Remember back when Hurricane Katrina ravished New Orleans and the federal government, well George Bush, was out eating birthday cake and playing air guitar when it happened?
Remember when the people of Hollywood organized that big telethon to raise money for the people affected by the storm?
Yeah, so remember when Kanye West showed up on your television screen and yelled, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people?”
Remember how shocked and dismayed you were when you heard those words come out of Kanye’s mouth?
After the shock had time to wear off the message started to sink in. Did George Bush really hate black people? Better yet, did he care about poor people?
Well I guess brother Rick Scott is taking one out of “W’s” playbook.
On Tuesday, Florida’s Governor signed a new law that will require the state’s welfare recipients to take a drug test. Scott and Florida State Republicans claim that the tests will rid the system of people who use welfare to buy drugs.
Scott, the governor who wants to cut spending and increase job creation, says that the tests will cost around $10 per person. Other estimates take that number up to around $40 per person. Either way you are screwed if you need state assistance.
Allow me to channel my man Kanye: Rick Scott does not care about poor people.
But, we knew that. We knew that Scott was only interested in aiding himself when he ran for governor and we knew that the poor and downtrodden would get the shortest end of shortest stick.
We knew that Scott had the interest of capitalism and corporations at heart when he was elected governor and we knew that a day like this would eventually come.
You know, this new law reminds me of the bogus new elections law that Republicans rammed through the Legislature because, according to them, there is need to rout out voter fraud. Well, guess what? There were only 31 cases of fraud reported over the past three years.
Scott had no statistical information to back-up his claim of rampant drug use by poor people, rather he just figured that this was the easiest way to rid the state of the ugly moniker of welfare.
No other state in this union conducts drug testing on welfare recipients, but Florida. Florida wanted to be the first to do so.
There is a saying that you get the government that you deserve and this one here is at the feet of Florida’s voters.
But why in the world must poor people always receive a kick by the rich man’s golden boot, by Rick Scott’s golden boot?
This isn’t a case of what poor people did to Scott, it’s a case of what Tricky Ricky is doing to Floridians, not just the poor.
I guess the state’s double digit unemployment rate pales in comparison to the war on welfare. The state’s continuing housing crisis is no match for Scott and his passion for getting rid of welfare queens and druggies.
Testing Florida’s welfare recipients for drugs is only the tip of the invisible iceberg that Scott is about to ram Florida into.
If this state is built anything like the Titanic, I hope we have a band to play us off when the ship finally goes down.
