Florida to poor residents: Fuck you.

You'd think that during a recession as long and as serious as this that Americans would be more compassionate toward their poor. Well, you'd be wrong.

Florida governor Rick Scott signed a measure into law requiring all citizens applying for TANF benefits to submit to a drug screening. He reasons that taxpayers shouldn't subsidize illegal drug use. Awesome. Too bad they're not doing that here any more than they would be doing it elsewhere.

I pay taxes to maintain roads. Drug users use roads. Ergo, rather than toll bridges, we ought to have drug test bridges--that way, I don't accidentally subsidize drug use by allowing drug traffickers or drug users to use these roads for their nefarious purposes.

This is a discriminatory practice. Never mind the fact that America's poor are already submitted to humiliating violations of privacy by the state simply for being poor. Now we think they're using state benefits to buy drugs or to support their habit?

Really? So do you think that poor people use drugs often and middle and upper class people don't? Or do you think that members of the middle and upper classes do, but they're above the law and therefore we shouldn't ask them any questions?

There are so many crazy narratives about what poor people do with their benefits, and it's all basically bullshit. When people of privilege aren't complaining that poor people are ruining America by means of entitlement programs, they're trying to convince us that they're using their funds to get drunk and/or high, and by doing so supporting crime and violence in certain sections of THEIR cities or THEIR communities. This legislation is nothing more than an extension of that logic, and it makes me fucking sick.