Recent comments
ADHD: Hunter in a Farmer's World
Thom Hartmann has written a dozen books covering ADD / ADHD - Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder.
Join Thom for his new twice-weekly email newsletters on ADHD, whether it affects you or a member of your family.
Thom's Blog Is On the Move
By webmaster
Hello All
Thom's blog in this space and moving to a new home.
Please follow us across to hartmannreport.com - this will be the only place going forward to read Thom's blog posts and articles.
"Welfare" seems to be a bad word to some people although they may not know what they are talking about when they use the term "welfare" or "people on welfare". Some may only mean "black people on welfare". Welfare is a broad term for a lot of different social programs. Aid to dependant children usually for mothers who have children that they otherwise could not support is but one of these programs. Lets test the mother and if she has taken too many ibuprofen, or too much of a prescribed drug, or smoked part of a joint in the last week, let's label her a drug abuser and cut off the support for her children. Let them starve to death out on the street. Is that the right thing to do? Another form of welfare is Social Security disability. What about all those people who have phisical & mental disabilities? Let's test them too. If they test positive for any of the before mentioned transgressions lets cut them off too, and if they can't make it on their own without any help, too bad, at least we're not having to support them with our hard earned tax money. Is that the right thing to do? There are other forms of welfare too. There's unemployment compensation, Food stamps, Social Security retirement, housing programs, and many others. Do we want to test everyone who recieves money from our government? If so, let's test all government workers too, including elected officials, congressmen and senators both state and federal military personell, CIA employees, EPA employees, etc. etc. What about the people who work for contractors that have government contracts? They recieve our tax money too. Shouldn't they be regularly drug tested too? We should if we are sure that we do not want anyone recieving our tax money that would test positive for drug or alcohol abuse. Or is it just poor people that we don't want to recieve our hard earned tax money? Is that the right thing to do?
The problem you state here, Thom, is only a fraction of our failing media system. The other side of that coin is the fact that even when the politicians tell the truth "Yeah, we torture" is that they aren't held accountable AT. ALL.
Remember when Nixon said when he told David Frost in 1977..."When the president does it, that means it's not illegal"? Well, back then, it was and Nixon paid for it dearly with his presidency. Today, it means nothing. nada. zip.
Cheney says he'd torture again, if he had to; Bush laughed at no WMD to his base; and it just goes on and on.
This is where both the media fails to question and then follows up by making the statements just okily dokily.
johnofpa ~ I know! You caught that too, didn't you. That is more than 1/5 of an average $500/week paycheck. Did you catch the cost for welfare. The way I calculate it for one week we're looking at about $.70. I don't know about you but I won't even miss $.70/week. I sure as hell will miss $115/week. We are all being played for fools.
This goes against the Republican mantra of big government, It creates a huge bureaucracy and at 35$ dollars a test is costly. It's simple math something the Republicans don't get.. There are only 32 testing clinics state wide in Florida to test over 100K people equaling 3.5 million dollars per round of testing. Results show only 2% test positive for drugs. How often do they test people? Once a month? Once a year? If someone test positive how long do they have to wait to be tested again. Pot stays in you system for a month.. What about law suits? There will be some for sure because as an ex professional baseball player that was tests a lot we knew tests we not perfect and mistakes are made all the time. In the end this is the most BS crap ever and the Dems need to step up and slam the GOP for this anti republican big government garbage they are creating..
My apology, Mr. Hartmann, for misspelling your name earlier.
Thank you, Mr. Hartmann, for using the somewhat more accurate term "conservatives" to replace the false Republican/Democrat duality that formerly characterized your reporting.
Nevertheless, "conservatives" also creates a false dichotomy. It implies the existence of a separate liberal or progressive wing within the USian Ruling Class.
But in fact no such wing exists. We are ruled by a single, utterly monolithic, capitalist party that hides its tryannical consensus behind the Big Lies of two deceptive names and a plethora of sham controversies.
Therefore a genuinely truthful statement apropos the issue at hand would be, "One of the main reasons the Ruling Class is imposing welfare drug-testing laws is to shame and punish poor people."
