OpenGov - Open Government Brainstorm

Now, if someone can't keep track of what's going on and presents you with a word salad instead of talk, then sure, don't employ them. What is the deal with one man smoking marijuana and being President of the United States, and another doing the same thing being treated as an outcast.

This is even more important for users of other illicit drugs. The lifelong persecution of illicit drug users which is now Federal law prevents them from ever obtaining services, entitlements, and benefits they need to succeed. Are we more interested in pursuing our hatred of drug users or actually reducing drug use?

Full agreement with bre2002, extend it to all illicit drug users.

All employment is up to the person employing you.

If you smell you are not going to work for me.

Sorry, that is life.

Obama doesn't want white people working for him, so he looks for other people to work for him.

If I want to discriminate like Obama I can.

Thank you for showing us how ignorant you really are rsgallaher

I dislike the idea of tell people what they can consider when deciding to hire someone. If you spent the time and money to build a company, pay whoever you want to work there. If you pass on hiring qualified people for insufficient reason then your company will fail and another will succeed.

If the owner of a company wants to shut the whole operation down, should he be forced to stay in business so that qualified employees don't loose their jobs?

Not saying that you shouldn't be able to hire whoever you want. You just shouldn't be able to make me pee in a cup or cut some of my hair off as a requirement to consider me for employment or for student loans.

If you think about it the fact that someone gets caught with marijuana and then can no longer receive federally subsidized student loans hurts everyone. Just imagine all the people that might have went to college if they had just been able to get their loans. What are they doing now? Working at McDonald's? some factory? Three kids, on food stamps and cash assistance? Who do you think pays for that you moron. How about when unemployment runs out and they have to feed their family some how? So yeah, employers should be able to hire whoever they want, within reason. Just like you can discriminate against women, different races and disabled people.

Seriously whats next if we let what we do in our personal lives decide if we get a job or not. Are we going to develop a test to see if you are sexually promiscuous and then deny you employment because of it? Or maybe we should require everyone to be perfectly the same. Everyone with blond hair and blue eyes and share all the same views. Lock everyone else up and not let them breed because they are an inferior race.

The student loans are the easy part. I don't think we as tax payers should be forced to subsidize loans for anyone. If you want to set up a scholarship fund with your own money, feel free.

Food stamps, welfare, and unemployment, same solution. Let people give to charity what there conscience compels them to and stop taking money from working people against their will.

I wanted to go to college and my family couldn't afford it. I didn't go bed for government sponsored financial aid. I worked my butt off to make the grades and test scores to earn a merit based scholarship.

I have never taken "unemployment" because I have never been unemployed long enough. The trick is to be willing to take whatever job is available. You don't have a right to think that scrubbing toilets is beneath you if you are living off taxes of the person who does scrub those toilets.

If someone tells me they won't hire me for some stupid reason (race, religion, gender, etc) I'm not going scream that its unfair and wait for some government agency to come fix it. I'd rather find a competing company that will hire me, and do such a good job that we put that first company out of business.

Stop being a victim! You make your own choices and live with the consequences. Hit the books instead of the bong until colleges beg to give you full scholarships and companies line up to hire you. In the meantime, take any job you can get. If your boss treats you like crap, use that to motivate yourself to work harder.

The student loans are the easy part. I don't think we as tax payers should be forced to subsidize loans for anyone. If you want to set up a scholarship fund with your own money, feel free.

Food stamps, welfare, and unemployment, same solution. Let people give to charity what their conscience compels them to and stop taking money from working people against their will.

I wanted to go to college and my family couldn't afford it. I didn't go beg for government sponsored financial aid. I worked my butt off to make the grades and test scores to earn a merit based scholarship.

I have never taken "unemployment" because I have never been unemployed long enough. The trick is to be willing to take whatever job is available. You don't have a right to think that scrubbing toilets is beneath you if you are living off the taxes paid by the person who does scrub those toilets.

If someone tells me they won't hire me for some stupid reason (race, religion, gender, etc) I'm not going scream that its unfair and wait for some government agency to come fix it. I'd rather find a competing company that will hire me, and do such a good job that we put that first company out of business.

Stop being a victim! You make your own choices and live with the consequences. Hit the books instead of the bong until colleges beg to give you full scholarships and companies line up to hire you. In the meantime, take any job you can get. If your boss treats you like crap, use that to motivate yourself to work harder.

Apparently if you try to edit out typos in the forum it reposts the entire message.

scholarship? so you didn't have to pay it back? seems like a hand out to me.. all loans are subsidized some how dumb ass.. Do you think that when you put worthless two bit pay check in the bank from scrubbing those toilets that it just sits there? no, they lend it out to someone and then it gets paid back.. We are all interconnected and to think that you are the only one that is responsible for anything that you got then you are stupid enough they you should probably start working towards some more scholarships.

