193.9 - Outrage of the Week: drug testing the poor

Outrage of the Week: drug testing the poor

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walkalloveryou wants Wisconsin to institute drug testing for applicants for public assistance.

He is far from the first. Over the past few years, a good number of states have introduced programs to require applicants for public assistance, particularly applicants for TANF or what used to be called welfare, to be "screened" for drug use with the supposed, the claimed, idea of fighting drug abuse and encouraging them to get back into the workforce.

Florida tried it, requiring all applicants be tested. It not only was a flop, it lost money and was tossed out by a federal court as an unconsitutional violation of the right to privacy - and that came after it had turned up a drug use rate of just 2 percent among public assistance users, a quarter of the rate for the total population, according to federal estimates.

After that, states started using various screening procedures to decide who would be tested, thereby getting around the constitutional violations. It didn't really help. Minnesota tried a drug testing program; it was another flop: Only 0.4 percent of participants in the state’s main cash welfare program had the felony drug convictions the program focused on, as opposed to 1.2 percent of the state’s adult population as a whole.

Utah tried it, using a screening test to see who would have to be tested. A year later, exactly 12 people had tested positive. That's a positive rate of drug use of 0.2 percent of total benefits recipients, compared to 6 percent of all state residents.

Tennessee just tried it, and in the first six months of its program found 37 people testing positive out of 16,000 applicants for assistance, a rate of less than a quarter of a percent in a state where the overall level of drug use is estimated at 8 percent.

We have seen this over and over and over again in state after state after state: Applicants for public assistance have lower rates of drug use than the population as a whole. Even in states like Utah and Tennessee, which only tested those deemed "at risk" of being drug users, even if in such cases you were to assume that 90% of drug users either beat the test or were never tested, so the actual rate of drug use is 10 times what was found, the rate of drug use among applicants for public assistance would still be a third, a quarter, of that among the whole population.

But still this determination to test, this regime of regulations, persists, failure after failure. Twelve states have enacted such laws and according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, bills to do the same have been introduced in at least 10 other states so far this year, states from Maine to Texas to Montana.

Why? What is the point? What is the reason? An unintentionally revealing answer was given by Tennessee state Rep. Glen Casada, in referring to the 37 people in Tennessee who were denied benefits due to a positive drug test:

That's 37 people who should not be receiving taxpayer subsidies, because they are not behaving as they are supposed to. If the taxpayers are going to support you there are certain criteria you need to adhere to.

Other supporters elsewhere say even though the tests have found very low levels of drug use, they're still good because they have, they say, a deterrent effect - encouraging people prone to drug use to avoid it and thereby remain better prepared for employment.

Precisely. Because you are poor, they are saying, because you are in need of help, because you are struggling, therefore you are no longer a full human being, therefore you are morally inferior, therefore we have the right and the power to judge you, to look down on you, therefore we have the right and the power to shape you, to correct your (to we superior sorts) obvious failings, to demand that you behave as we tell you to, we have the right and the power to humiliate you, to demean you, and you will kowtow and tug at your forelock and kiss our ring or you can just damn well go hungry and cold.

None of these programs are about combating drug use of getting people into treatment programs or even about "good use of taxpayer money." They are about our contempt for the poor, our classist assumptions that those who are poor are simply inferior in some way, morally, ethically, or both, and somehow deserve their condition.

It is cruel, it is bigoted, it is an outrage.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/11/welfare-drug-testing_n_6655712.html
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/02/10/3621267/tennessee-drug-tests-after-six-months/
http://www.startribune.com/politics/statelocal/235888681.html
http://www.wbir.com/story/news/politics/2015/02/08/drug-testing-of-welfare-applicants-yields-few-positives/23086333/
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2014/12/16/few-welfare-applicants-caught-in-drug-screening-net-so-far/

247.4 - Outrage of the Week: Wisconsin Gov. Scott WalkAllOverYou

Outrage of the Week: Wisconsin Gov. Scott WalkAllOverYou

Now for our other regular feature, this is the Outrage of the Week.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott WalkAllOverYou is at it again, trying to find ways to humiliate and denigrate people applying for public benefits which they need and to which they are entitled.

We start with the fact that federal regulations do not allow states to make applicants for unemployment benefits or SNAP benefits (what we used to call Food Stamps) take a drug test. Scotty boy does not like that and is suing the federal government. Y'see, in the case of applying for cash benefits under the program of TANF, which stands for Transitional Aid to Needy Families and is what we used to call welfare, drug testing can be allowed - and WalkAllOverYou is insisting that unemployment and Food Stamps are exactly the same as TANF.

Scott WalkAllOverYou

Not satisfied with that, on May 4, he authorized rules allowing employers who made drug tests a condition of employment to voluntarily submit to the state information about the results of those tests and considerations of privacy be damned. If any of those people later apply for unemployment or SNAP benefits but either failed the employer's drug test or wouldn't take it, they can be denied benefits unless they agree to get drug treatment.

In other words, he is trying to make an end run around the federal regulations by creating a database of pee, allowing him the opening to potentially deny benefits to those in need with the claim that "Well, we didn't make them take the test." This, he says, is part of moving people from "government dependence to true independence," with "independence," it seems, consisting of getting no help at all and screw you. The "independence" which he seeks, that is, is for him and his cat cat cronies to be freed from any legal or ethical obligation to care about anyone or anything other than their own selfish desires.

And no matter how many times these drug-test regimens fail, no matter how many times they wind up showing that the poor are less likely to use drugs than the general population, as they invariably do, still we are afflicted with stupid, obnoxious, sneering, classist jerks like Scott WalkAllOverYou looking down their noses at the poor and viewing them as inferior beings.

It is - he is - a moral and ethical outrage.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/5/7/1523972/-Gov-Scott-Walker-to-form-statewide-pee-database-in-his-latest-attempt-to-stick-it-to-the-poors
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2016/05/06/3776097/walker-drug-test-unemployment/
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/02/26/3624447/tanf-drug-testing-states/

223.7 - States continue to demonize poor as drug abusers

States continue to demonize poor as drug abusers

Talking about the economy brings up something we're talked about before here, with a bit of recent news prompting me to bring it up again.

In the summer of 2014, Tennessee instituted a new program of drug testing applicants for public assistance, what we used to call welfare.

The program consisted of three questions about drug use added to the application. Answer "yes" to any one of them and you have to take a urine test or be rejected outright. Take the test and fail, you have one chance to take a second test after completing a drug treatment program. The penalty is losing six months of benefits.

Well, the news is that it's been a year now and the state has reported on the results so far: Only 1.6% of the nearly 30,000 applicants answered "yes" to any of the screening questions and of those, fewer than 12% failed the urine test. Together, that means that less than 0.2% of applicants for public aid, fewer than 1 in 500, were found to be using drugs.

Tennessee thus joins the list of six other states - AZ, KS, MS, MO, OK, UT - that have instituted similar programs only to have similar results: discovering that poor people are considerably less likely to be using drugs than the general population.

Yet these states and others continue to push this idea that we are somehow doing poor people a favor by treating them all as suspected drug users who have to prove the purity of their bodily fluids to their governing overlords, those who hold in their hands the power to decide if the accused gets any help with food or shelter or health care for themselves or their children.

With the repeated failures of that idea, whose only practical outcome has been to deny benefits to people in need, possibly to the very people who need them the most, the question arises as to why it keeps getting pushed.

The answer is contained in the question: The intent is to find ways to deny aid to the poor by demonizing the poor, by claiming the problem is one of personal failures, which drug addiction is presented as despite the medical evidence to the contrary, rather than one of economic injustice that has turned too many of us into economic throwaways as power and wealth become more concentrated.

Throwaways in more ways than one. The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, which is Canada's largest mental health and addiction teaching hospital as well as one of the world's leading research facilities on those topics, has long maintained that it does not support mandatory drug testing and treatment not only because they are of "limited utility" in confirming drug use or treatment needs but also because they

further entrench the stigma which erroneously links drug addiction with economic need, and fail to address the complex but more relevant needs of those requiring assistance

- as well as, it could well be added, ignoring the possible needs of the estimated 70% of drug users who are employed and so are not among those applying for public assistance.

