Florida governor signs welfare drug-screen measure

CNN

Saying it is “unfair for Florida taxpayers to subsidize drug addiction,” Gov. Rick Scott on Tuesday signed legislation requiring adults applying for welfare assistance to undergo drug screening.

“It’s the right thing for taxpayers,” Scott said after signing the measure. “It’s the right thing for citizens of this state that need public assistance. We don’t want to waste tax dollars. And also, we want to give people an incentive to not use drugs.”

Under the law, which takes effect on July 1, the Florida Department of Children and Family Services will be required to conduct the drug tests on adults applying to the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. The aid recipients would be responsible for the cost of the screening, which they would recoup in their assistance if they qualify. Those who fail the required drug testing may designate another individual to receive the benefits on behalf of their children.

Shortly after the bill was signed, five Democrats from the state's congressional delegation issued a joint statement attacking the legislation, one calling it "downright unconstitutional."

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Supreme Court Lets Corporations Ban Class Actions

"This morning, the US Supreme Court dealt a crushing blow to American consumers and employees, ruling that companies can ban class actions in the fine print of contracts." - Attorney Deepak Gupta.

Supreme Court AFP File image

Stephen Lendman, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

In an earlier article I discussed hurdles ordinary people face before America's High Court.  Saying pro-business rulings aren't new, it suggested the most damaging one occurred in 1886.  In Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railway, the High Court granted corporations legal personhood. Ever since, they've had the same rights as people without the responsibilities. Their limited liability status exempts them.

As a result, they've profited hugely and continue winning favorable rulings. Today more than ever from the Roberts Court, one observer calling its first full (2006-07) term a "blockbuster" with the Court's conservative wing prevailing most often.

Through today, it's been much the same, notably in its January 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision, ruling government can't limit corporate political election spending as doing it violates their First Amendment freedoms. Writing for the 5 - 4 majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy called it legal "political speech," effectively putting a price tag on democracy.

We the People Must Protect Our Liberty, No Matter the Cost

S. Paul Forrest
Activist Post

America today is no longer a Land of Opportunity but one of basic survival for the middle to lower class tax brackets. The hope we once knew and looked toward in our daily struggles as a beacon of light at the end of the labor tunnel is quickly being extinguished by corporatism and entitlements for the rich while we at the bottom slave to minimally support our families. 



Our governmental representatives sit in Washington, D.C. deliberating our collective future, while We the People can only hope they are doing so in our best interests. To date though, this has not happened. To date, they have done nothing but add to our national deficit with corporate bailouts and tax havens for their contributors while our national education system has come under attack, our teachers lose their jobs, citizens lose their homes and our elders face the loss of Medicare and the elimination of social security, a fund into which they have paid their whole, working lives. To date, they have only appeased us with pointless debates while the same corporations that feed from the public trough fill these politician’s pockets with “campaign contributions”.



Minnesota Republicans want to outlaw cash-carrying poor people

Fight Back News

St. Paul, MN – Minnesota Republicans are pushing legislation that would make it a crime for people on public assistance to have more $20 in cash in their pockets any given month. This represents a change from their initial proposal, which banned them from having any money at all.

On March 15, Angel Buechner of the Welfare Rights Committee testified in front of the House Health and Human Services Reform Committee on House File 171. Buechner told committee members, “We would like to address the provision that makes it illegal for MFIP [one of Minnesota’s welfare programs] families to withdraw cash from the cash portion of the MFIP grant - and in fact, appears to make it illegal for MFIP families to have any type of money at all in their pockets. How do you expect people to take care of business like paying bills such as lights, gas, water, trash and phone?”

House File 171 would make it so that families on MFIP - and disabled single adults on General Assistance and Minnesota Supplemental Aid - could not have their cash grants in cash or put into a checking account. Rather, they could only use a state-issued debit card at special terminals in certain businesses that are set up to accept the card.

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A McDonald Economy

Tesha Miller
Seismologik

The Golden Age of the American working class is over and McDonald's Golden Arches provides a glimpse of what lay directly ahead for many working Americans. McDonald's will be adding as many as 50,000 new hires on April 19. The newly disenfranchised who were unfortunate enough to be swept away by the housing bubble collapse had to penny pinch on shoestring budgets. Those no longer able to afford Starbucks coffee, instead sipped on the newly developed McDonald's McCafe line and the restaurant chain financially exploded despite the tanked economy. While the entrepreneurial spirit of McDonald's is certainly noteworthy there is a more important element to this story to be considered. The poor substitute for coffee is symbolic of a far greater crisis to the American people then just a preference for coffee beans.

