Welfare drug tests struck down!

And boom goes the bubble gum.

Ever since the Tea Party and the Republican National Committee began their Facebook crusade for mandatory drug tests of welfare recipients, I've kept a special eye on this issue. Their idea was motivated by classism and control. If people can be singled out because of their economic group, where does it stop?

Drug testing welfare recipients without reasonable suspicion was long ago ruled unconstitutional in a Michigan case. But what hath the Tea Party wrought? After the Tea Party installed a slate of right-wing crackpots in public offices throughout the land, Florida and Georgia passed laws to require suspicionless drug tests in order to receive welfare.

Florida wasted over $45,000 on this program before a judge halted it. Only about 2% of people on welfare failed the drug test. (The rate of drug abuse among the rest of the public is about 10%.) Yesterday a federal appeals court struck down this program - echoing the Michigan ruling. In what Huffington Post calls "a strongly-worded opinion", the 3-judge panel unanimously deemed it an unconstitutional search - which it is.

Meanwhile, public interest in the issue has been gutted. Hardly anybody today is demanding drug tests for welfare, largely because Occupy showed that the crimes of the 1% were going unpunished. (Occupy has also decimated interest in the confiscatory FairTax - a longtime right-wing cause celebre.)

But Florida's fascist Gov. Rick "Max Headroom" Scott must still be "hardly anybody today." He vows to squander yet more taxpayer money by appealing yesterday's decision to the Supreme Court.

(Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/26/florida-welfare-drug-testing_n_2766479.html)