That stigma of the poor as being druggies, as being poor because they are druggies, has consequences far beyond the humiliation of having to pee in a cup. As the Centre notes:

Research from the US indicates that denying benefits to those who fail to comply with treatment may result in increased poverty, crime, homelessness and higher health care and social costs.

That stigma, which drives the entire drug-screening idea, is just one more obstacle faced by those who economically struggle every single day, with all that entails for, again, necessities such as food and clothing and shelter and health care and more, who struggle every day to try to escape the trap of poverty but who find that stigma of them as drug abusers that follows them even as they try to find work, that demonization of their condition, that assumption of their moral inferiority, that as I call it classism, our contempt for the poor, is just one more mountain for them to climb.

And one more reason we need that economic overhaul.

Sources cited in links:
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/10/07/3710190/tennessee-welfare-drug-tests-year-one/
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/02/26/3624447/tanf-drug-testing-states/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/welfare-drug-testing_56156d38e4b021e856d344cd
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1KvgtEnABY
http://www.camh.ca/en/hospital/about_camh/influencing_public_policy/public_policy_submissions/mandatory_drug_testing/Pages/manddrugtesting.aspx

224.8 - Only the poor face drug tests to receive any public aid or benefit

[Welcome to Jon Swift Memorial Roundup readers. Comments, as always, are welcome. You might be interested in checking out my weekly cable-access show, posted at whoviating's channel at YouTube.]

Only the poor face drug tests to receive any public aid or benefit

Last week I expressed my anger over the demonization of the poor as drug abusers, leading to the assumption that they have to be drug-tested, they have to show they are drug-free, in order to qualify for public assistance. I'm going to go on about that a little more this week.

Because this demonization of the poor has continued despite the fact that experience has repeatedly shown that the poor are less likely to be using drugs than the general population (which makes sense when you think about it: the poor can't afford the drugs).

Despite that history, despite the evidence that the poor are not drug abusers, thirteen states have passed legislation to drug test applicants or recipients of public aid - two of those, Arkansas and Wisconsin, doing so this year.

In addition, 18 states have bills pending to do the same. Because of federal court rulings that comprehensive drug screening is a violation of fourth amendment privacy rights, these bills try various ways to work about that by using questionnaires, the person's history, or the catch-all term "suspicion-based" screening.

Just how blatant is that demonization?

When Florida pursued its unsuccessful attempt before the courts to justify drug testing all applicants for assistance, it actually argued in one of its briefs there is a "concrete danger" that poor people are drug abusers, that is, that you can just assume they are using and abusing drugs. This came after its own program, before it was stopped by the courts, found a rate of drug use among applicants for assistance of just 2.6% in a state where it's estimated that over 8% of the general population are users.

And it's not just so-called "red states." One of the bluest of the the blue, Massachusetts, is now considering a bill that would require a drug test for anyone applying for aid if they have had a drug conviction any time in the last 20 years. The same would apply to anyone else who received aid as a result of that application. Fail, and you are banned from receiving aid for a year unless you complete a drug rehab program at your own expense. Which, of course, you may not be able to do because unless there is a free state-approved one available, if you could afford the cost of the drug rehab you probably wouldn't need the aid in the first place.

Why do I bring this up again? Well, this sort of demonization has primarily been directed at applicants for Temporary Aid for Needy Families, known by the acronym TANF, or similar programs that make up what we used to call welfare - that is, before that word became poisoned by the right-wing out of their hatred of the poor and the liberals out of their condescension toward the poor and their cowardice in the face of right-wing name-calling. But that's not enough for some people.

Sen. Joe Manchin

So Sen. Joe Manchin, Democrat of West Virginia, wants to go beyond TANF and have random drug testing for people who live in or apply to live in public housing, housing which he repeatedly referred to as "drug-infested." "We should be," he said, "looking at how do you have drug-free areas."

And that, in a way, sums up the who bigotry of it all. You know full well you can walk through virtually any neighborhood anywhere in this country and know there is drug use around you, know that community is, in Manchin's term, "drug-infested." But we don't demand all those people prove they are drug-free. It's only the poor.

We don't demand that those applying for subsidized student loans such as Stafford loans prove they are drug-free before they get aid. Only the poor.

We don't demand that a middle-class family taking advantage of the Earned Income Tax Credit get tested first. Only the poor.

We don't demand that the rich pee in a cup before they can take mortgage interest tax deductions on their McMansions. Only the poor.

We don't demand that farmers looking for price supports prove their purity before they get aid. Only the poor.

When corporations through their lobbyists get special exemptions for themselves written into the tax code, we don't demand the corporate executives prove they're clean so we can be sure those benefits are not going to supply someone's drug habit. Only the poor.

No public financial benefit of any kind, no grant, no tax deduction, no low-interest loan, no subsidy, none of it comes with a demand to pee in a cup - unless the beneficiaries are poor.

It's only the poor who we expect to suffer the humiliation, the degradation, the soul-killing suspicion that they are somehow morally inferior and must prove their purity before we will deign to condescend to offer them a shiny penny. And we expect that because that's what we really think: We think the poor are inferior - lazy, drug-addled, loafers who need the strict but of course actually loving guidance of their betters, that is, us.

It is hatred for the poor. It is bigotry. It is class bigotry, or as I and others call it, classism. And our society reeks of it.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.ncsl.org/research/human-services/drug-testing-and-public-assistance.aspx
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/02/26/court-rejects-florida-law-requiring-drug-testing-for-welfare-recipients/
http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Drug-testing-welfare-applicants-popular-but-can-4416545.php?t=0dbaab4db5b05374ef
http://www.tbo.com/ap/politics/welfare-drug-testing-yields--positive-results-252458
https://malegislature.gov/Bills/BillHtml/143634?generalCourtId=12
http://www.wvgazettemail.com/article/20151019/GZ01/151019454/1101

Left Side of the Aisle #104 - Part 6

Outrage of the Week: Texas says poor people are druggies

Now for our other regular feature, the Outrage of the Week.

In Texas, applicants for TANF, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, what we used to call welfare, can receive an average of a whopping $70 per month for each person in the household. In exchange, participants must sign a so-called personal responsibility contract involving such requirements as child support, children's school attendance, parenting classes, medical screenings and immunizations for children.

That level of humiliating assumption that poor people are moral inferiors who will only try to take care of their children if they are forced to, has proved to be, in the eyes of the glorious leaders of the state, insufficient punishment for the failures of being poor.

On Wednesday, April 10, the state legislature, currently composed of 19 Republicans and 12 Democrats, passed a bill which mandates that every Texan applying for food assistance through TANF must submit to an undefined "screening process" and a possible drug test before receiving benefits if the screener finds "good cause" to even suspect that person is or is likely to abuse any "controlled substance." It passed unanimously.

It was one of seven such bills introduced this year, including one that would extend the requirement to unemployment assistance.

This despite the manifest failure and utter pointlessness of such slaps in the face of the poor, as repeatedly demonstrated in other places that have done something similar.

For example, in 1999 Michigan ran a pilot program of random drug testing, only to have a state court of appeals shut it down in 2003, saying that suspicionless testing is unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment's prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures.

Florida also ran a pilot program beginning in 1999 but decided two years later that both the costs and the invasiveness of the tests were too great to justify continuing it.

Even so, in 2010 Florida Gov. Rick Voldemort Scott got approval of a requirement for urine tests for all applicants for state aid. Two federal court rulings have smacked down the program, including an appeals court ruling in February that program violated the Fourth Amendment by not showing a "substantial special need," stating in no uncertain terms that

[t]here is nothing inherent to the condition of being impoverished that supports the conclusion that there is a "concrete danger" that impoverished individuals are prone to drug use.

