The Devil Went Down To Georgia

There's some guy masquerading as a Democrat state legislator in Georgia, and he's raising eyebrows.

Scott Holcomb, aware that both legislative houses are considering bills that would require applicants for public assistance to submit to drug testing, has filed a bill of his own that would require state legislators to submit to the same tests. It's hard to argue against the idea: legislators, like those on welfare, food stamps, and other "support" programs, are paid through taxpayer funds - and in point of fact, the case could be made that legislators cause more harm to the general public than do those on public assistance.

And the idea's catching on.

Random drug testing should be a requirement for all government employees: every bureaucrat, every legislator, and at every level.

It makes so much sense that Holcomb's Democrat credentials seem questionable, at best. On the other hand, as the adage goes: even a blind hog, in a forest of oaks, will uproot the occasional acorn.

Related articles

• Welfare Recipients, Members of Congress All Ought To "Pee In A Cup" (neosecularist.com)
• Perry Joins Gingrich In Desire To Drug-Test Federal Aid Recipients: 'I Don't Have A Problem In The World With That' (thinkprogress.org)
• Tom Humphrey: Agreement near on drug testing of legislators? (knoxnews.com)

Comments

[ZZMike]

Another perk:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203413304577088881987346976.html

"Strangely, while insider trading by corporate insiders has long been the white collar crime equivalent of a major felony, the Securities and Exchange Commission has determined that insider trading laws do not apply to members of Congress or their staff."

Martha Stewart goes to jail; Congressmen make a profit.

"... Democrats' portfolios outperform the market by a whopping 9%. Republicans do well, though not quite as well. And the trading is widespread, although a higher percentage of senators than representatives trade—which is not surprising because senators outperform the market by an astonishing 12% on an annual basis."

Must really be financial wizards. Now if only they could work their magic on the budget.

Here's something you might want to watch, coming up March 19:

http://www.2012presidentialelectionnews.com/2012-debate-schedule/2011-2012-primary-debate-schedule/

"March 19, 2012 Air time TBD on PBS
Location: Portland, OR
Sponsor: Oregon Public Broadcasting, NPR, PBS, and The Washington Times
Participants: TBD"

With those sponsors, it has to be a real circus.

[David Appell]

Drug testing, then, ought to be a requirement for anyone who receives government funds, including farmers who receive farm subsidies, and all stock holders and corporate officers of any corporation that receives government subsidies -- including those coal, oil, and natural gas companies who, in FY2010, received $4.2 B in federal subsidies, and the electric power industry who from FY2007-FY2010 received $10.2 B (EIA Subsidy Report, http://is.gd/ajcsv3).

Or we could be reasonable and agree that drug testing is invasive and antithetical to privacy and not make it a requirement for anyone to receive government funds.

[Max]

Or we could be reasonable and agree that drug testing is invasive and antithetical to privacy and not make it a requirement for anyone to receive government funds.

LOL! Being reasonable has never been part of your repertoire, David - which is why you hold the distinction of having been booted off so many blogs across Oregon and Washington.

Why don't you tell us how "invasive" it is for Portland police to pee in cups on a random basis, for CDL holders to pee after any fender-bender, for bus drivers and light rail engineers to pee after a problem, for heavy rail engineers and airline pilots to pee - but why we should exempt good folks like Barney Frank, who helped engineer the most catastrophic economic train-wreck in history?

This is all you seem capable of doing: you routinely take one item and try to blow it up - and in so doing, you demonstrate a stupifying capacity for idiocy.

Your straw men always fall apart, and this is no exception: farmers receive subsidies, Government Motors got subsidies, and the list is huge. Who made it happen? Now, this is going to be a huge step for you, and I understand that, but try to keep up:

The very people - legislators, bureaucrats, city councilors - that were suggested as candidates for mandatory drug tests.

By the way, David, you employ incorrect terminology: they are not "government funds" - they are taxpayer dollars. Yes, I understand that it's a difficult concept for you to grasp, but the difference in terminology is significant: you think of it as "government money"; most sane people understand that it is their money.

Now, go feed the hamsters in the closet of your Scappoose apartment; they must be hungry after spending so much time running on their treadmill to provide you with the "green energy" that affords you the luxury of bloviating on the few blog-sites that haven't kicked you to the curb.

