Florida's modern day poll tax.
Governor Rick Scott (I won't even get into his personal history or how the hell the piece of shit got elected in a state full of fucking old people) just signed a law in Florida requiring everyone applying for welfare to pay for and take a drug test first.
Now, at first glance that might not seem so bad. But rethink it. People have to pay for the drug test first. They can get reimbursed by the state once they are accepted into the program. If they do not get accepted, for any reason, even unrelated to the testing, they do not get reimbursed. They have to pay to apply for a government service they might not even get accepted to.
This is blatantly a modern day poll tax, designed specifically to keep people from applying for welfare in the first place. You think the state is going to accept just any old drug test result? No, they are going to contract with private testing agencies, either by subcontracting some company directly or by making them pay to get 'certified' by the state to be an 'official' program tester, which is almost certainly to lead to ongoing re-certification fees by the state, inspecting fees so people aren't running 'clinics' out of the home or a garage. So there's more fees and more costs.
When they first passed the breathalyzer law in Michigan the state contracted two companies to run it state wide. Of course they didn't have facilities everywhere so they had to contract with local businesses like truck and car accessory places. What the fuck did these sub sub contractors know about anything? The program was a fucking mess. You had two choices, period. And depending on where you lived, you might have only one choice if there is only one place in town and they only contract one service. It was a state sanctioned monopoly, and it didn't work for shit. Even the people that worked at the local car accessory place admitted the program was fucked up, so bad at the time, only a couple years into it, they were think of dropping it.
But back to the current ideological war on society. This is just one more front in the ongoing war against social programs. It's designed specifically to prevent people from even applying. If they were serious about it, they would have written the law to allow the state to pay for all pre-application testing and then bill or sue the people that fail. But they didn't. On purpose.
They're applying for fucking welfare! They don't have any fucking money! And if they get denied for reasons other than drugs, they're still out the fucking money!
It's a modern day poll tax. It's open war on poor people. It's nothing less than the abdication of social responsibility to consumer market capitalism.
The new color of racism is green.
Now, at first glance that might not seem so bad. But rethink it. People have to pay for the drug test first. They can get reimbursed by the state once they are accepted into the program. If they do not get accepted, for any reason, even unrelated to the testing, they do not get reimbursed. They have to pay to apply for a government service they might not even get accepted to.
This is blatantly a modern day poll tax, designed specifically to keep people from applying for welfare in the first place. You think the state is going to accept just any old drug test result? No, they are going to contract with private testing agencies, either by subcontracting some company directly or by making them pay to get 'certified' by the state to be an 'official' program tester, which is almost certainly to lead to ongoing re-certification fees by the state, inspecting fees so people aren't running 'clinics' out of the home or a garage. So there's more fees and more costs.
When they first passed the breathalyzer law in Michigan the state contracted two companies to run it state wide. Of course they didn't have facilities everywhere so they had to contract with local businesses like truck and car accessory places. What the fuck did these sub sub contractors know about anything? The program was a fucking mess. You had two choices, period. And depending on where you lived, you might have only one choice if there is only one place in town and they only contract one service. It was a state sanctioned monopoly, and it didn't work for shit. Even the people that worked at the local car accessory place admitted the program was fucked up, so bad at the time, only a couple years into it, they were think of dropping it.
But back to the current ideological war on society. This is just one more front in the ongoing war against social programs. It's designed specifically to prevent people from even applying. If they were serious about it, they would have written the law to allow the state to pay for all pre-application testing and then bill or sue the people that fail. But they didn't. On purpose.
They're applying for fucking welfare! They don't have any fucking money! And if they get denied for reasons other than drugs, they're still out the fucking money!
It's a modern day poll tax. It's open war on poor people. It's nothing less than the abdication of social responsibility to consumer market capitalism.
The new color of racism is green.
posted by opus512 at 8:58 AM
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