Piss sniffer. I’m writing that one down.
It’s cheaper to pay addicts to not become even bigger nuisances, like burglars and muggers and whatnot.
Personal responsibility to a point, but as said in the other thread, you really only have three choices:
- pay some welfare up front, even to addicts.
- pay a lot more money in police, jail, and hospital costs to deal with angry sick homeless people who steal to get drugs/alcohol.
- let people die on the streets (which will probably also cost more in terms of falling property values, direct costs of cleanup, investigation, and corpse disposal)
I don’t see any point to paying more money and getting worse outcomes to prove some nebulous moral point.
I don’t necessarily agree with you–I perceive addiction in general to be similar to my chronic major depression. It’s not curable in the sense that if I stop taking medicine and watching myself for danger signs, it WILL recur and eventually kill me via my suicide. It is, however, manageable with training and vigilance and the occasional prescription. Many other mental disorders function the same way, why wouldn’t addiction?
That having been said, that’s why I’m opposed to drug testing for welfare recipients. It seems to me that the people I know who’ve got off drugs/alcohol had a support network, a safe environment, and a easing of the real-world burdens enough to let them pry out a space where they didn’t need to drink in order to cope. That can be provided by giving addicts the same welfare and benefits as any other poor person–getting them stable, with a roof over their head and food in the fridge will give them a space to stand when they’re fighting the desire to intoxicate
I’m glad we can agree on something, Bricker. I note, unlike Der Trihs, that you aren’t saying we can’t give the needy a hand if we want to.
Of course I am against welfare at the federal level, seeing it as unconstitutional, and think it should only be administered by states.
and prosecutors don’t get government money?
I did it backwards. The defense lawyers, unless pro bono , work for their customers. the prosecutors work for at the behest of the TV networks and are paid by tax payers.
There may be some correlation between drug use and mental illness. As to cause and effect…well that’s a little more uncertain.
I do know that after I read Chris Prentiss’ book The Alcohol and Addiction Cure I was able to end a three year crack cocaine addiction, and I was able to do it just like that (snaps fingers) once I found the right way to look at my problem. I haven’t had the least desire to smoke crack since (8 years). Whereas I went to “treatment” twice and it didn’t help too much. I figured, from what they had told me, that I was alaways gonna be a crack addict and everyday have to fight that urge to smoke crack for the rest of my life. I’m glad I decided that idea was horseshit. Under that idea I was still smoking.
Chris Prentiss taught me not to think like that and now I don’t.
given your other posts, I thought there was something wrong with that one.
As a matter of original interpretation, I’d agree with you, but I believe the view that federal welfare programs are unconstitutional has been forclosed for some years now by the reasoning in Helvering vs. Davis and Carmichael vs. Southern Coal & Coke.
I love how it’s the people who nominally espouse smaller government that come up with these ideas. Their heads would spin if they ever realized the enormous amount of resources required to support the police state that must necessarily result from controlling how the poor, gay males, and women live their lives.
What drugs are we discussing, here? As some of you may or may not know, its a lot easier to bust potheads for this stuff, because pot lingers in the system. The “real” drugs can be washed out with a couple of days abstinence. Alcohol, of course, is pretty much non-testable, save for the moment of drunkeness.
So, effectively, you will still end up supporting those drug users who are smart enough to evade your net, but punishing the relatively innocuous potheads. And spending a buttload of money to accomplish it.
Brilliant!
Then you’ll be glad to know:
I have no problem with needs testing for anyone who receives government money. It’s an essential part of the program.
But drug testing isn’t a good method of needs testing. Qin’s proposal wouldn’t do anything about a welfare recipient who’s wasting money on cigarettes or lottery tickets or comic books or baseball cards or tropical fish or collecting guns or NASCAR memorabilia - all of these people could get potentially off welfare if they spent their money more wisely but none of them will fail a drug test.
