Posts tagged welfare
Fierce...Flawless...
Welfare Recipients Are Actually Mostly White And Less Likely Than The Average American To Use Drugs
Gov. Voldemort Rick Scott (who, not coincidentally, has a financial interest in a drug testing facility; he just transferred legal ownership of it to his WIFE) decided to drug test welfare recipients. This cost taxpayers millions of dollars and lined his wallet, and they found that only 2% of all welfare recipients tested actually tested positive for drugs. Of that 2%, ALL of them had family members who were eligible for welfare, so NO welfare money was saved by attempting to deny it to people on drugs. (I’ll also note that I heard nothing about getting people who tested positive into a rehab, or any concern for innocent minor children who rely on welfare to, you know, not starve.)
Now considering that data exists that has found that 5% of Americans use illegal drugs (that’s the LOWEST percentage I have found; other data puts it at 22 million people, or 9% of the population), that means that, according to the findings in Florida where only 2% of the tested population tested positive, people on welfare are LESS LIKELY to use illegal drugs. In fact, people on welfare are anywhere from 3% to 7% LESS LIKELY to be using illegal drugs than the general population as a whole.
Also, let’s not pretend that there are not “false positives” when drug testing, because there are. Your legal doctor-prescribed medications can show up as opiates or other “illegal” drugs. You can eat a poppyseed bagel and have a false positive. If there is a possibility that a test could be WRONG and deny a family some needed assistance so they can EAT, there is something gravely wrong with the idea.
Furthermore, you can’t buy non-food items, which is fair, because it is FOOD assistance, not Food and Toiletries Assistance…but that means that someone who can’t afford to eat without enduring the shame and hassle and difficulty involved to request food assistance (meager as it is) probably can’t afford other things like: pet food, diapers, toilet paper, shampoo, toothpaste, soap, tampons or sanitary pads, shaving razors, aspirin, vitamins, and so on.
In some places, you can’t use food stamps to buy hot food (like a roast chicken from a grocery store’s deli section), prepared food (like pre-made sandwiches, which are, oddly, sometimes cheaper than buying all the bread, condiments and fillings separately), frozen food, and so on. Guess what? People who have never been on food stamps get very angry if folks buy, say, a birthday cake (allowed) or soda pop or chips (allowed, but people have the nerve to bitch about it, because you’re not allowed to eat junk food EVER if you’re on food stamps). No, you deserve your suffering because you’re asking for help that YOUR TAX DOLLARS help pay for. Now that YOU have fallen on hard times, you better make sure your cart contents meet with everyone’s approval because they all think it is 100% THEIR tax dollars paying for that pint of store-brand ice cream that you should be ASHAMED of yourself for purchasing with food stamps.
It is “unfashionable” to point out that a lot of these drug testing schemes, in addition to being very profitable for certain corporations and individuals with a financial stake in those businesses, operate on the old and well-debunked Reagan-era myth of the “Welfare Queen” who is always presumed to be both a person of color and someone taking advantage of a broken welfare system to avoid working for a living. In truth, the average welfare recipient is a white mother in the suburbs who remains on welfare about two years and is actively searching for employment (and this is partially true because there are more white people in general). Why is it unfashionable: Because when you say something sounds problematic and racist, conservatives clutch the pearls and act offended. Well, boo hoo. Stop being racist, then. Problem solved!
The idea is that “lazy people of color” are using “your” taxpayer dollars (it is always assumed that these people do not also pay taxes) to avoid work while getting high on illegal drugs, but the truth is that this is bunk and it is not-so-thinly-veiled racism.
Republicans, how’s that line about minorities becoming dependent on the nanny-state pan out for you now?
Point of interest: 2% vs. 5%/9% isn’t “3 to 7 percent less likely”. The difference is actually three to seven percentage points, and when we’re talking about single digit values the disparity between them is far greater than “3% less likely” conveys.
To use a very simple example: if 2% of welfare recipients use drugs and even just 4% of the general population use drugs, that means welfare recipients are 50% less likely to use drugs. That is, half as likely. That is, other people are twice as likely to use drugs as welfare recipients.
So this article makes a lot of great points, but if you’re going to quote it to people, don’t repeat “3% less likely”. That sounds like a margin of error. Say something like “less than half as likely”. Or use the 2% figure by itself, and emphasize that it’s lower than the average.
Welfare Recipients Are Actually Mostly White And Less Likely Than The Average American To Use Drugs
Gov. Voldemort Rick Scott (who, not coincidentally, has a financial interest in a drug testing facility; he just transferred legal ownership of it to his WIFE) decided to drug test welfare recipients. This cost taxpayers millions of dollars and lined his wallet, and they found that only 2% of all welfare recipients tested actually tested positive for drugs. Of that 2%, ALL of them had family members who were eligible for welfare, so NO welfare money was saved by attempting to deny it to people on drugs. (I’ll also note that I heard nothing about getting people who tested positive into a rehab, or any concern for innocent minor children who rely on welfare to, you know, not starve.)
Now considering that data exists that has found that 5% of Americans use illegal drugs (that’s the LOWEST percentage I have found; other data puts it at 22 million people, or 9% of the population), that means that, according to the findings in Florida where only 2% of the tested population tested positive, people on welfare are LESS LIKELY to use illegal drugs. In fact, people on welfare are anywhere from 3% to 7% LESS LIKELY to be using illegal drugs than the general population as a whole.
Also, let’s not pretend that there are not “false positives” when drug testing, because there are. Your legal doctor-prescribed medications can show up as opiates or other “illegal” drugs. You can eat a poppyseed bagel and have a false positive. If there is a possibility that a test could be WRONG and deny a family some needed assistance so they can EAT, there is something gravely wrong with the idea.