And in fact there is no evidence at all that people seeking assistance are more likely to do drugs. I mean, consider that Florida program: In the four months it was in operation, only 40 applicants out more than 4,000 canceled a drug test after completing the application. Of those that were tested, only 2.6% tested positive - a rate 1/3 that of the general population, according to federal surveys. Florida wound up spending more on the tests than it saved by not paying benefits to those who tested positive.

But still it goes on and on. Seven states have enacted similar laws - and, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, another 29 states are considering legislation this year.

The rich and the powerful really do despise the poor. It's not new - but it's still an outrage.

Sources:
http://crooksandliars.com/mugsy/texas-senate-unanimously-votes-drug-test-wel
http://blog.chron.com/texaspolitics/2013/04/unanimous-senate-vote-to-support-drug-testing-welfare-applicants/
http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Drug-testing-welfare-applicants-popular-but-can-4416545.php

Poorly served

Updated It's there. It's always there, as an undercurrent, a tension, if you will, a leitmotif. No matter how often or how vigorously we thump ourselves on the back about how "generous" and "good-hearted" and "fair-minded" we are, no matter how many times we praise ourselves for our unique measure of understanding and compassion, no matter how loudly we proclaim our vaunted lack of class-consciousness, it is still there: our contempt for the poor, our Calvinist-slash-Puritan conviction that people are poor as a result of their own shortcomings of character and morals.

No, of course I am not claiming everyone feels that way. I am claiming what I said: It is a constant undercurrent in our society, in our political discourse, and in our social programs. We blame the poor for their poverty, regarding it as less a matter of economic circumstances than as - although we would rarely be this direct - a judgment of God.

I was a little slow to pick up on the latest example of this sneering condescension; it was my wife who spotted an AP article in our local major newspaper explaining how there are moves in at least eight states to require

recipients of food stamps, unemployment benefits or welfare to submit to random drug testing. ...

"Nobody's being forced into these assistance programs," said Craig Blair, a Republican in the West Virginia Legislature who has created a Web site ... that bears a bobble-headed likeness of himself advocating this position. "If so many jobs require random drug tests these days, why not these benefits?"

Blair's bill, which would cover food stamps, unemployment compensation, TANF, and WIC, is the most extreme but not the only example.

On Wednesday, the Kansas House of Representatives approved a measure mandating drug testing for the 14,000 or so people getting cash assistance from the state.... In February, the Oklahoma Senate unanimously passed a measure that would require drug testing as a condition of receiving TANF benefits, and similar bills have been introduced in Missouri and Hawaii. A Florida senator has proposed a bill linking unemployment compensation to drug testing, and a member of Minnesota's House of Representatives has a bill requiring drug tests of people who get public assistance under a state program there.

The Florida proposal is particularly creepy: It would require 10% of new applicants for unemployment benefits to be tested, 10% of those currently getting them to be tested (I'm assuming each year) - and the costs of the test would be paid for out of the benefits of the person tested.

Although, as the AP article notes, this doesn't seem to be a coordinated effort, Phillip Smith, the editor of Drug War Chronicle, notes that advocates are "using remarkably similar rhetoric" in their pitches, ones I say are based on fear and even more on resentment, suspicion, hostility, and bigotry toward the poor and the struggling.

Oh, but we're told, there's nothing punitive about these bills, nothing at all. Oh no, it's all about our abiding, deep, concern for the health and well-being of the poor and about their ability to get jobs because, y'know everybody does drug testing these days, just everybody, so what's the big deal. And besides, think of the children!

Instead, think of the bigotry! Think of the rancid, putrid, vomit-inducing ignorance, paranoia, and bullshit that drives this kind of - to engage in my own abuse of language - "thinking." Think of how it equates being poor, being on welfare, needing Food Stamps, hell, with being unemployed with using drugs, indeed with being a drug addict. Think of how it approaches those who need help as somehow socially inferior creatures who we must control, test, guide - for their own good, oh of course, for their own good. Because we are their betters and so we know what they need - which is a good hard smack on the head, the lazy, drug-addled bums.

This is nothing new, it's been there from the start, it's not even something we created, it's something we inherited. In a previous job I did some research on early laws in England intended to address poverty, laws that dated back to the mid-1500s. In those laws and in the various attempts to amend them in ways to make the laws "work" as intended - which almost universally failed to do so - I found one constant, underlying, assumption, which repeatedly undermined the efforts: the assumption that there is work enough for everybody. So unless you are too young, too old and feeble, or in some way physically incapacitated to a degree that makes work impossible, if you're not working it's because you're either a shiftless good-for-nothing or a criminal. If you can't support yourself or a family, it's your own fault and you need to be sent to the workhouse or to prison.

We supposedly have grown beyond that, we supposedly have become more understanding. But while that old social bigotry may not be as rampant or as obvious, it is still there. It's been revealed in the various canards about "welfare dependency" that even lead some legislators to illustrate a talk about welfare with pictures of public parks with signs saying "Don't Feed the Animals." It's been revealed in the basic tenet of supply side economics that the way to reduce unemployment is to "lower unemployment benefits to increase the incentive to get a job," which if it means anything, means that people - the "underclass," that is, the "others" - will work only if their condition is so bad that they have no choice; they must be forced to work.

And it's revealed in these bills. An editorial in the News-Herald of Panama City, Florida, which took a libertarian-type stance against that state's proposal, noted that "the idea is that publicly funded benefits should be earned through good behavior," that there is in the minds of the bill's supporters a "moral component" to receiving aid. But as the editorial goes on to ask

[d]oes drug testing apply just to direct cash payments? Are only those who are out of work or indigent required to be drug-free? Or should anyone who receives taxpayer largess first prove that they are clean?

Pell Grants, guaranteed student loans, farm subsidies and other forms of corporate welfare, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, the Earned Income Tax Credit, Bright Futures scholarships, federal bailout funds - the list of government goodies is vast and constantly growing.

For that matter, lawmakers are compensated with direct cash payments of tax dollars. Why not make them relieve themselves in a cup before each vote to prove they aren't conducting the people's business under the influence?

The latter being the question I asked my wife when she first pointed me to the article. "What's your problem?" I asked of the person who wasn't there who would object to that notion. "How can you be against it? Or do you approve of legislators debating and voting on laws while they're stoned?"

But of course that suggestion will not be acted on; as Jeremy Meyer, director of the master’s program in public policy at George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia, wrote in Politico on Sunday, this is

a classic demonstration of how America has always had one drug law for the rich and one for the poor.

Except for certain medical uses in certain states, he pointed out, marijuana, a central focus of the "concern," remains illegal virtually everywhere in the country even though we have just elected our third consecutive president who smoked it as a youth - all three of who support "imprisoning people for making the same choices [they] made."

He also said that "no one has suggested drug testing recipients of billions in bailout cash," which as I expect he knew is not precisely true: T. F. Thompson, contributor to the the Florida Times-Union, did so, as did John Wellington Ennis at the Huffington Post. Surely there were a number of others. But his real point remains valid: No "serious" commentator would dare propose such an outlandish idea, not without losing all claim to "seriousness." After all, the bailed-out bankers are not slackers, they are not lazy, they are the leaders! The producers! The creators! They are... superior! They are your betters and they judge you, not the other way around.

However, what is truly revealing about how much a part of our social fabric this prejudice against the poor is, what truly reveals just how effectively manipulative such grandstanding can be, what is ultimately most depressing, is the response. On the various news sites and in several polls, the comments are overwhelmingly in favor of these bills. One major theme was "I have to do it, everybody in private industry has to do it, so should they." (That actually isn't true; a majority of private employers and a majority of the Fortune 500 do, but that is nowhere near "all.") It's either if I'm treated crummy, so should you be, or if I don't mind being treated like a suspected criminal and having my privacy invaded, you can't, either.

