You just spent the last four years serving your country in the Afghanistan war zone and finally you get to come back home to Wisconsin. Like most veterans, you don't have a job lined up and you apply for unemployment. Under Governor Scott Walker's proposed plan for unemployment beneficiaries, however, you will first have to pee in cup and prove that you are not guilty of taking illicit drugs.
Ironically, even though Walker has been warned repeatedly that suspicionless drug testing for government programs has always been thrown out by the courts for being grossly unconstitutional, it will likely take months before the courts are able to shut down Walker's publicity stunt and in the interim one of the groups that will be hit hardest are newly unemployed veterans whose primary mission was to "support and defend the Constitution." This is nothing but class warfare being waged on those just returning home from warfare.
And, of course, veterans aren't the only ones Walker is targeting. What about the 55 year old factory worker who has just seen his job of 30 years being shipped off to China? Pee in a cup! The teacher who got laid off because of education budget cuts? Pee in a cup! The autoworker who saw his plant shut down because the national economy collapsed? Pee in a cup!
In fact, here's the kicker: Walker has made getting unemployment so absurdly difficult that the only people that can legally get unemployment (after January 1, 2014) are those who have made it through a bureaucratic maze, proving time after time, that they were separated from their job because of no fault of their own. That’s right: if you lose job and it is your “fault” you don’t get any unemployment to start with. The only ones who will be asked to pee in a cup are those who lost a job through no fault of their own! Read that last sentence again. Out loud. And then tell your neighbor. And your uncle.
All this nonsense to get unemployment insurance-- that the worker paid into during the time that he or she worked. Why? Well, according to Walker, to make sure the newly unemployed, through no fault of their own, are indeed... ready to work. So, let’s get this straight: folks who lose their job through no fault of their own, you are concerned that maybe they aren’t “ready to work”?
The list of people who will have to pee in a cup to get their government checks does not include the millionaires who get voucher checks to send their kid to private schools, the fat cat agri-businesses that receive government farm subsidy checks, or corporate CEOs who get more corporate welfare in an hour than the average unemployment beneficiary will see in their lifetime.
After winning another election based on his promise of “jobs, jobs, jobs”, Scott Walker’s first goal, right out the gate, will not create a single job and will just be more of the same: Divide (and conquer) the middle and lower classes to keep the focus off of the one percenters that caused Wisconsin's job crises in the first place.