Furthermore, you can’t buy non-food items, which is fair, because it is FOOD assistance, not Food and Toiletries Assistance…but that means that someone who can’t afford to eat without enduring the shame and hassle and difficulty involved to request food assistance (meager as it is) probably can’t afford other things like: pet food, diapers, toilet paper, shampoo, toothpaste, soap, tampons or sanitary pads, shaving razors, aspirin, vitamins, and so on.
In some places, you can’t use food stamps to buy hot food (like a roast chicken from a grocery store’s deli section), prepared food (like pre-made sandwiches, which are, oddly, sometimes cheaper than buying all the bread, condiments and fillings separately), frozen food, and so on. Guess what? People who have never been on food stamps get very angry if folks buy, say, a birthday cake (allowed) or soda pop or chips (allowed, but people have the nerve to bitch about it, because you’re not allowed to eat junk food EVER if you’re on food stamps). No, you deserve your suffering because you’re asking for help that YOUR TAX DOLLARS help pay for. Now that YOU have fallen on hard times, you better make sure your cart contents meet with everyone’s approval because they all think it is 100% THEIR tax dollars paying for that pint of store-brand ice cream that you should be ASHAMED of yourself for purchasing with food stamps.
It is “unfashionable” to point out that a lot of these drug testing schemes, in addition to being very profitable for certain corporations and individuals with a financial stake in those businesses, operate on the old and well-debunked Reagan-era myth of the “Welfare Queen” who is always presumed to be both a person of color and someone taking advantage of a broken welfare system to avoid working for a living. In truth, the average welfare recipient is a white mother in the suburbs who remains on welfare about two years and is actively searching for employment (and this is partially true because there are more white people in general). Why is it unfashionable: Because when you say something sounds problematic and racist, conservatives clutch the pearls and act offended. Well, boo hoo. Stop being racist, then. Problem solved!
The idea is that “lazy people of color” are using “your” taxpayer dollars (it is always assumed that these people do not also pay taxes) to avoid work while getting high on illegal drugs, but the truth is that this is bunk and it is not-so-thinly-veiled racism.
Republicans, how’s that line about minorities becoming dependent on the nanny-state pan out for you now?
Point of interest: 2% vs. 5%/9% isn’t “3 to 7 percent less likely”. The difference is actually three to seven percentage points, and when we’re talking about single digit values the disparity between them is far greater than “3% less likely” conveys.
To use a very simple example: if 2% of welfare recipients use drugs and even just 4% of the general population use drugs, that means welfare recipients are 50% less likely to use drugs. That is, half as likely. That is, other people are twice as likely to use drugs as welfare recipients.
So this article makes a lot of great points, but if you’re going to quote it to people, don’t repeat “3% less likely”. That sounds like a margin of error. Say something like “less than half as likely”. Or use the 2% figure by itself, and emphasize that it’s lower than the average.
(via tal9000)
Calling Newt Gingrich:
Who uses food stamps and other welfare programs. And no, Newt, it turns out they’re not all African American.
From Charles Blow.
History Time!
Even though today Americans incorrectly associate welfare dependency with Black people, Black people were excluded from the welfare system for most of its history.
Welfare was meant for immigrant women. Proponents of the welfare system thought that urban immigrants threatened “the social order.” Welfare was seen as not only charity but also as a way of “supervising and disciplining recipients.” They felt that the cure for single mothers’ poverty was for these foreigners to “conform to American family standards.”
Black single mothers were not included in this effort. Welfare was intended for White mothers only. Administrators either set-up regulations that disqualified Blacks (such as eligibility standards that excluded domestic servants) or didn’t enact programs in areas that had large Black populations.
“As a result, in 1931 the first national survey of mothers’ pensions broken down by race found that only three percent of recipients were Black.”
In addition to this, other programs, such as those enacted in the New Deal, also excluded Blacks. When Blacks were able to gain access to some benefits, they were given less than Whites on the grounds that “Blacks needed less than Whites to live off of.”
Blacks only began to gain access to assistant programs through the Civil Rights era. As a result of lots of hard work by grassroots organizations, welfare benefits were secured for all.
However, this became a double edged sword kinda victory for Black America.
“As AFDC became increasingly associated with Black mothers already stereotyped as lazy, irresponsible, and overly fertile, it became increasingly burdened with behavior modification, work requirements, and reduced effective benefit levels. Social Security, on the other hand, effectively transferred income from Blacks to whites because Blacks have a lower life expectancy and pay a disproportionate share of taxes on earnings. Meanwhile, a white backlash had decimated the War on Poverty programs within a decade.”
(via “Welfare and the Problem of Black Citizenship” by Dorothy E. Roberts)
(via karnythia)
PSA for USians
“Unconstitutional” does not mean “I disagree with this law.” So when your argument that a new law that requires drug testing welfare recipients (or any law, really) is not unconstitutional hinges on the fact that you agree with the law and not on the law’s consistence with the Constitution, you are wrong. Not because I say so, but because you are not even following the basic logic you claim you are.
Either argue the merits of the law based in its constitutionality, or argue that you dis/agree with it. Those are not the same thing.
Thank you. This has been a PSA.
World-Renowned Chef Karl Wilder Tries Living on Food Stamps
Still think people on food stamps have it too good? Chef Karl Wilder is trying to feed his family on the budget equivalent of what they would receive on food stamps. He’s been documenting his meals on his blog as part of an awareness campaign for the San Francisco Food Bank.
He just finished his two months on a food stamp budget, and he says, “I admit to being bored by it. I am sick of many of the foods that work in this budget. I am ready for it to be over.” He went to the doctor and found that although he’d lost weight, his body fat percentage went up, and his blood sugar, cholesterol and triglyceride levels were all higher.
Still think poor people have it made on food stamps?
(Source: stfuconservatives, via dopegirlfresh)