The other was "those drug-swilling layabouts need to get clean before they get any of my tax dollars," which is the very idea that the most reactionary forces are pushing: an equation between drug use and poverty and the ancient distinction between the "deserving" and the "undeserving" poor - that "moral component" of which the News-Herald wrote - with only the most sympathetic included in the first group and the rest tossed into the latter pile like rubbish. The idea that there is a moral judgment involved in being rich or poor remains strong in our society and bills such as these and the support they gather from too many indoctrinated people who should know better are one outgrowth.

Still....

Still it must be said that there has been pushback. For one thing, the Clinton-era "end of welfare as we know it" allowed states to do drug testing as a condition of aid. When Michigan tried to take advantage of the change by implementing "random, suspicionless" drug testing, it was shot down in federal circuit court as a violation of the Fourth Amendment.*

More recently, a measure related to those now under consideration failed in Arizona earlier in the year. And in some perhaps surprising places, the idea isn't even under consideration.

Idaho legislators are not in the mix. ...

Tom Shanahan, Idaho Health and Welfare Public Relations: "I don't think people want to see anyone, especially families with children, going to bed hungry at night. Traditionally, Idahoans who may qualify for food stamps, a lot of them don't apply and we're hoping that people who do need food assistance are coming in and hopefully getting it."

Even in the states where the bills have been proposed, there is opposition and their futures are not assured. For example, Kansas City Star columnist Barb Shelly called that state's proposal "loopy," saying the bill "targets people not because they've committed crimes or neglected their children, but simply because they're poor." She quoted one House member as calling it "crazy and mean."

I think it's doubtful the state of Kansas would ever have money to test welfare recipients for drugs[, Shelly said].

So why did House members spend two hours debating a bill that will probably go nowhere?

And nowhere is exactly where it may be going. After passing the Kansas House handily, the bill apears to have stalled in the state Senate:

Senate President Steve Morris, R-Hugoton, said Friday that he wasn't sure what his chamber would do with the bill, which hasn't received review yet in his chamber.

"I guess we'll see what it looks like," Morris said.

Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, D-Topeka, said he doesn't understand the rationale behind the bill. He also doesn't know whether the Senate will spend much time considering it.

"I think it's questionable whether we would," Hensley said.

In Florida, there was that News-Herald editorial, which asked:

[I]nstead of treating everyone as a potential suspect without probable cause and forcing them to prove their innocence in a lab, why not rely on old-fashioned due process?

In West Virginia, Craig Blair's state, a petition was circulated against the measure.

The letter is signed by representatives of groups ranging from the state AFL-CIO to the West Virginia Catholic Conference and the Mental Health Consumers Association.

The West Virginia Association of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Counselors also registered its opposition.

In fact, Blair's bill didn't even make it out of committee. Although he hasn't given up on the idea, the method he's trying - getting a bill directly to the floor - has worked only rarely in the past and it appears to be dead at least for now.

More generally, Phillip Smith reports that

[r]andom drug testing of welfare recipients has also been rejected by a broad cross-section of organizations concerned with public health, welfare rights, and drug reform, including the American Public Health Association, National Association of Social Workers, Inc., National Association of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Counselors, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs, National Health Law Project, National Association on Alcohol, Drugs and Disability, Inc., National Advocates for Pregnant Women, National Black Women's Health Project, Legal Action Center, National Welfare Rights Union, Youth Law Center, Juvenile Law Center, and National Coalition for Child Protection Reform. ...

"Drug testing welfare recipients or people getting unemployment is a terribly misguided policy," said Hilary McQuie, western director for the Harm Reduction Coalition. "If you find people and cut them off the rolls, what's the end result? You have to look at the end result."

Which simply shows, I expect, how unserious Ms. McQuie is.

Smith gets the last word:

Legislators proposing random drug testing of welfare or unemployment recipients have a wide array of organizations opposing them, as well as common sense and common decency. But none of that has prevented equally pernicious legislation from passing in the past. These bills bear watching. [Emphasis added.]

Absolutely.

Footnote: On his unintentionally-hilarious website, Blair, who charges that opponents of his bill

are either enablers of bad (illegal) behavior, drug abusers or the most despicable of all...have a personal financial interest/gain in the demise of a certain segment of our society [emphasis as per original],

has a poll which asks "Which on describes your position? Do you favor random drug testing for those who receive welfare, food stamps, or unemployment benefits?" The choices are:

-Let's help people get off drugs and back to work!
-I'm interested, but I want more information.
-What are we waiting for? Suspend the rules and pass this bill!

Footnote to the Footnote: Besides wondering just who it is that Blair imagines has "a personal financial interest/gain in the demise of a certain segment of our society" and exactly how that "segment"'s "demise" would be profitable to anyone, I wonder why he doesn't consider the "personal financial interest/gain" on the part of the billion-dollar-a-year drug testing industry that pushes these kinds of measures? Or is that another example of the saying "some questions need only be asked?"

Footnote to everything above: When people like Blair, when people like those who posted comments about drug-sodden poor people who don't "deserve" any public assistance, picture such "undeserving" folks, what do they look like? Or is that, as I suspect it is, yet another question that need only be asked?

Updated to address a point I thought about addressing initially but didn't - but now it has come up comments, so I'll address it now.

In comments, Imee says "Blair does have a point when he asked, 'If so many jobs require random drug tests these days, why not these benefits?'"

I'll give two good reasons:

1. Bluntly, private companies do it for one reason and one reason only and it's the same reason they are increasingly demanding other sorts of personal information: because they can. It's an exercise in power, not in need-to-know.

I'm against such drug testing in private industry, too. You're hired to do a job; what you do in your off hours should be none of your employer's business. If there is evidence of drug use by an employee that affects their work performance, then I'd allow for some sort of drug testing of that person. (Note that this has nothing to do with offering drug counseling or treatment as a voluntary option to any employee that seeks it, with the understanding that seeking such counseling or treatment does not subject them to job-related drug testing lacking additional evidence of an impact on performance.)

2. Ignore my personal opinion for the moment. When the big moves for employment-related drug testing developed, there was a lot of opposition on the grounds of it being what it is: an invasion of privacy. A basic reason that courts allowed these intrusions was that private employers are not government and so are not constrained by the limits of the 4th Amendment, which requires cause. In the case of government jobs, testing was justified only for certain positions and then on the grounds that public safety was such an issue in those cases that it outweighed the right of privacy.

Which means that in reality, something with which he seems unfamiliar, Blair's argument comes down to this: "Private employers can do drug testing because they are not government. Because private employers do it, therefore, government can do it, too, even though government is government."

So no, Blair does not have a point. Except maybe on the top of his head.

*Paragraph edited for clarity.

242.5 - Drug war used to demonize poor people

Drug war used to demonize poor people

Well, plus ça change. In more recent times, drugs have served not so much to attack hippies or the antiwar left - probably in good part because there aren't a lot of hippies around and the antiwar left seems to evaporate whenever a Democrat is in the White House. But they have still proved politically useful to demonize a different group: poor people, who are usually envisioned in the racism-infused public mind as African-Americans, so it's kind of a two-fer.

Patron saint of welfare "reform"

It was in 1996, during the presidency of - and with the urging of - the sainted Bill Clinton, that the US enacted a welfare "reform" law that among other abominations placed a lifelong ban on receiving welfare on people convicted of drug felonies. No other sort of felony was subject to this lifelong ban - not murder, not assault, not armed robbery, not arson, none of them. Nothing except drugs.

As a direct result, to this day, many men and women exiting prison after doing their time don't have access to certain forms of government assistance, including TANF, or Temporary Aid to Needy Families, what we used to call welfare, and SNAP, still commonly known as Food Stamps.

It has gotten somewhat better with regard to SNAP: Eighteen states have abandoned the federal prohibition on drug offenders receiving Food Stamps and 26 more, most recently Alabama, have eased the restrictions, allowing benefits under certain conditions. Three more states - Georgia, Indiana, and Nebraska - are considering doing the same.

But six states - Alaska, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, West Virginia, and Wyoming - still bar anyone with a drug felony from receiving any Food Stamp benefits and need be damned.

