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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bentway who wrote (651898)	4/19/2012 6:17:08 AM
From: Brumar89	Respond to of 1583412

So you're actually denying drug users avoid drug tests they know they'll fail.

To: bentway who wrote (651898)	4/19/2012 6:18:09 AM
From: Brumar89	2 Recommendations Respond to of 1583412

Pictured: A loving dog owner checks his beloved pet's neck muscles for tenderness and marbling.

To: bentway who wrote (651898)	4/19/2012 8:12:16 AM
From: Brumar89	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1583412

Welfare applications jump after injunction on drug testing Gray Rohrer, 04/17/2012 - 04:30 PM One month after a federal court judge in Miami issued a temporary injunction against a state law requiring welfare applicants to pass a drug test before receiving benefits, the number of applications and the amount paid out by the state rose significantly. Judge Mary Scriven issued the injunction in late October, and by December, applications for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families reached 146,020, a 10.5 percent increase from November. The total amount paid out by the Department of Children and Families, the state agency that administers the program, increased 7.9 percent to $12.5 million – by far the largest month-to-month increase for at least a decade. Since then, the monthly TANF payout has held steady between $12.58 million and $12.62 million in the first three months of 2012. According to a DCF spokesman, though, other factors than the federal court ruling helped lead to the increase. There is usually a slight seasonal bump from November to December every year, and there was a general decline in applications throughout last year as the unemployment rate dropped. “I think that probably was somewhat due to the drug-testing lawsuit, but I don’t think it was the large factor,” said DCF communications director Joe Follick. About 2,000 of the 13,914-application increase in December came from people who were eligible for benefits but refused to take the drug test, Follick said. Still, according to DCF figures, the largest monthly swing in the past 10 years came in February 2005, when the TANF payouts decreased 4.7 percent over the previous month. Plus, the increase in December came in a month when the unemployment rate dropped from 10 percent to 9.9 percent. The drug testing was a high priority for Gov. Rick Scott in his first year in office. The law took effect in July, and DCF began testing later that month. In the three months when tests were conducted before the injunction, only 2 percent tested positive. The governor’s office said they haven’t reviewed the statistics, but added that the main point of the policy is to make sure TANF benefits go to fill the basic needs of families, not to cut state spending. “It is important to ensure that people who receive TANF dollars use the cash assistance appropriately and not spend it on illegal drugs,” Scott spokeswoman Jackie Schutz said. The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, which brought the case against the welfare drug testing law, agrees that the effect of drug testing on welfare payouts is beside the point. For them, the law’s constitutionality is the central issue. “Our legal challenge -- and the federal court agreed with it – is what we’ve said all along: Suspicionless, unwarranted drug testing is unconstitutional,” said ACLU of Florida spokesman Derek Newton. “You don’t give up your constitutional rights in order to get a benefit from the government.” thefloridacurrent.com ... 19 percent (First Quarter) and 35 percent (September 2011) of otherwise eligible applicants received a drug-related denial For the 7,028 welfare cash assistance applicants approved in the first quarter of the drug testing requirement, another 1,629 were denied for a drug-related reason. All but 32 of these denials were because the applicants did not get the required drug test at one of 350 drug testing sites across the state. Thus, in the first quarter, 19 percent of otherwise eligible applicants were denied for a drug-related reason. For September, these drug-related denials were an astounding 35 percent of all otherwise eligible applicants, as shown in Table 1 on page 3. .... floridafga.org From another site: ;