Right. You can’t go too crazy and regulate EVERY aspect of a welfare recipient’s life. I mean, hell, if they stop for an ice cream cone every once in a while that’s no problem. But if they are so far off of the path that they are buying cocaine with public funds, then they are well off the beaten path of the basic purposes behind the welfare system and need to be put on another track. What that is I’m not sure, but it sure as hell isn’t continuing to give them public dollars to support their habit.
No, I meant adult recipients obviously.
So…?
A: Hey, can you give a dollar?
B: Sorry, don’t have any.
A: Stabs B to death and then seizes his wallet
Well if we are going to treat them, we can’t just give them money since many of them will just use it on drugs and alcohol to hurt themselves. The mandatory drug testing laws can differ in severity and consequences. I do support treatment centres.
Cite? I’d be interested in what approaches you are referring to, and their success rates.
I’ve struggled with addiction my whole adult life, and I think most people who aren’t addicts have a tendency to oversimplify the issue because they just can’t understand it. It truly is something that’s hard to grasp when you haven’t been through it. Everytime the topic comes up, the comments make that very clear. I don’t say that to make excuses, I say it to express my frustration in the lack of effective treatment and the way people judge addicts so harshly, as if we have a moral failing instead of a physiological problem. I take responsibility for myself, but it doesn’t change the fact that I’m going to have to fight this thing for the rest of my life.
Taking people’s benefits away because they fail a drug test is bullshit for a lot of reasons, and equating drug addiction with being some kind of lowlife degenerate is one of them.
Like so many others that think radical changes to welfare are needed, you obviously have little to no clue about the issue you’re chiming in on. You apparently think welfare cash assistance is permanent/life-long, unconditional, and substantial - it is none of those things, far from it actually. You seem to think that people who apply for welfare easily get money with no questions asked and no other forms of help such as job-seeking assistance and counseling.
I suggest doing some minimal research on the issue before pretending you know how to fix it’s (mostly imaginary) problems. Otherwise, your claims of only having these people’s best interests in mind seem to ring hollow, and your accusations that others are the ones that are “really writing off these people” look downright hypocritical.
(The above applies for a few other people in this thread, but the general tone and content of this post just set me off. Seriously people, if you are going to criticize welfare programs, at least learn something about the subject.)
That, in macrocosm, describes a notable number of 20th-century revolutions in the third world.
Would you kindly address the fact that in a recent study, alcoholics given an allowance and a spot in a halfway home and allowed to drink anyway drank less and cost the government less than alcoholics turned away if they drank?
Tag a low-key, non-mandatory treatment program on that after these guys have a few months to settle down and start drinking less on their own, and I think you might just [del]waste the taxpayers money on evil addicts[/del] hit all possible good outcomes.
How often should we drug test these people. Once a month, every 6 months?
Michigan has a 48 month lifetime for receiving welfare. Should we test them during the last year?
You really think things through QIN. I guess you hate the poor quite a bit.
It’s a preamble explaining the need for the following enumerated powers. What you’re saying is like saying “We the people…” is a law.
I don’t think misunderstanding the way welfare works (especially given all the bad propaganda from sources he’s likely to have been taught are reliable) implies a hate for the poor. Nor does, on the surface, a desire to prevent the poor from using what assistance they do receive for drugs. I’ll be interested to see how he feels about the studies that show better results from not banning the addictive substance, though.
I don’t support banning consuming or possessing drugs actually although I support banning hard drugs from being manufactured, grown, sold, or distributed.
So…?
A: Hey, can you give a dollar?
B: Sorry, don’t have any.
A: Stabs B to death and then seizes his wallet
[/quote]
Fisrt, it’s more like:
A: Hey, can you give a dollar?
B: Go crawl into a corner and die, vermin. See this money? It’s mine, and you can’t have any of it, and I have it because God likes me and hates you! <spits on A>
A: Stabs B to death and then seizes his wallet
And second, as pointed out this “I’ve got mine, screw everyone else” attitude is exactly the sort of behavior that’s led to revolutions and violence all over the world.