"Need be damned" is even more true of TANF benefits. Thirteen states continue to fully prohibit anyone with a drug-related conviction from getting welfare benefits, and 23 others maintain a partial ban. Only 14 have lifted the ban and treat people who have done their time the same as they do anyone else.

The Marshall Project, which collects this data, suggests that the difference is that, unlike Food Stamps, states have to foot part of the bill for TANF. Put another way, the frequent attitude is, "Sure, you can have benefits on the same basis as everyone else - provided we don't have to pay for it."

But even if there has been some improvement in the possibility of those with drug convictions being able to obtain aid if they need it, there is still an on-going effort to use the specter of drugs to demonize the poor. Only the means, not the intent, has changed.

The means now is drug-testing of applicants or recipients of public aid, of making it a requirement for obtaining or continuing to receive assistance.

State after state after state - 13 states, in fact - have instituted some form of drug-testing regimen for those in need of aid, with 19 more considering it. And it's always, always, always, done on the claims that this will save money and we don't want the tax dollars or hard-working citizens to be subsidizing the drug habits of those poor people and besides we're actually helping poor people because this will force them to get off drugs and get a job!

That stigma of the poor as being druggies, and as being poor because they are druggies, drives the entire enterprise, an enterprise pushing the idea that we are somehow doing poor people a favor by treating them all as suspected criminals who have to prove the purity of their bodily fluids to their governing overlords, those who hold in their hands the power to decide if the accused gets any help with food or shelter or health care for themselves or their children.

So state after state after state has pursued this notion - and state after state after state has shown it to be a fantasy.

Florida tried it and found only 2% of recipients of public aid used drugs, in a state where the rate of drug use among the population as a whole is estimated to be 8%.

Utah tried it and found a rate of drug use among benefit recipients to be just 0.2%. In Tennessee, it was under a quarter of a percent.

In Arizona, more than 87,000 welfare recipients went through drug testing and only one person tested positive. Not one percent, one person.

Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, all with similar results.

And now North Carolina has joined the list. According to the state's Department of Health and Human Services, a mere 0.3% of the approximately 7,600 applicants and recipients screened for drug use tested positive.

But none of this has stopped states from doing testing and it hasn't stopped other states from considering doing the same. How many failures does it take to add up to failure?

Unless - unless it actually wasn't a failure. Unless the drugs were never the issue. Unless the actual intent is to, as I said at the top, demonize the poor, mark them as somehow different, alien, as "not us," and so as undeserving of our concern.

That stigma of the poor as druggies, which drives the entire drug-screening idea, is just one more obstacle faced by those who economically struggle every single day, with all that entails for, again, necessities such as food and clothing and shelter and health care and more, who struggle every day to try to escape the trap of poverty but who find that stigma of them as drug abusers that follows them even as they try to find work, that demonization of their condition, that assumption of their moral inferiority, that classism, our contempt for the poor, is just one more mountain for them to climb.

For the sake of maintaining our sense of class superiority, we have made the poor into more victims of our failed war on drugs.

But I have to add, footnote, whatever, that the stigma goes beyond the false idea of the poor as druggies. It goes to the core of our entire social attitude about poverty.

Consider, for example, how many states have precise rules as to what Food Stamps can be used to buy, in one case going right down to the size and type of canned beans you can buy. Consider how often any sort of treat for a child, a soda, candy, whatever, is on the banned list. Consider how many states have similar rules about TANF, with long lists of things for which welfare assistance can't be used, ranging from the absurd (jewelry, cruises) to the mundane because God forbid if you are poor that you should be able to take your kid to a movie.

Consider, particularly, how often we put demands on the poor that we would never dream of putting on others who are not poor but who are getting public benefits.

CalWORKS is California's welfare program. Everyone who applies for aid and is accepted must agree to have their homes be preemptively searched for evidence of fraud at a time of the agency's choosing, which of course they do not tell you in advance because then you could hide the evidence of fraud of which they assume you are guilty - and if you're not there when they come, obviously unannounced, you can be declared "uncooperative" and denied aid. In short, the Fourth Amendment does not exist for you and neither does innocent until proven guilty - because you are poor and need help.

Can you even conceive of someone who declares their children as deductions on their tax return being told they have to agree to have their home preemptively searched to prove those kids really live there and really are dependent on them? Remember, that deduction is a benefit, a tax benefit that by cutting their taxable income puts extra money in their pocket just as surely as does any cash aid to a poor person. But can you even imagine anyone being told they have to surrender their Fourth Amendment rights in order to claim that benefit?

You know, some of those drug-testing regimens not only want you to be drug-tested to get benefits, they want you to be tested on a regular basis to keep them.

Can you even imagine, can you even conceive of, someone declaring a home mortgage deduction on their income taxes being told that every year that they do so that they have to submit to a drug test to prove that they are not using the benefits we are providing to them to get high?

Of course you can't. It seems absurd. But you can imagine such being done to a poor person; in fact, you know it does and it happens to them every single day.

None of this is about helping the poor. Rather, it is all about being able to say that because you are poor, because you are in need of help, because you are struggling, therefore you are no longer a full human being, therefore you are morally inferior, therefore we have the right and the power to judge you, to look down on you, therefore we have the right and the power to shape you, to correct your (to we superior sorts) obvious failings, to demand that you behave as we tell you to, we have the right and the power to humiliate you, to demean you, to strip away your rights, and you will kowtow and tug at your forelock and kiss our ring or you can just damn well go hungry and cold.

I say it again: None of this, none of this, none of this is about helping the poor. It is about our contempt for the poor, our classist assumptions that those who are poor are simply inferior in some way, morally, ethically, or both, that it's simply a matter of personal failings and they somehow deserve their condition rather than being just the most obvious victims of the economic injustice that has turned too many of us into economic throwaways as power and wealth become more concentrated.

I have in the past referred to classism as our greatest unacknowledged evil. And so it remains.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.aol.com/article/2016/03/17/should-people-with-felony-drug-convictions-have-access-to-food-s/21328901/
http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2016/02/alabamians_with_drug_convictio.html
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/02/04/six-states-where-felons-can-t-get-food-stamps?ref=tsqr_stream#.8s7hSzmEc
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2015/02/1939-outrage-of-week-drug-testing-poor.html
http://www.aol.com/article/2016/02/18/States-tested-their-welfare-recipients-and-the-results-w/21314760/
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2015/10/2237-states-continue-to-demonize-poor.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2015/07/2112-our-worst-unacknowledged-evil-part.html
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/2/22/1489251/-The-Republican-war-on-poor-people-s-grocery-lists-continues
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/3/20/1501544/-Punishing-the-poor-is-not-going-to-end-poverty

Left Side of the Aisle #251

Left Side of the Aisle
for the weeks of June 23 - July 6, 2016

This week:

A tale of two assaults
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/04/09/former-vanderbilt-football-player-found-guilty-of-raping-a-student-who-had-blacked-out/
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/king-brock-turner-cory-batey-show-race-affects-sentencing-article-1.2664945
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/king-rapist-brock-turner-judge-embody-worst-america-article-1.2662841
http://www.metrolyrics.com/sex-kills-lyrics-joni-mitchell.html

Footnote: pushback
http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/juror-in-brock-turner-case-tells-judge-shame-on-you-w210048
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/jurors-refuse-serve-judge-sentenced-stanford-rapist-article-1.2667764
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jun/14/aaron-persky-brock-turner-trial-judge-removed-new-/
https://www.change.org/p/california-state-house-recall-judge-aaron-persky

Good News: net neutrality wins
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/06/14/the-fcc-just-won-a-sweeping-victory-on-net-neutrality-in-federal-court/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/06/15/the-net-neutrality-court-decision-in-plain-english/?wpisrc=nl_p1most-partner-1&wpmm=1
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-internet-idUSKCN0Z01RR
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2014/01/1426-net-neutrality-neutralized.html

