Classist brain trust on autopilot

Just because the Nazis seem to be reduced to background noise doesn't mean you shouldn't still be vigilant against their recycled hate. Now the right-wing brain trust is rehashing a failed idea that tasted like shit to begin with: forced drug tests of folks who get government benefits.

Let me be clear: Anyone who supports this bullshit should stay home on Election Day, because they obviously don't understand basic civics.

I'm telling you point blank that this idea is evil.

The first wave of this fascism, back in the '90s, was derailed when a federal court correctly ruled that drug testing welfare recipients was unconstitutional. Did lawmakers learn? Of course not, because they're fucking stupid.

Now legislators in at least 8 states are trying to require drug tests for people who receive welfare, unemployment benefits, or food stamps. Their usual excuse is that people who have jobs often have to take drug tests, so why not those who don't?

Um, probably because not everyone who gets welfare is jobless, perhaps? To get most forms of assistance (other than unemployment), you must be poor - not necessarily unemployed. The working poor are called the working poor because they work. (It's been proven before that a disproportionate number of Wal-Mart employees make so little money that they qualify for food stamps.)

So this proposed law is about classism. Nothing but.

If legislators are so worried about people with jobs having to take drug tests, why don't they propose a law to limit employers' powers to require such tests?

In West Virginia, far-right Republican Del. Craig Blair whimpered, "Nobody's being forced into these assistance programs." Hey, Craig? Have you seen the poverty and unemployment statistics lately? Or are your math skills as limited as your civics knowledge?

As more proof of Blair's idiocy, he made a website touting his drug test idea, graced with a goofy caricature of himself.

Luckily, other West Virginia legislators aren't so receptive to the idea. Democratic Del. Sally Susman told Blair in a letter, "Your latest legislative proposal is such staggering nonsense I was surprised the members of your own party did not laugh you out of the House of Delegates."

Blair's proposal is so idiotic, in fact, that Susman actually thought someone submitted the bill using Blair's stationery just as a joke.

Maybe the first folks who ought to be tested are legislators. They must be smoking something pretty powerful to come up with the shit they come up with.

It gets worse: The Kansas House approved a similar measure. The Oklahoma Senate passed such a bill unanimously. Then again, you can expect that from Oklahoma lawmakers, after they tried to censor a biologist's speech because it disagreed with the Answers in Genesis cult that most state legislators are a member of.

Of all the humiliating, cruel things to do, why test poor people for drugs? Bank executives who waste bailout money don't have to be tested, so why the poor? If this passes in any state, there ought to be marches in the streets of every town. Forced drug tests of the poor used to be considered an unthinkable taboo anywhere outside Nazi Germany. Now it's become taboo just to remember that it ever was taboo.

In their hearts, the fascists are fighting a higher power.

(Source: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hWSQNKlnu1j_2qJbg2HdBi_HUEaQD975O5Q80;
http://www.register-herald.com/local/local_story_062212021.html)