From Diana Vance
Monroe
To the editor:
Scott Walker wants jobless, food-stamp recipients to face drug tests. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, is peddling the story that food-stamp recipients in Wisconsin fail to get jobs because they are on drugs. Scott Walker wants to expand it to include all adults receiving Medicaid and unemployment benefits.
The State Department of Health reports that many recipients of Medicaid and even food stamps already have a job but it pays so little they need assistance. Statistics show that as high as 58 percent of those getting food stamps are employed.
Data shows that those recipients of Medicaid - 83 percent of this goes to the elderly, disabled or working poor. Raising the minimum wage would accomplish far more than giving a drug test.
The Walker/Vos proposal is built on a lie that poor people who receive government aid have a lifestyle problem that makes them unemployable. I believe this attacks the dignity, the self-esteem and self-respect of the poor and 40 percent of them are children. It certainly enhances the lie that they should have a stigma. Will the children who receive aid have to pee in a cup too?
Dr. George Lundberg, former editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, said in Forbes magazine that drug testing is "chemical McCarthyism" and goes on to say that it is costly to administer and is not justified by any cost-benefit analysis.
Let's get the sigma off the needy and put it where it belongs - in Scott Walker's lap.
Monroe
To the editor:
Scott Walker wants jobless, food-stamp recipients to face drug tests. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, is peddling the story that food-stamp recipients in Wisconsin fail to get jobs because they are on drugs. Scott Walker wants to expand it to include all adults receiving Medicaid and unemployment benefits.
The State Department of Health reports that many recipients of Medicaid and even food stamps already have a job but it pays so little they need assistance. Statistics show that as high as 58 percent of those getting food stamps are employed.
Data shows that those recipients of Medicaid - 83 percent of this goes to the elderly, disabled or working poor. Raising the minimum wage would accomplish far more than giving a drug test.
The Walker/Vos proposal is built on a lie that poor people who receive government aid have a lifestyle problem that makes them unemployable. I believe this attacks the dignity, the self-esteem and self-respect of the poor and 40 percent of them are children. It certainly enhances the lie that they should have a stigma. Will the children who receive aid have to pee in a cup too?
Dr. George Lundberg, former editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, said in Forbes magazine that drug testing is "chemical McCarthyism" and goes on to say that it is costly to administer and is not justified by any cost-benefit analysis.
Let's get the sigma off the needy and put it where it belongs - in Scott Walker's lap.
