I was horrified to read today that a Republican Senator wants to require drug testing of all people receiving unemployment benefits. Having worked every year of my life since age 16 (when I couldn't WAIT to work), it dawned on me that not even a 46 year track record of believing in self-sustaining work could be challenged.
I mean, hey - maybe suddenly, after 46 years, I woke up on a Tuesday morning and felt - WTH (what the heck) - lazy. Maybe, suddenly, I found crack cocaine in my grocery bag, actually knew what it was, and snorted until my eyes popped. Having discovered Nirvana at this advanced age, of course I would never want to work again. If I could get Government benefits, to keep me in a poverty lifestyle to which I'd never before become accustomed, I mean, that's about as
way-cool as my life could turn out!
A conversation with a co-worker, two generations younger than me, opened my eyes to the new "guilty until proven innocent" reality of life here in the U.S.A.
This young woman, a favorite of mine, has grown up in the drug-testing era. A professional athlete by trade, she has had to be drug tested for all the important jobs in her life.
She sees nothing wrong with this, and feels that if a person is receiving public benefits, like unemployment insurance - for which she feels she is paying - then any and every one should accept a drug test without a problem.
My problem is that I, also, have been paying for unemployment insurance - for a far longer time, and have therefore made a substantially greater contribution, than has she.
Yet, I'm not equivocating about the 21-year-old laid-off from Staples, who worked for six months after college, and now needs help because this economy stinks. I'm not upset about the 32-year-olds, who've paid into the system for maybe 17 years, who lost their jobs as teachers and now need help.
I'm figuring we're all in this boat together. And I don't like the idea of living in a country where we're all suspected of being guilty, unless we're willing to, as she says, "pee in a cup" and prove otherwise.
Our nation suceeds because we are (or used to be) a system of laws based on the premise that we citizens are INNOCENT until proven guilty.
If we manage to flip-flop that equation, if the government can always assume that we are guilty unless we can prove otherwise, then we have entered an era of tyranny in which, yes indeedy, I'll need a lot of crack cocaine to survive.
Just somebody, show me what it looks like.
2 comments:
This is not a public trial. Drug-testing is being used as a qualifier, just as is filling out the appropriate paper work, going through a benefits interview, supplying past pay-stubs, the title and current registration for your car and current bank statements. Do you suggest that being required to present these is an infraction on your civil liberties as well? Are you living in an Utopian world where everyone is exactly what they say they are and your citizens never misrepresent themselves? If so, please send me an engraved invitation, because I live in reality.
It matters not how long you have paid into the system, Ms. Gibbs. Your opinion carries no more weight regarding this issue than mine simply based on how many years one has been a tax-payer. I see nothing wrong with adding drug-testing as a pre-qualifier for governmental benefits of any kind. If you cannot pass a drug-test, than you are preventing yourself from being able to qualify for jobs at many companies and, therefore, extending your need for governmental benefits and increasing the burden on the already over-extended tax-payer. If you can pass a drug test, you should have no problem with being required to take one.
When you walk into a governmental office, they don't know you from Joe Smoe sitting on the corner. The agency does not have an in-depth understanding of you as a person and your personal convictions. They can only base their decision to award you benefits based on the factual evidence they are provided. It is upon those facts that their decision will be rendered.
That sounds like an amazingly fair trial to me...
The "factual evidence" I can provide is a 46-year track record of employment, documented with pay stubs.
Ten, twelve and eighteen years longevity at individual companies certainly offers proof enough that I am not snorting coke or shooting heroin on my lunch break.
The spiral downward into investigating every aspect of our lives, by anyone who has a manufactured claim of "right to know" is a frightening trend.
Nowadays, insurance companies routinely run credit checks before they issue car coverage - and charge higher rates to those who have struggled to pay their bills.
Companies thinking about hiring you also go that route, on the flimsy excuse that if you pay your bills late, you might be tempted to steal from the company - even if the job you're applying for is a welder with no access to company funds.
I once refused to provide my social security number to a gynocologists office that said they "had to have it for my file." The showdown resulted in me walking away from my pap smear appointment. I have no idea of the security of their file clerks - and I'm not willing to give up my social security number to just anybody who asks - which, BTW, fraud experts endorse.
Let's up the ante a bit - are you willing to provide DNA evidence that you have never been involved in a crime, in order to obtain a job, or temporary government benefits?
Can the friends you grew up with, in your home town, be interviewed to make sure you're an upstanding citizen?
Should your parents be required to provide all financial documents of their assets, in triplicate, to insure that they CAN'T provide for you - because, really, even if you are 40 years old, if your parents are rich, I shouldn't have to pay for your unemployment - right?
These subjects of inquiry sound extreme - and un-Constitutional to you, I would guess.
Yet, being made to "pee in a cup" sounds exactly the same to me.
It's a slippery slope, my sweet pea . . .
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