[David Appell]

Max, we all know that taxpayers fund government--your distinction is pedantic and boring. As is your automatic assumption that legislators and government employees cause "harm" to the general public. While there is certainly room to disagree about its dimensions, government lays the foundation for a safe, civilized, healthy society.

Back to the main point: if those who receive "public assistance" should be required to undergo drug testing, why shouldn't others who also receive "assistance." Or are farm subsidies and corporate subsidies not assisting?

[Sam L.]

Nice whack job on the whack-job, Max!

[Max]

Actually, David, I'm using correct terminology when I speak of taxpayer funds. Although you may find the distinction "boring", it is accurate; you, by contrast, prefer to employ the double-speak popularized by government bureaucrats and officials.

It's so much more politically-correct to cloak the source of funds by referring to them as "government funds"; the implication being that it isn't really our money - it's the government's.

The lie slips off the tongue and the keyboard so readily, doesn't it?

legislators and government employees cause "harm" to the general public. While there is certainly room to disagree about its dimensions, government lays the foundation for a safe, civilized, healthy society

I maintain that legislators and bureaucrats inflict substantial harm upon the general public. This year alone, forty thousand new laws take effect. This goes on year after year (when was the last time you heard of a law being repealed?), and generates great harm to the general public.

If we are to believe your argument that While there is certainly room to disagree about its dimensions, government lays the foundation for a safe, civilized, healthy society., then one may reasonably ask that you back it with examples. We can agree that at one time, government did that; we apparently disagree with regard to whether or not they do so today. I submit that they do not, and further, note that their actions are, more often than not, in direct contravention of the roles upon which our system was founded.

Government's role involves securing our safety, which they clearly do not do: they fail to secure our national borders, and they strive daily to strip away our rights.

Many, like you, sneer at the concept of border security; illegal aliens, it is contended, present few if any public dangers. Thus, you dismiss safety, in complete disregard of the fact that there is good reason underlying our original framework for legal immigration. Health screenings, for example, are integral to the process of legal immigration, whereas those who enter illegally pass no such screens.

In view of the fact that TDR-TB (Totally Drug Resistant Tuberculosis) is now on the loose in the wild, the importance of border security cannot be overstated: TB is already one of the world’s worst killers, up there with malaria and HIV/AIDS, accounting for 9.4 million cases and 1.7 million deaths in 2009, according to the WHO., and until now, those stats have involved only the treatable forms.

Moreover, the water and sewer systems in virtually every major city in the USA are compromised; sewer line and water line breaks are occurring with increasing frequency, further endangering public health. In Washington, D.C.: At first glance, the pizza-size hole that popped open when a heavy truck passed over a freshly paved District street seemed fairly minor.

Then city inspectors got on their bellies with a flashlight to peer into it. What they discovered has become far too common. A massive 19th-century brick sewer had silently eroded away, leaving a cavern beneath a street in Adams Morgan that could have swallowed most of a Metro bus.

It took three weeks and about a million dollars to repair the sewer, which was built in 1889.

When sewage systems fail, cities can’t function and epidemics break out.

So, David: about that business you were describing in which "government lays the foundation for a safe, civilized, healthy society," - you need to re-think that, because government isn't doing it.

Now, in regard to your (not my) "main point": it is not the job of government to provide public assistance; i.e., taking my tax dollars and giving them to other people is not something that government should be doing. Period.

Let's move the way-back machine to a bit over a decade ago: 1999's $8.7 billion emergency agriculture aid package included $328 million to compensate tobacco growers for declining cigarette sales.

Now, ask yourself this: how many years had government been involved in enacting laws and programs geared to achieve the very effect of pushing a decline in cigarette sales? How many millions of our tax dollars were dumped into this effort? Yet they took $328 million of our tax dollars and gave it out to compensate tobacco growers for declining cigarette sales?

If you're against mandatory drug-testing for government employees, you must be on some pretty heavy-duty stuff, yourself.

And IF they're going to keep slinging out cash (while borrowing trillions more, as even our tax dollars can only go so far) to hand over to those who view the taxpayer-funded "security net" as a hammock, then I contend that those recipients should be subject to mandatory drug-testing as well.

Contrary to your previous contention, it is not invasive.

[David Appell]

P.S.:
> Government's role involves
> securing our safety

Government's role is whatever its citizens decide it should be.

[Max]

P.S.:
> Government's role involves
> securing our safety

Government's role is whatever its citizens decide it should be.

Wrong, as usual. Do some research (hint: read the founding documents).

