "I won't help you, Mr. Poor Person, because I disapprove of your lifechoices when it comes to entertainment!" Maybe we should also demand that poor people demonstrate their ability to play Parcheesi and Monopoly and Hungry Hungry Hippos while drinking wholesome lemonade and listening to Pat Boone, to ensure that they're living "appropriately" on "our" money.

Or we could just acknowledge that it is right and just and compassionate to help the poor and the unlucky and those who have gotten royally screwed by our tanked economy, just like God/Jesus/Buddha/some humanistic atheist guys said we should. And no poor person ever cared if their help came from the government or an NGO, so long as it came, and therefore, if it's our tax dollars at work, we shouldn't quibble, but rather let it go. And we might also choose to have some compassion for the hell that poverty and unemployment puts people through, and decide that they might deserve a toke from time to time just as much as they desk jockey who sits around all day on the phone with his legs up, and pulls down 300 G's a year to do it. Maybe more.

/rant

04-08-2009, 12:06 AM	#35 (permalink)
levite Minion of Joss Location: The Windy City	I'm not going to discuss the addicted and the hardcore user: I'm just going to point out that one can be an infrequent and casual drug user based on what friends may give you during shared usage: you're at a party one Saturday night, someone passes you the bong, Monday morning the State is surprise drug testing you and you're screwed. I'd also like to say that I'm hearing a certain amount of sniffing high-handedly about the unemployed toking, and I have to say: I smoked some while I was unemployed-- I spent almost all of 2002 out of work-- and it was either my friends smoking me out, or me finishing off what I had left when I was fired from my job, plus maybe one small purchase, using money my grandma gave me for a birthday gift (she specifically said, "have fun with this, and get something that makes you laugh..." you can't blame me for following through on that). Having some herb around to get high with my friends and my girl was a huge lifesaver, because I basically had no other life that year: I didn't go to movies, lost my cable, didn't go out, didn't buy almost anything but groceries and gas. I spent all my time looking for work, and a little toke sure helped pass some otherwise depressing evenings. The implication of all this criticism of the poor using a little money for the drug of their choice is that if you're unemployed and in the shitter enough to need government help, you don't deserve to ever unwind. This, to me, is an utterly American Protestant attitude: we are essentially already condemning the poor as sinful, and wanting to sit back and do a little forgetting of one's misery is just seen as compounding the sin. I have an enormous problem with the notion that we are essentially saying to our poor, "Bad enough that you're poor, you have no right to try to have a social life, or have a good time while you're poor! You should be spending every waking minute, and maybe every sleeping minute trying to get money!" Never mind that there is little one can do to find work at night or on weekends, and never mind that the poor are not reveling in the experience of poverty, and it might be sheer compassion on our part not to criticize them for whatever it is they can scrape together to chill a little from their miserable existence. I have no problem with my taxes going to help poor and unemployed people. Frankly, I'm happier with my money going to them than to fund the making of super-secret ultra-invisible Stealth Bombers that apparently anyone can potshot out of the sky, or idiotic schemes to shoot down missiles with other missiles (next time someone fires a gun at you, try defending yourself by shooting the bullet!), or the local congressman's pork project. There is, IMHO, very little excuse for government or taxes if not to help those least able to help themselves. And we help our poor so grudgingly, so uncaringly, so quickly embracing "Not My Problem!" to describe them. We say, "Don't use my taxes to help the poor! Let the Church do it! Let the nonprofits do it! Maybe I'll help the poor, but I'll do it some other way: I won't have my money used to help people by the organization that has the most information about everyone in the country and what their needs are!" And now we're going to go further: "You shouldn't be able to get your few government dollars to eke out the meager crumbs of survival while you struggle to find a job unless you can prove you share the pure moral vision uniformly embraced by 435 members of Congress (a large number of whom secretly take drugs or are addicted to alcohol)!" "I won't help you, Mr. Poor Person, because I disapprove of your lifechoices when it comes to entertainment!" Maybe we should also demand that poor people demonstrate their ability to play Parcheesi and Monopoly and Hungry Hungry Hippos while drinking wholesome lemonade and listening to Pat Boone, to ensure that they're living "appropriately" on "our" money. Or we could just acknowledge that it is right and just and compassionate to help the poor and the unlucky and those who have gotten royally screwed by our tanked economy, just like God/Jesus/Buddha/some humanistic atheist guys said we should. And no poor person ever cared if their help came from the government or an NGO, so long as it came, and therefore, if it's our tax dollars at work, we shouldn't quibble, but rather let it go. And we might also choose to have some compassion for the hell that poverty and unemployment puts people through, and decide that they might deserve a toke from time to time just as much as they desk jockey who sits around all day on the phone with his legs up, and pulls down 300 G's a year to do it. Maybe more. /rant __________________ Dull sublunary lovers love, Whose soul is sense, cannot admit Absence, because it doth remove That thing which elemented it. (From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)