Drug tests for Public Assistance recipients

I didn't read through the whole thread, but here is an on-line petition place:

http://grassfire.org/

 

What does this have to do with drug tests for public assistance recipients?

 

LadyEagle is addressing the opening post by providing a means for Tinytim to start a petition if he so desires.

LadyEagle is on topic.

 

I understand what you are saying. It is some times difficult for me to be patient with others who either lack critical thinking skills or pretend not to understand the course of the discussion.

I also find it ironic that JustChristian was implying that LadyEagle was off topic when that seems to be his standard operating procedure with his incessant off topic Bush bashing.

 

I can't believe nobody is thinking about the cost and the impracticality of this idea.

For this to be effective the testing has to be done regularly, so how often? Once a month, once a quater, twice a year? The less often the less effective. Once you decide how often, then where is the testing done? There are millions of people that get assistance in this country. Do you have them all go into a local office of some kind? How many towns have that many extra offices and bathrooms available to handle this? Probably for many towns that alone would be a problem. So what do you do, build a place for it, rent one? Then you would need administrators, and entire staffs of both men and women at each location.

If that isn't practical, do you go to their homes? Then you need a much bigger staff, and a fleet of vehicles. You would have the expense of running and repairing that fleet.

With testing people you can't possible surprise them, so you would have to send out some type of notice. That would only increase the chances of some being able to cheat or beat the system. One thing I have learned over the years, is that of the people that would probably fail the test many will figure a way of beating and cheating a system. So in reality it probably won't be as effective as we would desire, and just and up hassling all the people that would not fail (the honest people).

Another thing to consider. With the type of money involved in this, you will have to expect a certain amount of corruption. Some will take money and favors in order to allow cheating. Or worse yet the most corrupt might blackmail some people, and hold the power they have over them.

If something like this ever passed, I am afraid it would end up just another large government bureaucracy, full of waste, and corruption. One that cost the tax payers a tremendous amount of money without much success. Just something that will end up making people shake their heads in disgust when we read or hear news reports about it failings.