Good News: guns controls upheld
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-again-refuses-to-consider-weapons-bans/2016/06/20/d108abf6-34b7-11e6-8758-d58e76e11b12_story.html
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2016/06/20/supreme-court-guns-assault-weapons-connecticut-new-york/86133004/

Good News: no increase in youth pot-smoking in Colorado
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/06/21/colorado-survey-shows-what-marijuana-legalization-will-do-to-your-kids/?wpisrc=nl_p1most-partner-1&wpmm=1

Good News: young Americans souring on capitalism
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/04/26/a-majority-of-millennials-now-reject-capitalism-poll-shows/
https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/06/16/why-young-americans-are-giving-up-on-capitalism/

GMTA on demonizing the poor
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2015/10/2237-states-continue-to-demonize-poor.html - cut assistance
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/03/2425-drug-war-used-to-demonize-poor.html - less likely
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2015/10/2248-only-poor-face-drug-tests-to.html
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/16/gwen-moore-drug-test-rich-for-tax-deductions?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/gwen-moore-drug-test-the-one-percent
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/19/too-many-laws-treat-the-poor-like-children-who-cannot-be-trusted

A bit on Brexit
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/06/uk-brexit-guide/482730/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAgKHSNqxa8
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/eu-referendum-live-latest-poll-news-brexit-results-leave-remain-when-date-vote-odds-uk-britain-a7094741.html
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-dirty-secret-about-the-brexit-vote-its-all-a-sham-2016-06-21
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-brexit-idUSKCN0Z713G

UN: 65 million displaced persons
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/06/20/482762237/refugees-displaced-people-surpass-60-million-for-first-time-unhcr-says
http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/20/world/unhcr-displaced-peoples-report/
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=54267#.V2pN4jWE2d9
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/syrian-refugee-resettlement-security-screening_us_5702589de4b0daf53af00458

One word on Senate gun votes
http://time.com/4375965/hillary-clinton-orlando-shooting-senate-gun-control-vote/?xid=tcoshare

Left Side of the Aisle #38

Political crisis in Iraq
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204058404577108803828592794.html
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/nuri_kamal_al-maliki/index.html
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/01/201211104749950522.html
http://www.alsumaria.tv/en/Iraq-News/1-71860-Iraq-VP-bodyguards-arrested-for-terrorist-activity.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/in-iraq-a-return-to-old-enmities/2011/12/20/gIQAtIxz7O_story.html
http://www.alsumaria.tv/en/Iraq-News/1-72360-Higher-Judicial-Council-of-Iraq-denies-transferring-Hashemi-case-to-Kirkuk.html
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/12/21/iraq-vice-president-denies-charges-running-death-squads/
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/12/2011122881820637664.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/23/world/middleeast/explosions-rock-baghdad-amid-iraqi-political-crisis.html?ref=nurikamalalmaliki
http://www.alsumaria.tv/en/Iraq-News/1-72279-Iraqiya-List-warns-against-dismissing-ministers.html
http://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Fearful-Iraq-s-Sunnis-leave-mixed-neighborhoods-2435693.php
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-12-20/troops-are-gone-but-iraq-war-is-not-over-meghan-l-o-sullivan.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/24/world/middleeast/iraqi-sunnis-and-shiites-clash-over-regional-power.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/26/baghdad-bombing-iraq_n_1169745.html
http://www.alsumaria.tv/en/Iraq-News/1-72138-Iraq-State-of-Law-Coalition-criticizes-calls-to-dissolve-Parliament.html
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle08.asp?xfile=data/middleeast/2012/January/middleeast_January88.xml&section=middleeast
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/dec/15/world/la-fg-iraq-withdrawal-20111216

Outrage of the Week: Drug tests for public benefits
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/29/welfare-drug-testing-michigan_n_1174643.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/16/unemployment-drug-test-republicans-jobless_n_1153877.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/09/nikki-haley-drug-test-exaggeration_n_955900.html
http://www.stormfax.com/dickens.htm

Some updates on Occupy
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Latest-News-Wires/2011/1227/Putin-belittles-protesters-as-aimless-but-promises-transparency
http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2011/12/occupy_wall_street_what_is_the.html
http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/02/us/occupy-migration/?hpt=us_c2
http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20120102/NEWS01/301020070/Occupy-Louisville-protestors
http://watchdog.org/12640/occupy-hawaii-island-protesters-gather-near-pelosis-vacation-resort/
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-01-01/occupy-wall-street-arrests/52320900/1
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/01/occupy-protesters-ring-in-the-new-year-with-largest-demonstration-since-eviction/
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/02/MN041MK1EG.DTL
http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2012/01/westboro_baptist_church_and_oc.php
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/31/occupy-protests-iowa-caucuses-2012_n_1177997.html
http://www.jdjournal.com/2011/12/30/occupy-wall-street-protests-intensify-at-campaign-headquarters-many-arrested/
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-romney-occupy-protests-iowa-20120102,0,4262216.story
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/02/democrats-become-target-of-occupy-protests/
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/29/12-arrested-at-occupy-the-caucus-protest/

Privacy notes

Another collection of items over the past few weeks, this one relating to privacy concerns. As is often the case, it's not necessarily any individual item that really matters - although they are bad enough on their own - but the pattern they collectively demonstrate.

March 30 - In a regulatory filing, TJX Cos., parent company of nearly 2,500 discount stores including T.J. Maxx and Marshalls, revealed gross security holes in their handling of customer data, holes that lead to the personal information of at least 45.7 million credit and debit card holders being compromised.

Those holes included failure to delete customer data promptly and failure to adequately protect encryption methods.

"It's not clear when information was deleted, it's not clear who had access to what, and it's not clear whether the data kept in all these files was encrypted, so it's very hard to know how big this was," said Deepak Taneja, chief executive of Aveksa, a Waltham, Mass.-based firm that advises companies on information security.

Experts say such failures are common. The data theft has been tied to a gift card scam in Florida involving fraudulently obtaining $1 million in electronics and jewelry.

April 2 - HealthDay News reported that

urine-based drug tests have a lot of room for error and may not be useful in schools and other venues, a U.S. study says.

Researchers from the Center for Adolescent Substance Abuse Research at Children's Hospital in Boston reviewed 710 random urine drug test from 110 patients aged 13 to 21. Of the 217 positive results, a shockingly high 21% were attributable to legitmate prescription or OTC meds - that is, more than one out of every five positive results was wrong.

Given the high potential for misinterpretation, there is no justification for widespread use of random drug testing for adolescents, the researchers concluded. ...

"Drug testing should be reserved for patients with a clinical indication for this procedure, and when drug testing is indicated, the best available procedures should be used," [study author Dr. Sharon] Levy said.

Pressure for random testing of teens both in schools and the home is paired with pressure for, and the increasing occurence, of, such testing in the workplace. The researchers, as is normal practice, limited their judgment to adolescents because those were the people studied - but it can fairly be asked if in light of these results there is any "justification for widespread use of randon drug testing" for anyone at all.

April 4 - Schools in Taunton, Massachusetts plan on becoming the first in the state

to have students pay for lunch by scanning their fingerprints, a plan that is triggering an uproar among parents and ACLU officials worried about privacy and possible identity theft.

The plan was going to be mandatory but because of the strong opposition, it's voluntary.

Still, some parents are concerned that the fingerprints their children register with the school district could be stolen, misplaced, or used for a form of fraud that hasn't even been invented.

They note that supermarkets and retail stores have had customer information compromised, and argue that there are no state guidelines for schools using the technology. The parents also say they are skeptical that the 8,100-student Taunton school system can keep their children's information secure.

In a letter to the school superintendent, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts objected to teaching students to be casually fingerprinted. In a later interview, she called it "Orwellian."

School officials, on the other hand, played the same card that always gets played: the "it's for your benefit!" argument. They said

the new system will speed the cafeteria line, possibly let parents monitor what children eat, and lift the stigma from poor students who receive free or reduced-price lunches.

