{"id":15292,"date":"2015-05-22T12:35:13","date_gmt":"2015-05-22T19:35:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=15292"},"modified":"2015-05-22T12:35:13","modified_gmt":"2015-05-22T19:35:13","slug":"more-hatred-for-the-poor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2015\/05\/22\/more-hatred-for-the-poor\/","title":{"rendered":"More Hatred for the Poor"},"content":{"rendered":"

Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christians (the exact opposite of authentic Christians) love to parrot how their faith motivates everything they do.  But the Bible could not be more clear that we have an obligation to meet the needs of the poor among us.  Here is how Republicans respond to this Biblical imperative.<\/font><\/p>\n

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\"0522ThePoor\"At the beginning of July, a new restriction<\/a> will go into effect for recipients of welfare in Kansas that will only allow them to withdraw $25 in benefits a day. As Max Ehrenfreund pointed out<\/a>, given that ATM withdrawals come with a fee and are usually limited to multiples of 20, families will end up losing much of the money they normally receive to paying those charges \u2014 money that will go to financial institutions instead. It also restricts where they can withdraw that money, barring transactions at places like pools, liquor stores, and cruises. The restrictions are so harsh that the state is at risk<\/a> of losing its federal funding.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not the only state that has been looking for ways to make life harder on the poorest. Others have imposed drug tests and harsh limits without evidence that the policy changes would do much good.<\/p>\n

Drug testing<\/h6>\n

Drug tests for people who apply for benefits in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, better known as welfare, have become increasingly popular. States screen applicants with a questionnaire on drug use and test those who answer in the positive; if they fail the test, they and their families can eventually lose the benefits. Maine<\/a> and Michigan<\/a> are some of the newest states to start drug testing regimes, joining seven states that were already doing it<\/a>. But the lesson from those states is that the testing costs money \u2014 they\u2019ve spent nearly $1 million collectively \u2014 but doesn\u2019t uncover widespread drug abuse. In fact, while 9.4 percent of Americans use illegal drugs, all states but one had a positive drug test rate of less than 1 percent and none were as much as that national rate.<\/p>\n

That evidence hasn\u2019t stopped some from going even further. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) has put forward a plan<\/a> to drug test everyone who receives food stamps and unemployment insurance, which the state senate advanced<\/a> this week. But while states have a lot of power to set the parameters of TANF, the same is not true for these two programs, and Walker would need approval from the Obama administration for the plan to become reality. It would also come with a price tag, costing at least $1 million a year to drug test unemployed people alone\u2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Think Progress<\/a>><\/p>\n

Click through for even more ways Republican hypocrites are expressing their pseudo-Christian hatred for the poor.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christians (the exact opposite of authentic Christians) love to parrot how their faith motivates everything they do.  But the Bible could not be more clear that we have an obligation to meet the needs of the poor among us.  Here is how Republicans respond to this Biblical imperative. At the beginning of July, […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-religion","category-5-id","category-47-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15292\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}