Then don’t sideline into a generic complaint about how the Democrats levy too many taxes if that’s not what you really mean to say. If you want to discuss whether or not a particular program is worth the money, you should look up and notice the rest of us are already in the middle of a discussion on that topic.
Your point hinged on a “might”, and my reply was based on that “might”. If you’d said “will”, my reply would have been different.
Well that’s not what you’re proposing, is it? You’re not saying we should test them so that we can provide proper treatment options in addition to the money they need to eat or pay rent. You’re arguing that we should test them so that we can judge if they’re worthy to receive our charity. If you judge them to be unworthy, you want to cut off their support, possibly incarcerate them in a useless attempt to force them off their addictions, and if necessary, force their children into nursing homes.
It’s an entirely twisted notion of charity, limited government, financial planning, addiction treatment, and well-being of children - all predicated on the idea that you’re entitled to judge those who most need your help.
People, even beggars, are sometimes greedy. My whole point here (and Hamlet’s) is that none of us are without faults - therefore we who have much should not pretend that we’re more worthy than those who have little. We especially are in no position to judge those who are needy on their personal worthiness, having no particular worthiness ourselves.
Charity is as much about the giver as it is the recipient.
What I would say is that the fundamental point of a society - the only reason societies exist - is to ensure the communal well-being of its members, great and small. I would also say that we, as a society, are only as great as our weakest and most vulnerable members. Our ability to work together is what makes civilization possible. Helping each other - whether through education, healthcare, welfare, unemployment, food banks, etc. - makes everybody stronger, not just the immediate recipient. Government (well, American government, at least) is the collective will of every citizen - no matter how worthy, no matter how powerful - to work for the common strength of our society, by doing good for each other.
I think the idea in this thread - that we don’t have to help people we judge to be unworthy - is not just wrong, it’s dangerous to us as a society because it undermines the fact that our strength is in our cohesion and because it creates artificial divisions among our citizens.
Never really looked with any interest on that issue; vague memories of lectures–let me guess though, the court took the preample to the designated powers of Congress and read the explanatory “for the public welfare” as though it was law?
Seems to be like heading a grocery list
NEEDED THINGS TO GET AT THE STORE
1.Milk
2.Bread
3.OJ
4.Soap
5. TP
6. Brain
and then an errand runner comes back with 72 bags and a $300 receipt.
WTF you say, I asked for five things. OK six.
Huh-uh, the errand runner says, at the top you wrote needed things to buy at the store. So I bought all kinds of needed things.
Congress treated the Constitution as though it was law? What were they thinking?
It says it right in the Constitution “promote the general welfare” just after “establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence”.
Now you might think that five laws were enough to promote the general welfare. Others might think it took seventy-two laws. But the Constitution set a goal not a limit.
Yes. Or they said, “You put soap down, so I needed to purchase wash rags, shampoo, towels, dish towels, a dishwasher, a shower, plumbing supplies, a well pump, a parcel of land to dig the well, a backhoe, a shovel, and a house to put all of this stuff in. It was necessary and proper to my power to buy soap.”
What I’m hearing is that some of these poor folks getting public money are beyond help. That it is far cheaper, and therefore better, to allow them to feed their addictions instead of attempting to help them become a productive member of society.
You are really writing off these people. These people’s lives have value and that value cannot be tapped if they are on drugs. Not the occasional joint, but the heavier stuff. How do you find these people if you don’t drug test? I said before fail one test, get treatment, fail 3 times and you get benefits taken away.
These folks can’t take the first step to improve their lives unless they have incentive to get off the drugs. You call the test humiliating, but I call it helping them. They aren’t going to stop unless they have incentive to stop.
The elderly Social Security recipient has paid into the system all their lives, so no, I don’t care if grandpa tokes up once in a while. Subsidized farmers toking up once in a while, again so what, they are still busting their hump running a business. People in the projects w/ taxpayer paid food and shelter and kids, they have potential as human beings, but apparently it’s fine just to throw your hands up and give up.
I don’t agree