Right-wing idiot wants to criminalize poor

Do you need any more proof that America's political "leaders" don't give a floating fuck about you or anyone else but their greedy selves?

In the eyes of the right-wing consensus that dominates modern American politics, everyone who isn't of above-average income is a criminal. That includes me, you, and tens of millions of others - young and old, urban and rural, and of all races. According to our so-called "leaders", if you have bad luck in life, it's entirely your fault, you're less of a person, and you should be punished further.

Another clod who subscribes to this belief is Weldon Davis, a right-wing Democratic candidate for South Carolina House.

The Democrats ought to tell Davis to take his class warfare to the Republican tent where it belongs, but they don't have the guts anymore. (Who says the DLC isn't still running the show?)

Key among the Spartanburg-area candidate's right-wing ideas is his plan to impose mandatory drug tests on almost everyone who gets any form of government assistance. It would apply to welfare recipients, food stamp applicants, and even public housing residents.

Davis whimpered, "In order to have the privilege to have a job -" Alright, Weldon, that's about enough out of you for this millennium. Since when is having a job a privilege and not a right?

Who says that everyone who gets benefits is unemployed? It's been pointed out by others before that many employees of Wal-Mart (one of America's largest employers) make so little money that they collect food stamps. The same is true of other assistance programs and of other jobs. That's what the working poor means, Weldon, you idiot.

Because many welfare recipients work, who says they aren't already taking a drug test at work?

Drug tests aren't even accurate!

Right-wing State Sen. David Thomas, a Republican, already introduced a bill to require random drug tests of people who get unemployment benefits. But that bill didn't get very far.

Drug tests for public assistance have been ruled unconstitutional already. Weldon Davis knows it. The Nazis' 1996 federal welfare "reform" law spewed so much hate and vitriol against the poor that it allowed states to make welfare recipients take a drug test. Michigan - under right-wing then-Gov. John Engler, long known as an asshole who's not fit to be called human - became the first state to go along with it. But this practice was quickly ruled to be a violation of the Fourth Amendment's safeguard against unreasonable searches.

That's not to say this ruling isn't being violated elsewhere. Chicago, for instance, illegally began requiring drug testing of some in public housing. A similarly illegal federal rule evicts entire families if even one member is convicted of a minor drug charge.

However, there is no law to evict the wealthy from their mansions if they get busted for drugs. Again, the poor are being discriminated against.

The war on the poor that gained steam 15 years ago and continues today is motivated by sheer hate and greed. The failed drug war is almost inseparable from it: If the war on the poor and the War on Drugs were represented by circles on a Euler diagram, the drug war would be the smaller circle, and 95% of it would be within the circle for the war on the poor.

Weldon Davis's idea has also been proposed in other states in the past year or so, following a wingnutosphere crusade built on a lie.

Where's the drug tests of greedy Wall Street execs who fleece the taxpayers out of hundreds of billions of dollars in the form of a bailout? Where's the drug tests of right-wing legislators who carry out their class warfare on our dime? They're obviously on something.

(Source: http://www.goupstate.com/article/20081006/NEWS/810060291/1083?Title=Drug_testing_proposal_gets_mixed_response)