No Savings Are Found From Welfare Drug Tests [FL]

No Savings Are Found From Welfare Drug Tests
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ
Published: April 17, 2012

MIAMI — Ushered in amid promises that it would save taxpayers money and deter drug users, a Florida law requiring drug tests for people who seek welfare benefits resulted in no direct savings, snared few drug users and had no effect on the number of applications, according to recently released state data.

“Many states are considering following Florida’s example, and the new data from the state shows they shouldn’t,” said Derek Newton, communications director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, which sued the state last year to stop the testing and recently obtained the documents. “Not only is it unconstitutional and an invasion of privacy, but it doesn’t save money, as was proposed.”...

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/18/us/no ... d=fb-share

Not exactly a big surprise.

something seems a little off here.
four months of testing, and only 4000 people were tested statewide?
we do about half that many mass-spec urinalyses in the same time period in one clinic alone.
wait. let me see...
lowball estimates: @half of our patients get tested per visit...
@30 tests each saturday
@12 tests on each M, T, W, TH

so... call it 75 tests a week
300 tests per month
1200 tests in four months.

in ONE clinic.

something seems a little off here.
four months of testing, and only 4000 people were tested statewide?
we do about half that many mass-spec urinalyses in the same time period in one clinic alone.
wait. let me see...
lowball estimates: @half of our patients get tested per visit...
@30 tests each saturday
@12 tests on each M, T, W, TH

so... call it 75 tests a week
300 tests per month
1200 tests in four months.

in ONE clinic.

How many such clinics are in the state? And what proportion of their drug testing workload is welfare drug testing?

No Savings Are Found From Welfare Drug Tests, FL

Was the purpose to save money, or was it to stop rewarding non productive behavior?

No Savings Are Found From Welfare Drug Tests, FL

Was the purpose to save money, or was it to stop rewarding non productive behavior?

Well, *****, excuse me, Gov. Scott said, as part of his seven-step plan to create 700,000 private-sector jobs, that he could save taxpayers $77 million by adding a testing requirement and more stringent work provisions for cash welfare recipients.
http://www.politifact.com/florida/promi ... ecipients/

But even if it was to "stop rewarding non productive behavior" it seems to be, besides unconstitutional and an invasion of privacy, rather ineffective.


***** = unnecessary and unproductive phrasing removed by Mod Coyote

No Savings Are Found From Welfare Drug Tests, FL

Was the purpose to save money, or was it to stop rewarding non productive behavior?

Well, dork-butt, excuse me, Gov. Scott said, as part of his seven-step plan to create 700,000 private-sector jobs, that he could save taxpayers $77 million by adding a testing requirement and more stringent work provisions for cash welfare recipients.
http://www.politifact.com/florida/promi ... ecipients/

But even if it was to "stop rewarding non productive behavior" it seems to be, besides unconstitutional and an invasion of privacy, rather ineffective.

If you are talking about the 4th and 5th Amendment, you need to get thee to a school where these things are taught. Putting strings of ANY kind on government money is eminently constitutional, so long as the strings apply to all equally.

If you want your privacy, don't ask for my money.

No Savings Are Found From Welfare Drug Tests, FL

Was the purpose to save money, or was it to stop rewarding non productive behavior?

Well, dork-butt, excuse me, Gov. Scott said, as part of his seven-step plan to create 700,000 private-sector jobs, that he could save taxpayers $77 million by adding a testing requirement and more stringent work provisions for cash welfare recipients.
http://www.politifact.com/florida/promi ... ecipients/

But even if it was to "stop rewarding non productive behavior" it seems to be, besides unconstitutional and an invasion of privacy, rather ineffective.

If you are talking about the 4th and 5th Amendment, you need to get thee to a school where these things are taught. Putting strings of ANY kind on government money is eminently constitutional, so long as the strings apply to all equally.

If you want your privacy, don't ask for my money.

Your argument lost in Michigan, even before it was shot down in Florida. Good luck with it, though.

