They don’t drug test on SNAP Benifits, because everytime the GOP tries to pass a bill to do so, the ways and means committee reminds them that it would more than double the cost of the SNAP program to pay for even the most lenient drug testing. But they do try every few years.
They would rather pay more than the entire program already, to get those filty poors off assistance.
Also some fun facts, most SNAP recipients are children, most are white, and most make enough money to no longer need assistance in under 5 years, at which point they are back to paying taxes. Which pays for SNAP. Making the system quite self- sustaining. It’s cost is minuscule to tax payers, and yet it’s a constant wedge issue, why? Because of America’s greatest fear, that if we do something that benefits people, we might accidently help the wrong people. People who aren’t even white.
They tried it in florida and 96% of recipients passed…but not before the state spent $400,000 in taxpayer money with the drug testing company…that had the governors wife on its board of directors
not before the state spent $400,000 in taxpayer money with the drug testing company
Honestly, given Rick Scott’s reputation for bilking Medicare into the billions, this is one of the smallest tier scams I’ve heard of in Florida. They didn’t even take the state for a full seven figures (unless, of course, the number is being drastically under-reported which is always a possibility).
It stopped at $400,000 because the state Supreme Court ruled the law unconstitutional and put a stop to the whole operation. He’d have made tens of millions if not more otherwise.
Because of America’s greatest fear, that if we do something that benefits people, we might accidently help the wrong people. People who aren’t even white.
You just explained how unions fell apart, pensions stopped being a thing, schools lost funding, college education went up, and social safety nets disappeared.
I constantly come back to this quote from LBJ
“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
The point is not the cost. It’s the cruelty.
It’s often both because funneling! Yay!
Aaaannndd… It is also a kind of subsidy to US agribiz.
I will always upvote Supply Side Jesus. Because he pays me 20 shekels to do so.
Outstanding
Don’t use drugs. It will destroy your life.
By that, I mean the state and corporations will destroy your life for using drugs. How dare you buy illegal devil street heroin because your doctors stopped prescribing you totally reasonably priced and non-addictive Oxycodone® (which your insurance declined to even subsidize) for your spinal injury from when you got hit by an oversized gas guzzling pickup truck going 2mph
Frustrating, because moderate recreational drug use is fine and occasionally even beneficial as a social lubricant or creative spur. Have a beer, smoke a joint, do a bit of LCD, it won’t ruin your life.
But also, people do have real material health care needs - both physical and psychological. They need secure homes and nutritious foods and freedom from a certain degree of anxiety. A big driver of the opioid crisis wasn’t simply evil pharma companies (although they certainly played their role). It was amateur athletics, construction work, factory work, and other physically strenuous jobs responsible for chronic physical pain.
Rather than providing people reasonable work schedules, protective equipment, and physical therapy for their broken bodies, we just doped them up and sent them back on the jobs. And it work! Productivity surged! For a little while! And then these people became reliant on opioids to the point where they weren’t efficient workers. So they were fired and replaced with younger people who were given a new prescription of opioids to treat the next generation of chronic pain. And we did this for three generations. And now here we fucking are.
Now we’ve got folks in the tech sector telling their staff to start micro-dosing with LCD. We’ve got online hustlers who are told to stay up for days at a time continuously churning out new work product by leveraging the benefits of amphetamines. We’re got sales bros and bar service workers who are expected to drink their clients under the table night after night. We’ve got sex workers who are expected to endure physical and psychological abuse for a paycheck. We’ve got IT guys jacked up on whatever the fuck is in modern energy drinks who come off it by smoking a bunch of the most potent weed on the planet.
That’s modern drug use for you. Its not a means of lubricating social interactions or spurring personal creativity or taking the edge off pain. Its just a tool to get people to work past their natural limits.
I’ve got a LCD monitor here but I can’t figure out how to get high off it
Spellcheck hates me.
I was going to make a joke about ingesting LCD crystals being a cutting edge high, but yours is better.
Meanwhile in California it costs 100,000$ a year to house prisoners. Bad for the taxpayer, good for some… private interests @_@
Not just CA. Waymart and Laurel Highlands prisons both cost $100,000 or more per prisoner, and those are in PA
Jesus turned their urine into wine, then failed the test subjects because their urine was wine.
“Also the bit about usury being illegal, that’s over now.”
It cant be usury, if I call it interest.
Not only is their god all powerful and all knowing, apparently, they also beleive their god to be an idiot.
It cant be usury, if I call it interest.
They really do be thinking like this. The hypocrisy is kinda easy to expose; the Bible bans men laying with men, not banging them!
Jesus was magic. When you can pull fish and bread out of your ass then we can talk about giving other peoples hard work away for free.
Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, Jesus gave thanks and broke them. Then he gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people. They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve baskets full of broken pieces that were left over. The number of those who ate was about five thousand men, besides women and children.
Moisened bints lobbing schimtars at people is no method of governance and neither is magicians pulling food out of a hat.
Wankers.
Aiding the less fortunate in society benefits everyone, same as maintaining roads or building libraries.
For decades republicans have artificially raised the bar for that aid and lowered the aid actually received, for no reason than to appeal to the crowd that thinks taxation is theft but uses modern public amenities anyway.
The rampant cutting of those benefits and handing the rights over to corporations is one of the major reasons we have a nationwide health care crisis, just for one example of how those cuts end up hurting everyone.
The Didoche, a survival manual for christian communities during the roman persecution era, teaches that any stranger that arrives at your door should be fed and clothed for 3 days, after which point they need to make their own way in the community or move on.
Giving strangers the benefit of the doubt or taking care of those with legitimate disabilities =/= taking care of junkies or lowlifes for the duration of their lifespan .
If only low lifes or junkies were given the support they needed to not be low lifes or junkies.
Not everyone has your best interest at heart, certainly, but all people have value and not many would actively choose addiction
taking care of junkies or lowlifes for the duration of their lifespan .
They prefer the term shareholders or landlords, thank you very much!
So your saying some random guide made after Jesus supersedes his teachings? Sounds about Christian to me.
I believe the Sermon on the Mount essentially says “clothe the naked, feed the hungry, take care of the sick.”. No limits on time.
The Didoche was written in an era where Christian communities generally had little wealth and were constantly in danger of arrest or execution. This is NOT the case in most places now, and especially not in the US, which this meme is referencing.
Nobody who’s suggesting state assistance is suggesting that we “take care” of people forever, at least not under the current system. Indeed, the data pretty easily shows that if you give people a place to stay, solid food aid, and some cash to deal with bills and miscellania, they start being functioning members of society, and get jobs and start the detox process or whatever interventions they need, really quick, like within months. This has been trialed even in the US in places like Denver, and it works.
So what you’re really saying is “I don’t want more of my money going to helping other people.” Have fun being the richest man in the cemetery.
Aqua Cola!
(picture here an image of Inmortan Joe opening the spigots)I mean tbf to that last bit “render unto caesar” can certainly be read that way, guy was a radical from a recently conquered territory, I don’t think very many Judeans of his day would have had the best impressions of where their new taxes were being spent.