The average wage for McDonald's employees in 2011 is exactly what one might expect for a chain that can offer $1 menu items; about $7.50 -$10 an hour. During the peak of the economic recession nearly 700,000 jobs were being lost monthly to US workers and with it an entire way of life. Millions of homes were abandoned and foreclosed upon while small businesses ended and community banks closed doors for the final time. Some of the worst hit metropolitan areas suffered employment declines ranging from 9.8% to 17% according to a Brookings Institution report in 2010. Entire communities were devastated from the severity of the economic blow and this in turn lead to deficit increases and budgetary shortfalls. 

Understanding Stealth Economic Warfare

Dick Eastman
Rense

What is the connection between Wal Mart, the trade deficit, foreclosures and the end of domestic middle-class ownership of the means of production?

After careful economic survey of your town's economic environment one or more Wal Mart stores are built. Wal Mart with economies of scale, a surplus war chest for cut-throat competition and advantages in the import of foreign produced goods, Wal Mart focuses on driving each locally owned or domestically owned competitor out of business. People may not want to shop at Wal Mart but their own budgets and deflation which makes "making ends meet" progressively more difficult forces them to give in sooner or later. Only after the local competition is bankrupt will prices climb to monopoly pricing levels. What you don't know is that this is but one aspect of a grand strategy for conquest without war waged by an international elite against us.

In the days of regulated international trade what is being done would be called "dumping." Where one industrial country's monopoly corporations dump their unsold surplus on another. (The surplus is unsold because the workers of those countries are deprived of purchasing power, it being drained off in taxes and interest payments, and monopoly pricing.) Dumping undercuts what the local producers can profitably produce and so forces the replacement of self-sufficient local production with international dependency -- dependency on foreign supply. But there is more to what is happening today than that.

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US Debt Woes Expose Hidden Austerity and Looting

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The Perfect Storm

Robert Reich
RSN

It's a perfect storm. And I'm not talking about the impending dangers facing Democrats. I'm talking about the dangers facing our democracy.

First, income in America is now more concentrated in fewer hands than it's been in 80 years. Almost a quarter of total income generated in the United States is going to the top 1 percent of Americans.

The top one-tenth of one percent of Americans now earn as much as the bottom 120 million of us.

Who are these people? With the exception of a few entrepreneurs like Bill Gates, they're top executives of big corporations and Wall Street, hedge-fund managers, and private equity managers. They include the Koch brothers, whose wealth increased by billions last year, and who are now funding tea party candidates across the nation.


Which gets us to the second part of the perfect storm. A relatively few Americans are buying our democracy as never before. And they're doing it completely in secret.

Hundreds of millions of dollars are pouring into advertisements for and against candidates - without a trace of where the dollars are coming from. They're laundered through a handful of groups. Fred Maleck, whom you may remember as deputy director of Richard Nixon's notorious Committee to Reelect the President (dubbed Creep in the Watergate scandal), is running one of them. Republican operative Karl Rove runs another. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a third.

The Supreme Court's Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission made it possible. The Federal Election Commission says only 32 percent of groups paying for election ads are disclosing the names of their donors. By comparison, in the 2006 midterm, 97 percent disclosed; in 2008, almost half disclosed.

We're back to the late 19th century when the lackeys of robber barons literally deposited sacks of cash on the desks of friendly legislators. The public never knew who was bribing whom.

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Wealth inequality rivals the months prior to the Great Depression

My Budget 360

The official announcement that the recession is over underscores the massive disconnect between Wall Street and the rest of America.  Wealth inequality in America is at levels last seen right before the Great Depression ravaged our economy.  Yet the inequality has grown even more intense as this crisis has gone forward.  43 million Americans are now classified as being in poverty.  This trend hasn’t shifted in the last decade, recession or no recession.  The system is absolutely flawed and that is why we have over 16 percent underemployment, 41 million Americans on food stamps, 4 out of 10 workers in low paying service sector jobs, the median household income falling under $50,000, record monthly foreclosure filings, and yet the recession is over according to a small group of economists.  The recession may be over for Wall Street but the rest of America is still struggling.

Wealth inequality has been exacerbated by the casino like behavior of investment banks on Wall Street.  A recent study shows how out of touch with the facts most Americans are when it comes to wealth inequality in their own country.  One fascinating finding is that most Americans, even between those that make $50,000 and $100,000 actually envision optimal wealth distributions that are very similar:

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Max Keiser: Middle class needs to 'sharpen up the guillotine on Wall Street'

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