Supremes uphold rogue searches of welfare families

Hope the Supreme Court's stocked up on toilet paper, because they're publishing another ruling!

In California in 1997, San Diego County barked down an order that required welfare applicants to agree to routine warrantless searches of their home while they're present. If the residents don't agree to this search, they lose benefits that they need.

The ACLU challenged this policy as unconstitutional (which the policy is). But now the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear their challenge and is letting the policy stand (after the right-wing 9th U.S. Circus Court of Appeals also upheld it). This action provides another great example of Supreme Court doublespeak: The purported intent of the searches is to check for welfare fraud (even when there's no probable cause to think the residents committed fraud). But (in letting the lower court ruling stand) the Supremes in effect said the searches are legal because they're not looking for evidence of a crime.

Uh, isn't welfare fraud a crime??? I was pretty sure it is. So if they're claiming to look for welfare fraud, they're claiming to look for a crime.

(I know what the "regulation for thee, not for me" types are gonna say: They'll say for a family to get welfare at all is welfare fraud, but that it's just A-OK for a corporation to collect corporate welfare. Not like I give a shit what they think.)

The policy speaks volumes about what right-wing county officials think of the poor. They have a classist view in which they think of the poor as lazy fraudsters. If a rich person buys a million-dollar mansion, do they automatically assume they're guilty of a crime and conduct a warrantless walk-through search of their new home? In brief, San Diego County and the Supreme Court have in effect criminalized poverty.

Here's a deal: Counties can search welfare families' homes if they let me search offices of major corporations that get corporate welfare to make sure they really need assistance. Fair?

What you never hear about is the fact that since the 104th Reich passed the rogue welfare "reform" law in 1996, real misuse of welfare by individuals hasn't lessened. Not like there was that much to begin with: The supposed pandemic of welfare abuse in the early '90s was a hoax by talk radio and right-wing government officials who hated the poor.

(Source: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/5331061.html)