Of course, if the underlined were true, it might pass muster, and, hell, I'd pay to watch the CEOs of government contracting firms and those with special tax breaks pee in a cup.

No Savings Are Found From Welfare Drug Tests, FL

Was the purpose to save money, or was it to stop rewarding non-productive behavior?

both, albeit the latter should be the main purpose. And if it saves money, so much the better.

No Savings Are Found From Welfare Drug Tests, FL

Was the purpose to save money, or was it to stop rewarding non-productive behavior?

both, albeit the latter should be the main purpose. And if it saves money, so much the better.

And, again, it didn't seem to do much one either count. Mostly it was about "how can we punish welfare recipients?". On that, it succeeded, for a while, by putting one more humiliating hoop in the way of aid.

Gov. Scott said, as part of his seven-step plan to create 700,000 private-sector jobs, that he could save taxpayers $77 million by adding a testing requirement and more stringent work provisions for cash welfare recipients.

What part of "and" are you having trouble with?

But even if it was to "stop rewarding non productive behavior" it seems to be, besides unconstitutional and an invasion of privacy, rather ineffective.

...if one swallows an agenda-driven piece in the New York Times as necessarily complete, accurate, and the whole story, especially when it contains red flags that anyone familiar with competent analysis would have snapped to.

I'm not that gullible. Honest question: Are you?

[Sam Cree]

No Savings Are Found From Welfare Drug Tests, FL

Was the purpose to save money, or was it to stop rewarding non productive behavior?

Well, *****, excuse me, Gov. Scott said, as part of his seven-step plan to create 700,000 private-sector jobs, that he could save taxpayers $77 million by adding a testing requirement and more stringent work provisions for cash welfare recipients.
http://www.politifact.com/florida/promi ... ecipients/

But even if it was to "stop rewarding non productive behavior" it seems to be, besides unconstitutional and an invasion of privacy, rather ineffective.


***** = unnecessary and unproductive phrasing removed by Mod Coyote

I believe James Madison did not believe the Constitution authorized charity, but I don't actually know whether the FL constitution authorizes it or not.

However, if the point was to save money, the assumption would be that a major proportion of recipients were druggies. I again have no idea whether that might be true.

edit: I doubt either constitution gives anyone a right to subsidy of any kind.

Last edited by Sam Cree on Sat Apr 21, 2012 9:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[kingprout]

something seems a little off here.
four months of testing, and only 4000 people were tested statewide?
we do about half that many mass-spec urinalyses in the same time period in one clinic alone.
wait. let me see...
lowball estimates: @half of our patients get tested per visit...
@30 tests each saturday
@12 tests on each M, T, W, TH

so... call it 75 tests a week
300 tests per month
1200 tests in four months.

in ONE clinic.

How many such clinics are in the state? And what proportion of their drug testing workload is welfare drug testing?

I don't know.
The clinic I refer to is in South GA.
It is a cash clinic, and we do treat pain.
We work *very* closely with law enforcement, and jump through all the hoops the DEA requires of us (which are onerous and many), and we bust the prescription meds traffickers (double-dippers, doc-shoppers, pillbillies, and mules on the Oxycontin Trail) that we catch.
(However, note: We don't give the first or slightest fuck about pot use. As it is non-Rx, it is not our concern.)
Many of out patients are indigent, and on subsidies of one or more kinds.
Quite a few of our patients are from North Florida.

Somewhere above 50,000 families in Florida receive monthly State welfare assistance.
Given that, I find it very odd that in a 4 month period, only 4000 individuals were tested under this program.

side-note: an on-site strip reactivity piss-test costs us exactly $5.20, and is quite accurate.
off-site mass-spectrometry testing is free of cost to the cash clinic, as part of a deal with the testing company - subsidized by the sheer volume of paid testing done by the two medicaid/medicare/insurance clinics Doc runs.

Last edited by kingprout on Sat Apr 21, 2012 9:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.