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.
(Thomas Jefferson)

[David Appell]

Meekly accepting whatever people long ago decided was a government that fit their needs is also a form of tyranny--tyranny of the past.

"A little rebellion now and then is a good thing and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical."

THOMAS JEFFERSON, letter to James Madison, Jan. 30, 1787

[Max]

But - but - didn't you just say that government lays the foundation for a safe, civilized, healthy society? I'm pretty sure you did.

Now you're attempting to argue that foundations are irrelevant?

That's a pathetic and paltry line of "reasoning".

Small wonder that so many consider you to be, as a previous commenter here described you: "a whack job".

Small wonder as well that your reputation across the blogosphere is so degraded.

Has it ever occurred to you to wonder why you've been booted from blogs throughout the Pacific Northwest, or why people at climate change sites openly laugh at you?

Of course it hasn't. You are confident in your infallibility, your superiority, and in your incredible skill when it comes to building straw-men to toss around in an effort to obfuscate when you can't manage an argument that holds together.

Truly, you appear to be a legend in your own mind, and it's unfortunate that so many ignorant people are unable to bear witness to the pure genius that emanates obsessively from a hole-in-the-wall apartment in the thriving metropolis of Scappoose, Oregon.

As noted previously, the hamsters that run on the treadmills to generate your "green" power are hungry. You should go feed them.

[David Appell]

It's unfortunate you cannot refrain from ad hominem attacks.

Yes, government lays the foundation for a safe, civilized, healthy society. But needs change over time, and so governments must change too, in order to provide that same foundation.

It's really that simple.

[Max]

It's unfortunate you cannot refrain from ad hominem attacks.

I wondered how long it would take for you to trot out your trusty canard.

Of course, I made no such "attacks"; I merely pointed out facts. That you don't like them isn't relevant.

Fact: many consider you to be, as a previous commenter here described you: "a whack job".

Fact: you've been booted from blogs throughout the Pacific Northwest.

Fact: people at climate change sites openly laugh at you. They also leave interesting comments regarding your knowledge, or lack thereof.

Fact: you live in a hole-in-the-wall apartment in the thriving metropolis of Scappoose.

Granted, I made up the part about the hamsters, but since you're so big on Saving The Planet™, it's not much of a stretch.

That's not "ad hominem" - they are verifiable facts.

Now, for the real ad-hominem stuff, let's take a look at a few of the dregs that you have left in the living rooms of other people, shall we?

Following are direct quotes from David Appell, most of which were left on this site:

You're full of shit.

You don't have the right to ruin the planet for the rest of us -- it doesn't belong to you.

I'm not interested in arguing constitutional semantics. Save that for your pow wows and bonfires. For all practical purposes, the government can compel you to do a great number of things, all of which impinge on your theoretical freedom, some quite significantly.

You are exactly the kind of rube they are counting on.

Someday you'll know better.

I think you should shut the f**k up and stop denigrating better men than you.

So, David - and there are many more in the archives - I don't think you're in any position to drag in the old "ad-hominem attack" straw-man. Had you looked behind you, you might have noticed that it was already on fire before you arrived here.

Believe it or not, there are certain truths that are immutable over time - and unlike you, I don't buy into moral relativism.

Whether the thief be a single individual or a government, theft is a crime.

I notice that, as you attempt to cherry-pick your inane topics, you fail to address the larger issue: should government protect our borders and maintain our infrastructure? I believe that these are fundamental obligations of government - and they clearly are not fulfilling those obligations. If they cannot be trusted to fulfill such basic obligations, then they cannot be trusted with unfettered pursuit of goals that are clearly not within their purview.

I favor mandatory drug testing for all government employees, regardless of rank.

Thus far, you have consistently skirted every issue in a transparently desperate effort to obfuscate. Either address the actual issues, or go back to your hamsters.

Perhaps you should expend your efforts on your own blog (which nobody visits). Although I do attempt to be accommodating, after you've crapped on the living room carpet a few times, I become a bit annoyed. Your continued attempts to hijack this site will not be tolerated indefinitely.

[Sam L.]

I admire your patience, Max. I say it's above and beyond, and you can now pull the trigger on the auto-ban.

[Max]

I don't think it'll be necessary, Sam, but thanks - generally, when folks trot out their righteous indignation hobby-horses only to find their own words tossed back at them, they tend to slink away on their own. That, among other things, is what has transpired here.