more thoughts on some old ideas

"a longstanding constitutional axiom that the government may not require the surrender of constitutional rights in exchange for state-furnished benefits—say, barring criticism of Congress by residents of public housing."

- Hmm. I suppose that a little old document like the Constitution wouldn't get in the way of people who want to get rid of welfare by making it harder on people who need it (by requiring drug testing). Given my aversion to the already expansive definition of "probable cause", I have even less consideration for any idea like this. If you actually wanted to kill the social welfare instruments, you'll have to try something else though. Basically, if one is somewhere on the political "right" and wants to protect the rights of corporations to supply political speech (which is really something of a "liberal" idea), then you also have to respect where the boundaries in the Constitution are when you have your own "good" ideas for laws. So I don't think you will succeed in killing it without doing something drastic like a negative income tax. Welfare reforms a few years back is probably the best you will get. Wyden-Bennett was probably the best way to kill Medicare/aid for the same approach. You will have to leave in place the ability of people to live and receive some state or public subsidy to provide a level of safety and fairness to the overall system but also distribute more the responsibility of decision making to the individual so that people who "fail" cost mostly themselves something and people who "have been failed" by other circumstances and can still make something of themselves cost us nothing. By contrast, an idea like a drug-tested welfare state ensures more police state powers (which are supposed to be prevented by the Constitution and the courts), does not prevent welfare abuse, and acts as a further impediment/hassle cost factor to people signing up and receiving benefits that they might actually need (the number of people who don't sign up for public assistance benefits of some sort and who are eligible is rather high, at least comparable to the number of people who abuse the system). That does not impart "responsibility" except as a particle of moral majoritarianism that implies that it is the use of drugs/alcohol that is at fault for the failures of individuals. Addiction may be an issue worth investing more public attentions (though not by mandatory drug testing of a broad cross section of the population), still I'd like to see where we attend to the "failures" of wealthy individuals who use such substances with equal measures of public scrutiny before ascribing the failure of someone on public assistance to their habit of having a beer and some smokes after work or buying some marijuana once or twice a month.