No Savings Are Found From Welfare Drug Tests, FL

Was the purpose to save money, or was it to stop rewarding non productive behavior?

Well, dork-butt, excuse me, Gov. Scott said, as part of his seven-step plan to create 700,000 private-sector jobs, that he could save taxpayers $77 million by adding a testing requirement and more stringent work provisions for cash welfare recipients.
http://www.politifact.com/florida/promi ... ecipients/

But even if it was to "stop rewarding non productive behavior" it seems to be, besides unconstitutional and an invasion of privacy, rather ineffective.

If you are talking about the 4th and 5th Amendment, you need to get thee to a school where these things are taught. Putting strings of ANY kind on government money is eminently constitutional, so long as the strings apply to all equally.

If you want your privacy, don't ask for my money.

Your argument lost in Michigan, even before it was shot down in Florida. Good luck with it, though.

Of course, if the underlined were true, it might pass muster, and, hell, I'd pay to watch the CEOs of government contracting firms and those with special tax breaks pee in a cup.

I did not lose anything -- your understanding of what the USC is and what is and isn't constitutional is what is lost. Michigan and FLA are on hold -- God willing it will go to SCOTUS and the leeches will realize what I said -- My Money, My Rules.

Tax relief (allowing a person or corporation keep his/its own money) is NOT providing benefits. I guess it is possible to craft a tax deduction with that requirement, though. Of course Corporate Personhood sort of makes it difficult. Maybe you want to expand the already bloated SOX? Hey, no amount of bureaucracy too big to get in the way of the producers of wealth and jobs, right?

[excineribus]

Gov. Scott said, as part of his seven-step plan to create 700,000 private-sector jobs, that he could save taxpayers $77 million by adding a testing requirement and more stringent work provisions for cash welfare recipients.

What part of "and" are you having trouble with?

The part where a lying jackass claims that drug testing welfare recipients will save money, or he would have just said "I can save a lot with more stringent work requirements .and. we can pointlessly screw with the 97+% of welfare recipients who don't do drugs so long as y'all are willing to waste some of that savings."

But even if it was to "stop rewarding non productive behavior" it seems to be, besides unconstitutional and an invasion of privacy, rather ineffective.

...if one swallows an agenda-driven piece in the New York Times as necessarily complete, accurate, and the whole story, especially when it contains red flags that anyone familiar with competent analysis would have snapped to.

Been several looks at the Florida program so far. The best spin that's been put on it was "waste of money". Do you have a different take?

ETA: Fixed quotes

Last edited by excineribus on Sat Apr 21, 2012 9:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.

No Savings Are Found From Welfare Drug Tests, FL

Was the purpose to save money, or was it to stop rewarding non-productive behavior?

both, albeit the latter should be the main purpose. And if it saves money, so much the better.

And, again, it didn't seem to do much one either count. Mostly it was about "how can we punish welfare recipients?". On that, it succeeded, for a while, by putting one more humiliating hoop in the way of aid.

The lack of embarrassment is what is driving welfare. It SHOULD be humiliating to take welfare -- that is the biggest incentive to get off it. Nowadays they issue Debit cards that can be used in casinos and Disneyland -- on MY dime. The song "Swipe your EBT" is pretty well fact-based.

My mom was on welfare for many years and she hated it. She made it clear to us that she didn't like it, did it to keep a roof over our heads, went to school, got her degree, got a job and got the hell off the dole as soon as she could.

...The lack of embarrassment is what is driving welfare. It SHOULD be humiliating to take welfare -- that is the biggest incentive to get off it...

Not, like, actually finding a job that pays enough to support your family? Oh, wait, I didn't look at the economy before I asked that...

My mom was on welfare for many years and she hated it. She made it clear to us that she didn't like it, did it to keep a roof over our heads, went to school, got her degree, got a job and got the hell off the dole as soon as she could.

