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Kend ~ What could it hurt to save one life? What about all the lives lost fighting for our Constitutional rights that you've just cancelled. Oh, that right, you're a Canadian. Well some of us Americans hold our Constitutional rights very dear and simply won't hand them over to... maybe save one life.
Your example is flawed. What you described applies more to a stupid incompetent person than one on drugs. Unless, you've never interacted with someone on drugs it isn't that hard to spot. In addition, someone on most common drugs screws up continuously and is easy to spot. Insisting that someone who is suspected take a test, and randomly testing everyone are two completely different things.
On a lighter note, your example shows another flaw in testing... it is an easy thing to get around if you already know the result will be positive; and, who better to know that fact than yourself? I once knew someone who smoked weed who used his kids urine for the test. I asked him what would happen if the test came back positive anyway? He said he would kill his kid. I then asked him if that course of action didn't make him feel the least little bit like a first class hypocrite? He insisted it didn't. There you have the type of situation this blatant violation of the Constitution fosters--an artificially created class of first class hypocrites, liars, and deceivers. Is that really the company you like to keep?
Interesting how this particular poll has a 50/50 split. I don't feel it will make Wall Street any more responsible, unless all those extra taxes are funneled to the SEC and an oversight commitee. Let me do some quick math here... First we have a monthly volume of around 3 billion shares at the NYSE. Then we have an average share price of 42 dollars. So we have around 125 billion dollars a month being transacted. If you put a 1% tax on the dollar amount you get 15 billion in tax revenue a year! However, since the gains on the NYSE were over 26% last year and averaged 17% for the past 5 years, I feel a 5% tax is reasonable. 75 billion dollars is a nice piece of change for our national revenue. I am sure there will be some day-traders kicking and screaming, but most of the smart investors go long term, so I don't see it as much of an issue on how it affects their income.Stocks are just like other assests, which you would pay sales tax on, such as a car or a home. The main difference is rich people buy a lot more of these than they do anything else, which means we would be getting the revenue from the people who can afford it, instead of from the people who used to consider themselves the middle class.
Marc there is a big difference from back then to today. You can't use the natural selection theory today. Well maybe after tracking the empoyees screw ups for months maybe years. Putting together a extensive file showing how useless and unsafe this idoit really is. Then maybe after you give him a massive package then and only then can you terminate the employment. Hopefully before they kill or hurt someone. In my day there it was simple if we didn't feel safe the guy was gone. It kinda went like this. "get the F&%@ off my lease" done, no HR dept. Done.
As far as drug resting. It can't hurt. you pee in a cup. Big deal. Get over it. Look if it saves one life its worth it. Besides companies have so much liability today with all the bullshit law suits what else can they do. They have to cover there butts.
Besides if you are that worried invest in a whizzinator.if you don't know what that is goggle it.
On a lighter note my cousin smoked a little pot and had to get drug tested so he got a buddys urine for his Whizzanator and the borrowed urine tested positive for Cocaine. Best part is he payed the guy for it. I swear true story. Up in Ft McMurray (Ft McMoney as we call it) where oil sands are there is manitory drug testing everywhere. thats where he got busted. lost his $45.00/hr job driving a 1/2 ton truck around. He was a teamstear but up there if you are positive you are gone. Safety first they say,
What about jobs where safety isn't an issue. What about a job where you answer the phone, sit at a desk all day shuffling paper, or play a game. The underlying issues here are job performance and health. Shouldn't that be the main concerns of employers and employees. What would happen if it was discovered that being under the influence of something increased performance? Babe Ruth and Mark McGuire were both under the influence of something when they outperformed all other batters in Baseball history. It was their choice. Why not let freedom of choice trump corporate policy and performance testing replace drug testing for any situation where safety isn't an issue, and let the human need for self preservation reign in all other situations. How will we as a species ever learn the true value and harm of various substances on the human body unless we test them in the real world? Once this information is learned and becomes common knowledge the human sense of self preservation will do the rest. These draconian laws are preventing and delaying our own human progress and evolution. The time has come to stomp them out once and for all.
We have a local restaurant here in town that has a framed photograph that has always shocked me. It is a photograph of highrise construction workers taking a lunch break on a steel beam many floors above ground. They all seem quite casual about lunch. It would have scared the hell out of me. Just looking at the photo always gives me the creeps. Certainly none of these workers were the least bit impaired. Even completely sober you could never get me on that beam. There is a certain amount of self discipline we all assert over our own behavior in order to satisfy our sense of self preservation. It has worked since the dawn of time and only those interested in a fascist agenda and a quick profit would have us think some draconian measure is suddenly necessary to replace the human sense of self preservation. That is a ridiculous notion.