Actually -- though this is personal opinion based on the factual history of Nazi Germany -- all such efforts to demonize lower-income people are intended to better position us for extermination.
And now that death camps have become unfashionable, we're being murdered by "austerity" -- merely the most recent euphemism for genocide.
I happen to teach civics. Middle school social studies that is. I try to get the students to think critically. I've even had them read some of Thom's opinion pieces, and then read opinion pieces on the same topic from the other side of the political spectrum.
And the student thought process is always the same: "What's the least amount of work I can do to get through this assignment, so that I can move on to something I actually care about."
I don't know if this is a new phenomenon (I've been in education for over a decade now), or maybe it's just the population I work with, but the overwhelming majority of young people I've encounter just don't give a damn about anything other than their social lives and making money.
If I could ask my current and former students anonomously, "What are your life goals?" their top two answers would be: 1. get laid, 2. get paid.
Granted, those things would be in my top ten life goals as well. :) But not the top two. I'd throw in things like "help the less fortunate" and "let my children know I love them". And "lose weight".
Look at it on a weekly paycheck scale. $115.07 out of the taxes you pay go toward corporate welfare.
I think if you ask most Conservatives, they will tell you that they know someone who does drugs and gets welfare. I know that's true for me - one of my relatives even. She was on WIC, all while abandoning her child to be raised by my parents, while she went out and did meth.
Of course, if you took away the welfare, it wouldn't change the drug behavior. It would just make Conservatives feel better.
I am wondering if, when Thom says that corporations get Welfare, is he counting not taxing a company as the same thing as giving that company money. Like, here in IL, some companies have to get special lower tax rates as incentives to stay in this high-tax state. It a company like Walgreens has its tax burden reduced from $2 million to $1 million, does that count as "welfare" to a Progressive?
Government social programs are not charity but part of the just compensation of workers that their employers renege on and government makes up for. What employers don't pay in wages they will pay in taxes. If they refuse to do either, as they are now, then you have what is happeing now, the destruction of the middle class and the pauperization of the working class.
The reason conservatives so like drug testing welfare recipients is because they have a need to believe that poverty is the fault of the poor. Thus they must adopt an accusatory tone. Otherwise they might have to admit there's something wrong with the system they have so much invested in, that is so good to them and which they rip off so profitably
I don't have a problem with shaming someone who apparently can't take care of themselves so they ask hard working tax payers to take care of them and then slap them in the face by taking that help and blowing it on drugs.
Here all oilfield jobs require mandatory drug testing. No one has a problem with that it saves lives.
It is an outrage. A society in which guilt is presumed, all citizens are criminals until proven innocent. Drug testing is a clear violation of our constitutionally protected privacy under the search and seisure clause.
Employment drug testing is equally unconsitutional. Any decent American should be outraged at this fascist draconian practice.
Do hard-working taxpayers have a law that requires all elected officials and in particular, governors, to pass a LIE- DETECTOR test on the first try only, and to also pass a SMELL test whenever their gas-bag commentary stinks up the room.
I haven’t been calling ‘em Billionaire Welfare Queens for nothing, Thom. What we need to do is seize these little labels and petty insults conservatives have been directing at poor people, and at those who actually work for a living, and turn their little word game around, and pin these labels right where they belong: on the real welfare queens and the real deadbeat parasites sucking the life’s blood out of our democracy… what’s left of it, that is.
Corporate subsidies… yep. We get to pay taxes not for schools, not for infrastructure or healthcare or anything we all need, but instead to privately owned, for-profit orporations whose employees “aren’t making” (translation: aren’t getting paid) enough to feed themselves and their families!
God bless America. - AIW
DRUG TEST OUR TWO FACED POLITICIANS THAT SELL THE PUBLICS MONEY FOR SUSIDIES TO INTERNATIONAL INCORPORATIONS. OH WAIT ILL JUST VOTE FOR THE LESSER OF TWO EVILS NEXT ELECTION. THAT SHOULD SOLVE EVERYTHING.
EXECUTIVE ORDER A LAW TO CONGRESS ANY LAW PASSED NOT IN THE BEST INTEREST OF THE PUBLIC TAXPAYER BE EXPUNGED!!!