There may be people who are just into the dole (though, truth to tell, our dole is by any measure a whole lot more stingy than that of most other developed nations), but pretty much all the ones I've met were looking for a way out from under the state's thumb as soon as they could find it.

But even if it was to "stop rewarding non productive behavior" it seems to be, besides unconstitutional and an invasion of privacy, rather ineffective.

If you are talking about the 4th and 5th Amendment, you need to get thee to a school where these things are taught. Putting strings of ANY kind on government money is eminently constitutional, so long as the strings apply to all equally.

If you want your privacy, don't ask for my money.

Your argument lost in Michigan, even before it was shot down in Florida.

Oh look, excineribus is parroting lefty sites again, without actually checking up on their narrative.

So that "argument lost in Michigan", eh?

No, actually, it didn't. Oops.

The case the ACLU waves around as a "win" on that subject is Marchwinski v. Howard, but the constitutionality of requiring a drug test as a prerequisite for welfare payments didn't actually "lose" there.

The case was first brought in September, 1999, challenging the Michigan welfare drug-testing program.

A district court judge granted a preliminary injunction, citing his opinion that the testing did not have sufficient "public need" criteria.

HOWEVER, when a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit reviewed the matter in 2002 to decide if the injunction should stand, they UNANIMOUSLY found that THE DRUG TESTING OF WELFARE RECIPIENTS WAS ACTUALLY CONSTITUTIONAL. Read it and weep:
http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-6th-circuit/1114113.html

Lots of stuff there supporting freedumb2003's position, not a lot to support yours. Oops.

For some reason (I'm still looking for what triggered it), the full Sixth Circuit court revisited this same case in 2003. The act of revisiting it automatically set aside the 2002 decision, and the second hearing deadlocked, 6 to 6 -- they didn't even write an opinion, they just announced the deadlock. Unfortunately this meant that the second 6th Circuit second hearing had no resolution, the first hearing didn't count, and since the matter was unresolved at the Appeals court level, the original district court single-judge injunction was left in effect.

Good luck with it, though.

Your cocksureness is extremely unfounded. The only "win" you can claim on your view is a single district court judge, who was subsequently overturned unanimously by three Federal Appeals court judges, while twelve others couldn't reach an agreement on the matter. Oooh, ahhh...

You've really got to stop believing everything you read from leftist sources.

Of course, if the underlined were true, it might pass muster, and, hell, I'd pay to watch the CEOs of government contracting firms and those with special tax breaks pee in a cup.

You have a mistaken notion of "equally". As I'm sure even you know, the government is free to put different kinds of strings on different kinds of money, it just can't put different strings on different recipients of the SAME kind of money.

CEOs providing goods/services to the government in exchange for payment for contracted bids are a very different kind of recipient (and different kind of money outlay) than people who come begging to the government for money to live on and have nothing of value to offer for it in exchange.

So yeah, if the government wants to attach different conditions to the two very different types of transactions, there's absolutely nothing improper or illegal about that, no matter how much you personally have a hankering to see CEOs humiliated, or have some odd desire to "watch them pee"so strong that you'd pay for the view.

cue up the Anvil Chorus

...Unfortunately this meant that the second 6th Circuit second hearing had no resolution, the first hearing didn't count, and since the matter was unresolved at the Appeals court level, the original district court single-judge injunction was left in effect.

"Unfortunately"? The bottom line is... who won, again? If the district judge was wrong, and the en banc decision flawed, why wouldn't some right thinking members of SCOTUS have granted certiori? Because the case sucked? Maybe.

ETA: Note, the proposition has been heard in 3 courts. It looked *briefly* like it might prevail in 1, but the end of the day shows 0 for 3. How many strikes makes an out?

No Savings Are Found From Welfare Drug Tests, FL

Was the purpose to save money, or was it to stop rewarding non-productive behavior?

both, albeit the latter should be the main purpose. And if it saves money, so much the better.

And, again, it didn't seem to do much one either count. Mostly it was about "how can we punish welfare recipients?". On that, it succeeded, for a while, by putting one more humiliating hoop in the way of aid.