So the lesson here is – stab A to death first, and then spit on him? I was all for mutual noninterference, but, well, you’re scaring me, here.
Not really. That just makes C, D and E start a revolutionary cell and blow up B’s car with him in it.
What do you mean by “those type of people”? :dubious: Have you ever KNOWN any addicts, or anyone using welfare, Qin?
You got that right,** voltaire.
**
I’ve been on welfare, AND I’ve been a welfare caseworker. (In my final year as a caseworker, I busted fraudsters.)
People on Food Stamps DO get benefits with relatively few questions asked, to be fair (or at least this is how it was a few years ago, I’m no longer a caseworker so it could be the rules have changed). When I was a caseworker I wasn’t allowed to call bullshit on someone even when I knew they were lying to my face about their income. If someone claimed to be self employed, we had to take their word for it when they said they made only $300 a month yet they had a $500/mo apartment plus utilities to pay. (As far as sharing information with other agencies went, if we knew a client was working AND drawing unemployment, we weren’t allowed to tell the unemployment office that was on the 2nd floor of our building. If we knew a client had just got married to someone with an income and was drawing SSI, we couldn’t tell Social Security about it.) Even when people were busted committing fraud, in most situations nothing was ever done. Prosecutors aren’t going to waste time prosecuting someone for that unless it’s a truly enormous amount of money (my biggest bust DID get prosecuted - they’d scammed at least 40 grand in Food Stamps alone).
The government could be doing a LOT more to stop people who abuse the system, but they won’t. Drug use among welfare recipients? Puhleze. If you want to make a REAL dent in the amount of money being wasted on welfare programs, go after mothers who claim the father of their child is nowhere to be found in order to get benefits, and all the while he’s working full time and sleeping in her bed every night. I saw waaaay more of that in my office than I did people coming in high.
Welfare “checks,” though (what used to be called AFDC and is now, I believe, still called TANF), are miniscule. When I was on it, it was $340 a month. I survived by living off of student loans. Plus I was subject to a home visit pretty much any time they wanted to, plus a bunch of other rules - some reasonable, some downright ridiculous.
Nobody on welfare is having fun being on welfare … except those who are scamming the system and have hidden income. (And just as an aside – my biggest, ballsiest fraudsters? White upper middle class.) If you are poor enough to legitimately be on welfare, it’s a miserable experience. Those who are legit don’t need any more humiliation than they already feel every time they walk into the welfare office.
This right here is what we call concern trolling. You don’t care if people hurt themselves, you only care if welfare recipients “hurt themselves” with “your” money. If you cared about people “hurting themselves” with drugs and alcohol you’d not be targeting the poorest of the poor for your allegedly public-interest minded testing scheme. It’s fundamentally dishonest to pretend that this is about anyone’s wellbeing because the end result of any such scheme would be people left mired in deeper poverty, children left without food, shelter and safety and suffering. All so the “taxpayers” can [strike]save[/strike] spend a (lot of) buck(s).
I don’t know what state you’re in, but in Pennsylvania, there is one omnibus application for all aid programs, food stamps, medical assistance and TANF. Even though only a part of the information is used to determine eligibility for food stamps, you cannot submit an incomplete application even if you don’t want (or know you don’t qualify for) any other aid. The amount of information that one must provide is substantial; the online application is estimated to take someone of average reading ability and web form usage savvy a minimum of 90 minutes to complete.
So the government was formed because of a need for those powers. But you feel the government that resulted doesn’t have those powers.
What did it mean when they wrote “The Congress shall have power - To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States”?
Or for that matter when it said “The Congress shall have power - to pay the Debts and provide for the common defence and general Welfare of the United States.”
