Two Things

1. Via skippy, "What Real Class Warfare Looks Like," by Paul Waldman at the American Prospect:

   This is how people with power tell people without power that they're nothing, that in order to access even the most modest help they'll have to submit to a ritual of abasement, treated like criminals and forced to hand over their bodily fluids.
   
   And let's be clear—drug testing people on unemployment doesn't save any money, or reduce drug use, or solve any practical problem. But it does what it's intended to do: Put those people in their place.

2. Via The Slacktivist, Jesse Curtis writes "a lot of Christians don't care about poor people."

   We say it is the church's job to care for the poor, yet attend churches that don't help people pay their rent or buy groceries. It is the church's job and yet the pastoral leadership has not told the business owners in our congregation that the hiring of ex-felons should [be] prioritized. It is the church's job and yet we don't offer affordable child care during the week so single moms can go earn a living.

   There's more.

I'm going to hearken back to *gasp* the Great Depression and the fact that it affected pretty much everybody; that's why laws to restrain the financial industry could be passed and a social safety net installed.  (Also the fear of Communism was in the back of some minds.)

The Great Recession is maybe not as bad, but it is still hurting a lot of people whose only crime was believing the American Dream was realistic and not a sort of movable goal post.

All I will say about the "people with power" in the first item is that they obviously miss bowing and forelock-tugging.