The lack of embarrassment is what is driving welfare. It SHOULD be humiliating to take welfare -- that is the biggest incentive to get off it. Nowadays they issue Debit cards that can be used in casinos and Disneyland -- on MY dime. The song "Swipe your EBT" is pretty well fact-based.

My mom was on welfare for many years and she hated it. She made it clear to us that she didn't like it, did it to keep a roof over our heads, went to school, got her degree, got a job and got the hell off the dole as soon as she could.

Precisely. It SHOULD be humiliating. It used to be, now it is not - high time to put some of it back in. And because of the degradation since then, one needs, at least initially, to put more of it in. As the moral fiber improves, the internal humiliation would be taking over, and it would be possible to cut down on the external one.

Precisely. It SHOULD be humiliating. It used to be, now it is not - high time to put some of it back in. And because of the degradation since then, one needs, at least initially, to put more of it in. As the moral fiber improves, the internal humiliation would be taking over, and it would be possible to cut down on the external one.

You assume there is internal humiliation. In today's environment, I doubt that seriously, except for the very, very few.

The lack of embarrassment is what is driving welfare. It SHOULD be humiliating to take welfare -- that is the biggest incentive to get off it.

Amen.

BTW, I understood this argument intellectually for many years, but it's only in the last few that I've begun to actually see it play out with my own eyes.

For instance, I work out of a warehouse as a delivery driver. Not too long ago we'd been trying to fill a position in the warehouse, i.e. picking orders, receiving and putting up stock, servicing walk-in and will call customers, etc. It took months (more than several) to fill the job, which amazed me in this economy.

One day I was walking into the operations/warehouse manager's office just as an applicant was leaving. Since the applicant as he walked by me seemed relaxed, with a satisfied smile, I asked if we finally had a new employee. The ops manager explained that, no, although the interview went well, at the end the applicant demanded more than twice the going wage, and stipulated he would work no overtime.

This applicant wasn't some unrealistic idiot or fool. He didn't want to be offered a job. He'd just come in, and wantonly wasted our time, so he could rack up the requisite number of job interviews to remain eligible for unemployment insurance benefits. I commented that at least the ops manager would have the pleasure of reporting him to the Texas Workforce Commission. Nope, it was explained to me, couldn't do that, even though it would be a pleasure. It would open the company up to a lawsuit. Then the ops manager revealed that he had had dozens of interviews just like that one.

Even though I already knew in theory that this happened often, being confronted with the fact of it stunned me. I couldn't imagine, and still can't, the depth of shamelessness required to regularly walk into places filled with working men and women, and not only nonchalantly -- but confidently -- expect them to collude with you in mooching off the fruits of their labor.

I could never do that. I would -- literally, not figuratively -- stay home and starve before I could bring myself to show my face before a man or woman willing to give me a job, which I had no intention of taking. But many, many people can do that, and do do that, and the numbers are growing every day. This not only angers me, it downright frightens me.

Now, I'm a blue-collar guy from a fairly sophisticated middle class background, and reasonably liberal on social issues. If the more native and traditional blue-collars around me feel a fraction of the anger and fear I do -- and I warrant they do, and then some -- I would recommend the sonsofbitches at the ACLU rethink their practice of systematically blocking, on contrived grounds, commonsense reforms to social programs. I fear -- and I mean literally fear -- we are rapidly approaching a tipping point, and the ACLU will reap changes, hopeless changes, far, far more radical than those they presently thwart.

I would recommend the sonsofbitches at the ACLU rethink their practice of systematically blocking, on contrived grounds, commonsense reforms to social programs. I fear -- and I mean literally fear -- we are rapidly approaching a tipping point,

Does the ACLU really wield that much power? Or is the problem with spineless lumps we put into government office?

If a company can require your passing a drug test for gainful employment, why can't the government require your passing a drug test for gainful non-employment?