My opinion is that if they’re going so far off the path that they’re buying cocaine, then they’re breaking the law. And we have an existing system for dealing with people who break laws. There’s no reason why the welfare system should be involved in drug crime investigations anymore than we should have the police determining who’s eligible for food stamps. And there’s certainly no reason why we should treat every welfare recipient as a suspected drug user.
Oh, you shouldn’t take anything I say to mean I want welfare recipients piss-sniffed. I have a hatred of the drug war and the industry it has spawned.
I assure you that I went through full blown addictions. First, for fifteen years I took everything I could get my hands on. Then for five years I settled into some pretty serious alcoholism (a fifth a day) though I quit most other drugs. That was followed by 3 years of a $100-$200 a day crack habit. I tried (standard) treatment but that pretty much left me feeling hopeless with the message of incurable disease.
Chris Prentiss’ book The Alcohol and Addiction Cure is the other approach I mentioned. Please don’t take what I say as blaming addicts for a moral failing, I’m not, and Prentiss never talks like that either. Prentiss says that addiction is better seen as a symptom of something else, which can be addressed treated and cured. Even if that approach is not true, I can tell you personally that thinking in the manner he suggested allowed me to solve my addiction problems. All urges are gone now. It’s not a stay-away-from-drugs deal either; I used to drink til I was broke or it was all gone or the liqour store closed, once I started, no stopping, the ol one-drink-is-too-many-and-a-thousand-are-not-enough. I can have one drink or two now and stop, not desiring more, and its mostly unattractive.
I think changing substances of abuse was a good thing for me. It made me realize that “alcohol” didn’t have ahold of me, since it was easily replaceable with cocaine. With cocaine, alcohol made no never mind to me. then I realized that “cocaine” didn’t have a hold of me either–it was something else. I didn’t know what, but my thinking about my addiction had gotten me that far when I read Prentiss’ book. I figured more unhelpful shit like I’d read in the past, but I was surprised to find this book was completely different.
With the reasoning I already had in place I was a prime candidate for Prentiss’ message. He said to find the underlaying causes that make a person want to take drugs in an unreasonable manner the addict must keep asking himself WHY, over and over, (one must be honest with oneself) one keeps wanting to take drugs. Finding out why is the hard part.
Once you find out why you want to you will find the reason to be something irrational that has always bothered you, Recognize it as irrational and then change your mind.
Indygrrl, this worked for me. My urges and cravings are gone. It may not work for just everyone, although Prentiss claims it just about does. There are a very few who may have chemical imbalances that are behind the addiction and this process doesn’t really work. For the rest of us, there are often emotional reasons we take drugs to excess. Denying that emotional reason is very much part of the problem; we take the drugs to hide it from ourselves. This process can be temporarily emotionally painful.
At the very least, one reason it may work is because it is HOPEFUL. The message you’re sick and can’t be cured is not, and in fact is negative. If nothing else that message of HOPE worked for me. I did what Prentiss suggested and I put that crack pipe down and never wanted it again.
I hope something I said here can help you in your struggles.
OK, you got me. I don’t know how the ins and outs of capital W Welfare works.
But currently I work for a company that deals with subsidized housing. Tenant pays miniscule portion of the rent, but the government (Rural Development or HUD) pays the rest and often times utilities. Welfare might have a time limit, but these folks don’t. The majority of the people in these complexes have been there since the 90’s. That is definitely a way of life. If they qualify for this assistance, then I assume they are getting additional government help.
Overall, government should figure out why these folks have been in this situation for so long, and if drugs/alcohol are a contributing factor, then the government should do what it takes to help these people, including taking benefits away to encourage proper behavior. If education is found to be a contributing factor, then the government should provide job training.
The goal ought to be to let folks find a way out of this government subsidy, this should not be a permanent lifestyle.
You’re missing my main point (which I see that Little Nemo has pointed out):
Ensuring that the “undeserving” don’t get what they don’t “deserve” (based on arbitrary moral judgments) is more important than saving money; IOW, it is worth it to spend money to achieve this goal.