Its sure as hell will not be big business that pulls us away from a fiscal edge.
If drug testing is going to become rule of thumb in these Republican states, I think there should be mandatory random drug testing laws for all government officials...state and federal...with mandatory loss of job if they come up positive.
Some time ago I read somewhere that the drug testing in FL only netted 2% positive results out of all the recipients of "welfare" and unemployment. (I'm beginning to hate the term welfare). I've forgotten the cost of testing all recipients of public aid in FL, but it sure wasn't worth the money these crackpots who hate the poor spent in tax dollars to test everyone. I'm old and my memory is a tad faulty so maybe someone has the actual numbers.
The first to be drug tested if this is in fact enacted into law are the governors and all staff and government officials, too.
If they cannot do so then it should be nullified and taken off of the records because, quite obviously, they are drug users and scared to submit to their own testing procedures
we know testing is BS and a waste of money. But republicans do that best.
Where this obscenity has been implemented the percentage of recipients testing positive has been so low that the cost of administering the tests is several magnitudes higher than the savings accrued from the policy.
There is very little "news" available without purchasing expensive higher-tier programming packages (we don't want the masses to actually become informed) from providers such as direct tv, dish, comcast, time-warner, etc. There is quite a bit of coalition-building partisan opinion upon the rare "news" items. Radio is similarly barren, with few actual "news" outlets. News is who, what, where, when, how, and sometimes why. Meet the Press is long on opinion as to why, while lacking any of the former pieces of news. Legend's comment hits the nail on the head, and to answer, all the anchors at Fox, MSNBC, CBS, and a few at CNN watch Meet The Press to have filler for their lack of actual news, and rehash the comments all week long with secondary speculation upon the original speculation.
The piece by Thom makes me nostalgic for Helen. Here's a favorite quote, from a Bill Moyers transcript of Jan. 16, 2004:
"Well, Al Neuharth, the founder of USA Today had an interview with Fidel Castro a couple of years ago. And he asked Castro, "Now, what's the difference between your democracy and ours?" And Castro said, "I don't have to answer questions from Helen Thomas."
meg goodwin ~ Very well said. I think that the same can be said of some of us not so young kids too. Stewart and Colbert have so much more objectivity and substance to their satirical art of presenting the news that it just goes to show how really bad "official network media infotainment" has become. For the most part, I get my news from the internet. There are so many more sources there that I've grown to trust and know how to cross reference that I get a much better picture of what is going on, more perspectives, and save a vast amount of time and energy sifting through it all. Also, it is interactive. If I don't agree with something I can leave a comment behind. Whoo Hoo! Even though TV news was much more accurate, fair, and balanced when I was growing up, I always resented not being able to talk back to the TV source and have my voice heard. Now I can. Besides, nowadays, who has time to plant themselves in front of the boob tube and vegetate on nonsense? I much prefer being able to participate in it. Much more healthy for the body and the mind!
Who watches Meet the Press? It is a nothing show of interviews with John McCain and the like that like to pound their chests and bash Obama. Why watch that?
It troubles me when you take such liberty interpreting Mr Todd's statement:
"Todd told comedian Lewis Black that if he “barks” at politicians - AKA asks them tough questions - they won’t come back on his show. Amazing, right? The host of probably the most influential Sunday show in the country basically admitted that he won't do hard-hitting interviews because he knows that lying politicians will refuse to come back on his show if he calls out their lies."
As prolific a writer and activist that you are it must be excedingly tempting to do this, however I suggest greater separation between your opinion and someone else's statements. In the midst of addressing mainstream media's failings, which are considerable, it would be better to lead by example.
Thanks SueN. There's a charity rater site in my notes somewhere that does a good job if it's still around. I'll post it if I find it. Right now my lower back is insisting that I be still. (Bad back!!)
On Thursday, March 27, 2008, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals approved the release of former Governor Siegelman from federal prison while he appealed his conviction in the corruption case. He was released on Friday the 28th. Siegelman stated that he wanted to see Karl Rove held in contempt for refusing to testify before the House committee that investigated Siegelman's conviction.
Best wishes,
Olivia Jane
Editor, Paid to click