hundreds of thousands of dollars proving that, as it turns out, welfare recipients appear to use drugs at roughly one-fourth the rate of the general population. florida s drug test to the poor bill was initially proposed as a way that the state would save tons of money, but it ended up being a boondoggle, a hugely expensive way to discover almost no illegal drug use. and a series of court rulings has now found it to be wildly unconstitutional. a few months after the program was first implemented, a federal court ruling blocked it, and the court ruling, the judge of the court ruling went out of her way to basically laugh at the state for having cited one particular florida think tank for their evidence as to why the law was such a good idea. this was from the ruling. you almost never see anything this blunt in a court order. the state offers, as evidence of the cost savings, a pamphlet from the foundation for government accountability. the data contained in the pamphlet is not competent
state history. 20,000 barrels of what leaked from a pipeline in his north dakota wheat fields. and while north dakota isn t the sight of the oil-related disaster, it is, in some ways, the source of it. when that massive explosion in quebec in july killed 40,000 people, that explosion was caused by the derailment of a train, carrying a load of sweet, light crude from north dakota, from the bakken shale. north dakota over the last decade or so has become a state that s increasingly dependent on one industry. there s essentially an oil gold rush happening in north dakota right now. before the boom in 2008, the state was shipping about 18,000 barrels of oil a day by rail. by 2012, it wasn t 18,000 barrels a day, it was 425,000 barrels a day. and that number rose by another third in 2013. watching the state of north dakota deal with its sudden and new and dramatically different reality has been a fascinating
it saves. just one day before that, similar worries in the kansas city star , where missouri this past year was the most recent state to install drug testing for welfare recipients and where neighboring kansas is scheduled to be next. the program s price in missouri described as, quote, astronomical by one state s legislature, quote, a horrible waste of state resources. costs in missouri include $170,000 just for staffing administrative hearings for the people who are getting denied benefits. in kansas, they ve already earmarked nearly $1 million to pay for this policy, including $600,000 for upgrading computers to get ready for the testing program. really? you think you re going to save money with that much money invested? on new year s eve, a federal appeals court in florida ruled again on the policy that started this new trend in the red states. remember, the florida policy was originally stopped by the courts just a few months after it was implemented in 2011. but on new year s ev
to be first in line if they could when the clerk s offices opened up again on monday morning. and that sort of immediate, race done to the clerk s office response, doesn t usually happen after a court ruling, right? i mean, utah is appealing the ruling. not necessarily a final decision. even so, there is usually a delay until things go into effect. right. in this case, it turns out utah screwed it up. state made a mistake in the way they handled the game marriage case. that s why all the couples in up taupe were literally able to run into their clerk s offices and
conservative groups, through networks like alec, right? they were able to convince other republican-controlled states to try it as well. lack, quote, in 2013, alone, at least 30 states proposed bills related to drug screening and testing, with some even extending it to federal benefits, including unemployment insurance. that s from the minneapolis star tribune, which wrote about this over the holiday break. wrote about the reason of minnesota over the implementation of that state s version of the law. quote, there was little debate in the minnesota legislature last year when random drug testing was added to an amendment of an omnibus health bill. the bill passed the state senate in 2012. but now that it s going into effect, quote, counties across the state of minnesota are scrambling to enforce the rules. for many county governments across minnesota, the law has become a logistical headache. the new law, quote, could end up costing taxpayers far more than