Really, I don’t see why we shouldn’t all be tested. Why, it seems to me that every person who has benefited in any way by having clean(er) air or water because of government anti-pollution efforts should have to demonstrate his or her worthiness by proving to be personally unpolluted by the use of any drug at all. [I would include nicotine and caffeine and sugar. After all, what is the point of taking care of us so well only to have us thumb our noses at the effort by insisting upon just some small pleasure in an otherwise rather difficult life.]

Let me explain how this works, Radley says Team X did good/bad Thing A.
You then come along and point out how Team Y did better/worse than Thing A on Thing B. Everyone else wonders what the hell Team Y or thing B has to do with anything.

Your statements are completely unrelated to the discussion at hand. Not to mention that your bald-faced partisan accusation of partisan bias on the part of Radley is laughably ignorant. A cursory search of this website for “Democrats” “Medicaid” and “Medicare” shows Radley heaping criticism and scorn on Democrats where and when it is deserved. You should learn to do the same.

Although welfare dependency should be a situation from which people can escape, it should also be a condition which nobody will accept except in the direst of circumstances, and from which nearly anyone would try to escape. To the extent that welfare provides an existence which anyone would find preferable to working, it is too pleasant. Welfare takes money which could be used to hire workers, and instead uses it to reward those who don’t work. The bigger the welfare class, the more it depresses the economy, thus promoting the creation of an even bigger welfare class.

“Humans are our own worst enemy.”

Amen to that, brother. We certainly don’t need a worse one….

So to clarify, democrats pass a highly invasive incredibly expensive piece of legislation that is currently bankrupting the country, then Radley expertly points out that the GOP uses this highly invasive and incredibly expensive piece of legislation to restrict license plates (democrats have never been known to be so petty have they, Radley). Again, Radley you simply highlight your anti-GOP bias. You’re penny wise and pound foolish in your excitement to tar the GOP. You, rightly, point out GOP pettiness, but completely ignore the crushingly invasive and bankrupting legislation they are using was in fact passed by democrats. Which is worse: preventing Medicaid recipients from getting vanity plates or enacting legislation that causes sky rocketing medical costs preventing Medicaid recipients from getting otherwise less expensive and more widely available life saving and life improving drugs. Your stunning lack of proportion is truly a sight to behold.

Grow up.

The problem is that they are issuing other people’s money. Giving my shit away under their rules. I would agree whole heartedly with you if we were talking about private charity.

http://gawker.com/5884041/huge-houses-are-morally-wrong

Best line:

Some people think that if the money is legally made, it is the right of the moneymaker to use that money how they see fit, and it’s not anyone else’s business. Well, if you believe that you’re some sort of Randian libertarian, and you should not be reading this website. Most reasonable people accept the fact that society itself contributes greatly to the ability of rich people to gain and, crucially, hold wealth (that is, the rule of law that society enforces ensures that rich people don’t all immediately get robbed and guillotined, as has been the fashion at various points in history); therefore, rich people owe a great debt to society. More than others do.

Now it’s off to get my monocle cleaned.

There are an awful lot of times when I agree with you on an emotional level, BUT;

I’m a fifty year old man with bad teeth and gout. I have few illusions about where I’d end up in a true Anarchy; somewhere near the bottom of the pile, whimpering a lot. It may be possible to create a stable social structure without anything we’d call ‘government’, but it hasn’t happened yet, the few people who claim that it has seem to be lying or deranged (possibly both), and I’m not holding my breath.

To quote the late great Michael Crichton, always the smartest guy in the room….”Generally, whoever pays for an institution (or aid program) controls it.” So while us Libertarians may get all righteously outraged & shit about this kind of crap, it’s nothing new. You take a paycheck from an employer, you follow the terms & conditions they apply to the job: Dress code, code of conduct, don’t pinch the intern’s ass, no porn on company computers, don’t take kickbacks from the vendors, CAN”T DO DRUGS OR WE’LL FIRE YOU……”And if you don’t like it, quit. Otherwise, STFU.”

“Their money, their rules” applies to The Real World. Why the hell shouldn’t it apply to Welfare World as well? Are they moronic, dipshit rules? Sure. Does that matter? Not really – they’re no more onerous than the rules & regs that 98% of all the private employers out there have. It always amuses me to see Libertarians claim to believe that ‘Freedom also means that all your actions have consequences that YOU are responsible for’, (a most repellent notion to Entitlement Nation); and try to live their lives that way; and fanatasize that the Human Nature should be somehow repealed and that The Glorious Notion should be applied to politics and Ron Paul/Gary Johnson will become President and All Our Sacred Constitutional Will Be Miraculously Restored Overnight (LOL). But The Glorious Notion should for some mysterious reason NOT apply to The Po’. ‘Cause that would be, like, MEAN, man.

When it comes to State Control & government regulations, etc., again and again I hear variations of “I don’t take their money and I don’t want their money. So by what right do They hassle me?”

Welfare recipients can’t say that, now can they. You want a disability check? Then you have to meet the conditions the USG sets. You want a ponzi….er, “social security” check? Gotta meet USG conditions. You want a farm subsidy check, same thing. You want a USG payroll/pension check, same thing. So why doesn’t ‘You have to meet whatever conditions they choose to make up in order to get the check’ apply here? *Pretty sure* there’s no special “Welfare Money for Free” section of the Constitution…..

So what’s _really_ going on here, gang? The Gummint’s issuing the money, why *shouldn’t* they be able to attach whatever conditions they choose to it, **just like every other USG program**? “Soft bigotry of low expectations”? Racism disguised as ‘concern’, because ‘the poor and the dark-skinned folks are childlike simpletons who can’t NOT be alcoholics and/or do drugs and thus allowances must be made for their genetic deficiencies’? White Man’s Burden??

Government is only useful in the extreme macro sense, just as earthquakes are only useful in proving that the planet is living and not dead. At the individual level, for the non-government employee or privileged person, government is a force majeur and only to be feared.

In theory, I’m against “Corporate Welfare”. What confuses the issue for me is the number of times I’ve thought I was looking at an egregious example that on closer examination turned out to be a case of fatheaded Politicians demonizing and punishing an industry or company to the point where it looks like it might go out of business and then slipping it some tax breaks or regulatory exceptions so that it doesn’t. I’m vaguely sure that that isn’t always the case, but when I hear somebody thumping the pulpit about “Corporate Welfare” my instinct is to suggest that we do away with government support and government micromanagement in equal measure and then see where we are.

http://www.dor.ms.gov/mvl/tag_img/Choslif.jpg