Okay - in addition to taking note of the creepy "everything you do is being watched" overtones, I have another question, not so much about this attack on privacy but related to it: Just how does treating food assistance programs as something so shameful that participation in them is something that has to be hidden, "lifting the stigma?"

April 17 - The crime laboratory of the Massachusetts State Police is considering changing its rules on DNA database searches to allow for reports of partial matches.

Right now, DNA recovered from a crime scene is sent to the lab, which looks for a match among its database of DNA samples taken from convicted felons. If there's a match, investigators are informed. If there's not, they're not.

The change being considered would allow for investigators to be told about a "close match," one which could indicate that a suspect is a close relative of someone in the database. The problem is, such a practice would not only invade the privacy of, and cast suspicion on, innocent people who happened to be related to convicted felons, it would also inevitably wind up pointing fingers of suspicion at people unrelated to the person in the database but who just happened to have a DNA profile similar in the regions examined.

On a sidebar, in January the database administrator was found to have violated the ban on so-called familial searches. He was fired Friday. Just like in the Bush administration, when officials are found to be violating policies or laws and invading privacy, the response it to make what they did legitimate.

April 25 - At a debate in New York City about privacy rights, Norman Siegel, former director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, estimated that there are at least 10,000 cameras around the city conducting surveillance of passersby. Most of those are run by private businesses.

Siegel said such cameras should be

registered with a government agency and people on the street should be informed that they being filmed. ...

He suggested that it be made a criminal offense to abuse surveillance camera footage.

On the other side, Heather MacDonald of the conservative Manhattan Institute, dismissed concerns as people "amusing themselves with Big Brother fantasies" while fantasizing the cameras deter criminals and terrorists. She insited it wasn't an issue because "there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in public spaces."

That's an interesting argument because the "no reasonable expectation of privacy" garbage has been used to justify all sorts of intrusions of, and limitations on, exactly that reasonable expectation, from saying police could search your garbage with no need for a warrant to arguing passengers in a car could be searched, again without a warrant or an arrest, because since the car is not their "possession" they have no basis to expect to be "secure" in it. I only wonder how long it will be before someone declares that you had no "reasonable expectation of privacy" in your own home because a shade was up. Increasingly, our "expectation of privacy" is being limited only to those areas our most intrusive technologies cannot reach - and is shrinking as the latter expands.

April 27 - Just this week, a White House task force lead by the FTC and the DOJ released a plan to fight the increasing levels of identity theft, identity theft made increasingly possible by the increasing amount of what many of us naively believe to be personal information increasingly gathered and increasingly shared by an increasing number of public agencies and, more importantly, un- (or barely-) regulated private companies.

Certainly some action is needed.

In recent years, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has recorded approximately 250,000 complaints of identity-theft fraud annually. A survey study by the data-analysis group Javelin Strategy and Research estimated total adult victims in the United States at nearly nine million in 2006, with the value of the fraud totaling $56.6 billion. Common violations, perpetrated by individuals as well as organized groups, range from credit-card forgery to assuming a new identity to cover up other crimes.

And of course, we're not going to see action from the Shrub team.

To privacy-rights and consumer groups, identity fraud reflects structural vulnerabilities, as technology casts sensitive records into more unknown hands. In response, groups are calling for much-tighter controls than those the White House proposes on how corporations and government agencies harvest personal information. ...

[O]verall, the [task force] report is light on explicit recommendations for new regulations on companies and agencies that handle sensitive information. Rather, it emphasizes further monitoring of the problem, such as studying how companies use social-security numbers.

Oh, of course not, we can't put restrictions on business! Not without studying the problem! So let's have a study. Then we can have a second study to check the first study, a third to examine differences between the first two, a panel to do a meta-study of the three studies, a review panel to check the meta-study panel's results, a "high level" review of the review - by which time it will be decided that the original study is outdated and a new one is required. All the while, corporate America goes its merry number-crunching, database building and swapping, way.

David Sohn, counsel with the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), ... said existing laws miss new security and privacy threats posed by the "revolution in data technology, in terms of the ability to gather, store and manipulate large quantities of data." ...

Fundamentally, privacy and consumer groups say the most effective way to combat identity theft is to minimize the amount of data available for stealing. Groups such as the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), for example, support strict limits on the use of social-security numbers as an identifier.

Which is actually something I've been advocating for well, let me see, for over 20 years now. As I recall, what first got me going on this was discovering that the student ID numbers at the college where I was working were their Social Security numbers - and I couldn't understand why they were in effect being required to reveal their SSNs to anyone who had occasion to see their ID. My long-standing proposal was to limit the use of your Social Security number to uses directly related to Social Security and taxation and the only people who could ask for it are people who are legally required to make reports about you to the IRS, such as your employer and your bank. And within a certain period of time after you left a job or closed an account, information linking you to your SSN would have to be destroyed.

There are additional proposals on the table such as making companies liable when harm results from misuse of the data they collect - but again of course industry opposes such measures and so does the White House. And so it goes on as the same corporations and government agencies that keep telling you to "protect yourself" and "beware of identity theft," putting the onus all on you as an individual, at the same time keep demanding from you more and more personal information of the type that makes identity theft possible.

Footnote: The article linked is too long to be easily summarized here; I urge you to read the whole thing. I also have to note, sadly, that The New Standard, the source of the article, ceased publication as of April 27. The archives will be up at least for a while. It will be missed.

211.2 - Our worst unacknowledged evil: Part 2

Our worst unacknowledged evil: Part 2

When I say we tell the poor like it or lump it, I'm not exaggerating in the least. Just consider by way of way of example the way we demonize the hungry, the folks who rely on SNAP - the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, what we used to call, and often still do call, Food Stamps - for food purchases.

A Wisconsin state representative wants people getting SNAP benefits to have to go to "privately run food pantries" - more bluntly put, he wants "separate but (no doubt) equal" grocery stores for poor people.

One member of Congress has called on his constituents literally to spy on what people using EBT cards buy at the supermarket and to question them if they think anything they are buying looks suspicious or "inappropriate."

The state of Wisconsin has a list of precisely what you can and can't buy with your SNAP benefits right down to things like what type and size of canned beans you can buy.

Maine wants to say SNAP recipients can't use any of their benefits for candy or soda because heaven forbid poor children should have something fun or a treat.

It's not just SNAP, not just Food Stamps, it's all assistance in all forms. More than 20 states have extensive lists of what cash assistance can't be used for - with one state official insisting the list has educational value in that it sends the message that cash assistance should be used for necessities. Because of course the poor are unaware of the need for food or clothing or housing or medicine or transportation or whatever else and we have to "educate," that is, control, them, all for their own good, of course, because they are inferior and can't be trusted to make their own decisions.

And then there is the drug testing. No matter how many time it turns out that poor people looking for help are less likely to use drugs than their richer fellow citizens, no matter how many times it turns out that forcing applicants to submit to a drug test winds up costing the state more than it saves, no matter now many times these programs are miserable failures that do nothing more than brand all poor people as drug addicts, still they get pushed.

And the thing is, that's why they get pushed: They get pushed, and they get public support, because they label the poor as druggies, because we are prepared to assume that all poor people are somehow inferior, they are irresponsible, they are lazy, self-indulgent, moochers who spend all their time and money getting high. They're not like us! And because they are poor, rules of privacy protection and against self-incrimination don't apply to them.

We put demands on the poor that we simply do not put on the rich. It does not occur to us.

In his recent book Divide, journalist Matt Taibbi refers to "a creepy inverse correlation between rights and need" [emphasis in original] that exists in the US, where the protection of Constitutional, of basic human, rights is inversely proportional to how rich you are. Put another way, the poorer you are, the less rights you have.

