Orrin Hatch wants the unemployed to have to pee in a cup in order to receive their benefits. Really:
Hatch introduced an amendment to the tax extenders bill that would require those who are applying for some of the benefits in that bill, including unemployment and welfare benefits, to pass a drug test in exchange for the benefits.
Being unemployed just isn't denigrating enough for Orrin Hatch. You have to be punished it for, put under suspicion. That's the Republican way. What's next? Poor houses?
Actually, it's debtors' prisons. Yves Smith at naked capitalism writes:
On Friday, I put up a short post alerting readers to a PR campaign apparently just getting off the runway to impress the average American of his moral obligation to honor his debts. The rise of strategic defaults (and perhaps even more important, the increasingly positive coverage it is getting in the media and the blogosphere) is generating heartburn among the banking classes.
One of the tidbits we pointed to was a YouTube snippet of Peterson Institute Foundation [sic] spokesman David Walker speaking fondly of debtors’ prison and the need to "hold people accountable when they do imprudent things." A couple of readers complained that I was being unfair, while others said they’d be happy to see the return of debtors’ prison as long at the executives at the TBTF banks were at the head of the queue.
Be careful what you wish for. Reader bill clued us in that people who fall behind on debt payments are being incarcerated in six states. While this is generally short-term, it is nevertheless a troubling development, since these are all involve private contracts and look to be an abuse of the court system.
Arkansas, Arizona, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota and Washington are the states where we know this is happening. People are being thrown in jail for failing to pay debts as small as $85. Bring down the global economy from your position on Wall Street, you get a bail-out. Miss your cell phone payment, you go to jail. Welcome to 2010, the re-Gilded Age.