Kend ~ Very true! You don't take any chances, do you? The environment dictates your behavior. Darwins theory of natural selection does the rest. My father worked a similar job. Anyone who was dumb enough to show up compromised was quickly identified by co workers who didn't want to depend upon them. Anyone who fell through that line of defense fell by their own hands in short order. You cannot work such a job and serve the master of drugs at the same time. There really is no need for any invasion of privacy.
Drug testing has only been around for a few decades; yet, since the time the pyramids were built there have been dangerous work environments that required complete attention by all workers to perform their daily tasks. The lack of drug testing didn't inhibit the building of the pyramids, the Eiffel tower, Stonehenge, The Space Needle, The Golden Gate Bridge, The Twin Towers, or any other physical testament to the accomplishment of a drug testing free environment that exists in any developed city anywhere in the world.
Do you really want us to believe that drug testing was the key factor in keeping your oil derrick safe and you alive?
Kend, I thought you were at least my age. You're a few, maybe five, years younger.
I would agree, Kend, if they were testing, reliably, to see if you were high at the time, on the job. In that case, however, it wouldn't matter what you would be impaired by, impairement from any source would be an equal concern. Drug testing is really about intolerantly controlling other people's lifestyle choices and about general control and dominance. I mean, the drinks you had last week wouldn't be relevant to any current situation, would they?
Cop Out's a dumb ass. He's a softie, an easy mark (no pun).
You know, Alice, you're right. Employers have gained so much power and employees lost so much that employers almost own their employees now in many ways. I remember when it was only necessary to do a job 8 hours a day, five days a week. Now you have to be the job 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Even a crappy minimum wage job. They drug test day laborers not infrequently also.
Mark, how old do you think I am. Just for the record I did work on the rigs. I started in the early 80's in my teens and worked in the oil business into the 90's. All well after wooden dereks by the way. In the begining there was no drug testing as we know it today. If you even seemed a bit high on anything you where run off . The first rig I worked on was Westwood rig four, which by the way blew up on a location near a town called lodgepole, AB . I lost friends in that blow out and it and my time on the rigs was very f&%#ing real. My point was when you work in a job that a mistake could cost you your life you don't take any chances.
cop out thanks for your support
anarchist cop out ~ And just whom may I ask are you to vouch for anyone here. You, are not even able to vouch for your own credibility--of which, in my humble opinion, you lost in it's entirety the moment you vouched for Kend's. Good bye!
Oh, peezh tush! That Kend is such a bullshitter I think he invented his whole online persona. I think he's a shill. Dumb ass!
Who the f are you to question Kend's credibility? If he says he worked on an oil rig, he worked on an oil rig! If he says drug testing saved his life then it saved his life! Self righteous clown!
Listen Cop Out, I'm sick of your nonsense! We're trying to have intelligent discussion here on this blog and you're making all these careless and stupid comments. I wish you'd go where people like you belong and stop bothering us self righteous, uh, that is, I mean, righteous scholarly types.
I dunno. I hear those Malaysians smoke a lot of weed and then their planes disappear. Seems pretty clear to me.
This systematic harassment of marijuana smokers will not cease with the end of pot prohibition. Employers will continue subjecting workers to these urine tests, along with saliva tests, hair tests, blood tests ad nauseam, and people will continue living under the microscope of fascist surveillance. Hey, what's to stop landlords from subjecting prospective tenants to this abuse? The more the merrier!
Land of the free, home of the brave! - AIW
Who you crappin', Kend? There was no drug testing when you were younger. Marijuana couldn't even be found in the system by any tests until the '80s. Anyway, Canada had already decriminalized pot by the '70s.
As far as "when your life depends on it", we got a credible pilot who thinks otherwise.
Good point insurance is much more expensive for some than others. the more reckless amongst us indanger the innocent.vote as to the situation.
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Mark, having studied marijuana prohibition, I can assure you that everything you've claimed (that pot prohibition is used as a legal weapon against minorities like blacks & hispanics) can be easily substantiated. - AIW
Palindromedary (and/or Aliceinwonderland) ~ If that is me, then my all time favorite book is this one:
http://oaklandwiki.org/His_Honor,_the_Buckaroo
Everyone needs an all time favorite hero... That's mine!
Kend ~ Correction! You are probably alive today because of the lack of common sense testing; but, please, don't take my word for it. The future will bear me out.
Somebody here has a book I want to read!!!
I worked on oil rigs when I was younger and I am probaly alive today because of drug testing. Things are a lot different when your life depends on it.
Frank Gehry Seattle Stoner Monument Images for frank gehry seattle experience music project
I once had to take a general drug screen up in Seattle. I had to report to the Jones Building. Seattle is kind of poetic.