He cites the example of CalWORKS, the state of California's what would in the past have been called welfare program. Everyone who applies for aid and is accepted must agree to have their homes be preemptively searched for evidence of fraud at a time of the agency's choosing, which of course they do not tell you in advance because then you could hide the evidence of fraud of which they assume you are guilty - and if you're not there when they come, you can be declared "uncooperative" and denied aid. In short, not only are you in effect a prisoner in your home until this raid takes place, the Fourth Amendment does not exist for you and neither does innocent until proven guilty - because you are poor and need help.

Can you even conceive of someone declaring their children as deductions on their tax return being told they have to agree to have their home preemptively searched to prove those kids really live there and really are dependent on them? Remember, that deduction is a benefit, a tax benefit that by cutting your taxable income puts extra money in your pocket just as surely as does any cash aid to a poor person - in fact, in both cases, that is the idea: giving you more money to spend. But can you imagine anyone being told they have to surrender their Fourth Amendment rights in order to claim that benefit?

You know, some of those drug-testing regimens not only want you to be drug-tested to get benefits, they want you to be tested on a regular basis to keep them.

Can you even imagine, can you even conceive of, someone declaring a home mortgage deduction on their income taxes being told that every year that they do so that they have to submit to a drug test to prove that they are not using the benefits we are providing to them to get high?

The fact is, of course you can't. You can't imagine a non-poor person being told they have to surrender basic rights in order to obtain a public benefit.

But you can imagine it being done to a poor person; in fact, it happens every day and you know it happens every day. It is the great unacknowledged evil in our society - unacknowledged because even though you might be aware of the fact that the poor are treated differently, it doesn't register that way, it doesn't register as an evil the way equally blatant racism and sexism do. In point of harsh fact, it often doesn't even register as an evil but is perceived by far too many of us as a good thing, a proper thing, a right thing, to assume, to build public policy on the idea, that poor people are lazy, ignorant, drug-addicted frauds just sitting on their asses waiting for a handout.

Although most of us would be loath to admit it, the fact is, that is what many of us believe even if we would not express it so bluntly. The tell is that we don't as a society regard the different, the cruel, ways the poor are treated as an evil.

That great unacknowledged evil of our society, the one we don't face, the one we refuse to recognize, is called classism and it is our contempt for the poor, a contempt that cuts across lines of gender, age, race, and even income class, a contempt that is pervasive, constant; it is all around us in ways major and minor, big and small. Classism is driven by the moral corruption of power among the rich, but it infects our entire society.

In Divide, Matt Taibbi said "We have a profound hatred for the weak and the poor." When asked how he came to that conclusion - which I would re-label an insight - he said it was from visiting US courtrooms and seeing the different ways poor and rich defendants get treated by the courts.

When a poor person, a person without means, comes before a judge in an inner-city courtroom, he says, the judge doesn't want to hear anything the defense attorney has to say and seems angry at having to deal with this person at all. But when he attends trials involving white-collar criminals, Taibbi says, the judge is often very interested in what the defense attorneys - the plural is deliberate - have to say, even to the point of asking their advice on points of law, and there is a sense of admiration for the accused, who are regarded as somehow special, important, respectable, even superior, people.

As I would sum it up, what the word "justice" means in the US political and legal system depends almost entirely on who is asking for it.

Even the way we donate money reflects that class division, reflects the classism of our society. Repeated studies have shown that, as a percentage of household income, the poorest 20% of the population gives more than the richest 20% - and that gap has grown in recent years. Also to the point is that the poor give mostly to religious organizations and social-service charities, while the wealthy give to colleges, museums, and the arts - in other words, the stuff they themselves use. In fact, of the 50 largest individual gifts to public charities in 2012, not one went to a social-service organization or charity that principally serves the poor and the dispossessed.

We are an unjust society. And I don't just mean an unequal one - I mean a morally corrupt one. A society whose richest - that is, most powerful - members are by that very wealth, that very power, twisted into an ethically-bankrupt indifference to the concerns and needs of others, an indifference, that, precisely because it is expressed by the most powerful among us, again, infects the rest of us.

And it will not change. Not on its own. It's not something we can grow out of as a society, especially because we are now ever-more growing into it. It will not change on its own. It will, rather, only get worse absent direct action against it. And no, neither Hillary nor even Bernie represent that kind of direct action.

Because this is not about faces and this is not about just slowing the decline, which is all your "Hillary's the one"s and "Feel the Bern"s will ever do - now I will grant you that there's nothing wrong with doing that, nothing wrong with slowing the decline, so long as you realize that's all you're doing: You're not reversing the decline, you're just slowing it down. But ultimately, at the end of it all, that simply isn't good enough. A slower decline is not good enough. Because the issue here is about change, about real change; this is about power, about changing power - and when you talk about confronting power in search of real change in power, you are talking about revolution.

Frederick Douglass said it: "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."

I have said it before: Change is going to require struggle. It's going to require a genuine social revolution. It's going to require disruption. It's going to require people in the streets. It's going to require more, a lot more, than twitter feeds and Facebook posts and far more than "vote for Democrats!" It's going to require a combination of the intensity and determination of the labor movement of the 1930s, the fearlessness of the civil rights movement of the '50s and '60s, the passion of the antiwar and counterculture movements of the '60s and '70s, and the creativity of the Occupy movement of this century.

That revolution does not have to be, it should not be, violent, but it does have to be aggressive. We have to be loud, boisterous, insistent, not just once but over and over again. We have to fill the streets and yes the jails. We have to make "business as usual" impossible. We have to be disruptive, noisy, disrespectful, impolite.

I think of something from some years ago: On May 17, 1968, a group of nine antiwar protesters went into the draft board in Catonsville, Maryland, pulled out a pile of files on men about to be drafted, took them outside, and burned them with homemade napalm before waiting for arrest. At his sentencing, one of the nine, Daniel Berrigan, read a statement in which he said the action was

in consequence of our inability to live and content in the plagued city, to say "peace peace" when there is no peace, to keep the poor poor, the thirsty and hungry thirsty and hungry. Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children, the angering of the orderlies in the front parlor of the charnel house. We could not, so help us God, do otherwise.

We, too, have to be prepared to anger the orderlies to overcome those who stand behind them.

Quoting Douglass again,

It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.

We are, I fear, approaching a time when there will be the stark choice: confront or capitulate. Not one of those movements I mentioned could fairly or even rationally be called violent. But each in their own way, in their impact, they brought the fire, the thunder, the whirlwind. We need that sort of storm again.

I hope that revolution comes soon. I don't know if it will, I don't know if it will come at all. No one ever doesWhat I do know is that it is possible and that when it happens, whenever it happens, it will, as do most revolutions, come as a complete surprise to those who are its targets.

Sources cited in links:
http://wonkette.com/583395/wisconsin-rep-will-card-poors-for-food-at-their-separate-and-unequal-welfare-groceries
http://wonkette.com/577424/congressloon-spy-on-your-neighbors-shopping-carts-for-your-country
http://wonkette.com/584739/wisconsin-takes-lead-in-fck-the-poors-sweepstakes-now-you-cant-buy-beans-and-rice
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/24/paul-lepage-food-stamps_n_7134902.html?cps=gravity_2692_-7114837514795982426
http://www.aol.com/article/2015/04/16/new-kansas-rules-would-limit-spending-of-welfare-benefits/21172946/
http://time.com/3117361/welfare-recipients-drug-testing/
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2015/02/1939-outrage-of-week-drug-testing-poor.html
https://www.powells.com/biblio/9780812993424
http://www.rollingstone.com/contributor/matt-taibbi
http://live.huffingtonpost.com/r/archive/segment/matt-taibbi-on-the-profound-hatred-of-the-weak-and-the-poor/534d9e0578c90a533c000134?cn=tbla
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/04/why-the-rich-dont-give/309254/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/06/wealthy-charity-giving-greedy_n_5937100.html
http://thinkexist.com/quotation/power-concedes-nothing-without-a-demand-it-never/1273306.html
http://c9.digitalmaryland.org/index.cfm

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2012/06/11/daniel-berrigan-americas-street-priest
http://www.tomjoad.org/catonsville9.htm