Hating on the poors
by David Atkins
John Cheese has a great Sunday read at Cracked: Four things politicians will never understand about poor people. Subjects include “Poor Does Not Equal Unemployed,” “Poor People Are Not Mindless Leeches,” “Poor People Aren’t Rampant Drug Addicts” and “You Don’t Have Real Sympathy for the Poor if You’ve Never Lived It.”
From the section on drug testing welfare recipients:
This is another hot debate in political circles because quite a few states have already adopted it, and several more are considering it. Why not? Yes, it was declared unconstitutional on grounds that it violates the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches, but other than that, it seems like a good idea. Drugs are a huge problem with the poor, and I most definitely don’t want to be handing my tax dollars to someone who’s just going to blow it on … well, blow.
That’s what all of these states thought, and some of them still think that. Then they did the testing and found out that, actually, the poor are pretty much as clean as the rest of us. In Arizona, out of 87,000 people they subjected to the test, exactly one monster-forkin’ person tested positive. One. And Florida had just as embarrassing results: 21 people tested positive out of 51,000. That was right before a federal judge showed up and put a boot in their … leg-hat, by blocking the law. Of course, that didn’t hurt their feelings much since the program not only didn’t save the state any money, but it actually put them almost $46,000 in the hole (must … resist), even when you factor in the money they saved by denying applicants.
What really troubles me with this one isn’t the occasional crackhead being booted from the system. It’s the 6 year old that isn’t being provided for, regardless of what illegal horsepoop their parents are putting into their bodies. As in all of these points, yes, those people do exist — I’ll never deny that. And yes, I think it’s a dagnabbit falootin’ shame that some of our money is going to crack instead of … well, literally anything else. But that child is along for the ride, regardless, and pushing him deeper into poverty is unacceptable on pretty much every level.
Read the whole thing. It’s tremendous.
There’s a certain style to political blogging that falls on deaf ears to many apolitical types. But an article like this from a humor website filled with the right dose of comedy and profanity can reach many of the ones that folks like me and Digby can’t. I strongly recommend forwarding this article to anyone suffocating under the delusions of Republican talking points about poverty and social welfare.
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