1. I never said I currently scrub toilets, I said that I have done so when it was, briefly, the only job available to me.

2. Do you really not understand the difference between a handout and a recruiting incentive? Schools give merit scholarships for the same reason companies give hiring bonuses. Loosing a little money up front to recruit the best will pay off in the end.

3. I do not believe I am the only one who has responsibility for anything. I take responsibility for myself. I asked that you take responsibility for yourself rather than expect me and other tax payers to provide for you. Feel free not to send any money to me. I'll get by just fine.

4. As for everyone being interconnected, lets use the example of the human body. Many organs in the body work hard and provide a benefit to the whole body. Those we work hard to keep healthy. I jog to build up my heart because I know it will pay off later. The appendix doesn't do much of anything, but it doesn't really take anything from the rest of the body so it is mostly just ignored. If the appendix becomes diseased and starts damaging the other organs, does the body as a whole express support and ask "what more can we do for you". No. If that happened, the appendix would drain more and more from the rest of the body until it burst and kills the entire body. Instead, when the appendix gets inflamed and doesn't get better, it gets cut out. You only stay connected when you are either beneficial or inconspicuous.

5. I have a carrier and a good start on retirement savings. You are whining because no one wants to hire or, lone money to, a pot head and that hurts your feelings. Therefore, you want the federal government to come pat you on the head and make everyone play nice. Which one of us is stupid again?

@ copleykj - Dude slow down. Take another puff.

@rsgallaher Dude, I don't even smoke marijuana. So how about you go take another puff on your boyfriend's turd spear, and wipe your face off you got a little fudge brownie on your lip.

@copleyki I forgot I was dealing with people that may be 13 years old.

NO WAY!! Abusive pot smoking is diametrically opposed to success in college as well as success in the working world. Allowing pot smoking would be a sure way to get people to stay home and collect unemployment. Common Sense 101 - You don't give rewards for pot smoking.

First of all there is a difference between abusing a drug and using a drug. Second of all smoking pot is not going to make you fail out of school. I have though seen hundreds of people fail out of college because they get caught up in partying all the time. Maybe we should test them every saturday morning for alcohol and then expel them if they test positive, especially if they are under 21. I mean alcohol is just as illegal if you are under 21 as marijuana is for everyone else.

"Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded."

Abraham Lincoln (1809-65), U.S. President.

Speech, 18 Dec. 1840, to Illinois House of Representatives

wemo.mike--You are discussing a different issue. The issue was using drug testing in the hiring process and loan applications, not the legal prohibition of marijuana use. Alcohol is legal to consume but there is not law preventing companies from using blood alcohol as a disqualification to hiring.

Quoting from Seattle Police Chief Norm Sampler:

"But what we’ve been doing since the declaration of the war on drugs is pitting the police against young people, people of color, wildly disproportionate numbers of whom are going to prison behind simple possession cases. They are loosing their federal financing for their education. They’re losing subsidized housing in some cases. They are developing that permanent, lifelong record, possibly the result of the possession of a joint.

Commit the crime of rape, commit the crime of murder, be convicted, be sentenced, serve time, get back out… you can go right back into public housing, you can get that federal financing of your education. But you can’t if you’re caught with any amount of any illegal drug."

So, for marijuana charges, we are literally ruining one's chances of a prosperous future. But for rape or murder, no problem! This is insane. It is also an incentive for one who has a lifelong record to continue to operate in the black market, as they are marked for life as it is, and the underground market would provide them with better opportunities for making good money. I would rather send these folks to school, personally.

Get real!

sarah108, Again, there is a difference between legalizing marijuana and prohibiting drug testing as a hiring standard

I am a truck driver and for many years I smoked pot and had a managable life.I never used before or during my driving hours because when you operate a 18 wheeler that weighs in a upward's of 80,000 plus pounds,you really need to be 100% focused on your task at hand.About 20 years ago the good old federal government basically took over the whole trucking industry and in doing so they forced every trucking company to implement both pre-employment and random drug testing.I'm not against drug testing per say,but I hate the fact that if a person who works hard and pays taxes and is a otherwise law abiding citizen and just happens to smoke a joint in the privacy of their own homes,they are at risk of losing their job's for the next 30 days.There really needs to be a way of testing for recent use,say within a time frame of 10 hours.No employer,law enforcement agency and most definately the federal or state government's should have the right to judge people for what they do in private and on their time.

JD is right. This is actually one of the major reasons that prohibitionists want to keep their jackboots on the throats of the people with respect to cannabis. Their logic is that, since there's no accurate roadside test, it should be illegal.

Looked at realistically, there's no roadside test for stupidity either, but we definitely allow a great many stupid people to get behind the wheel. An acquaintence of mine nd his wife were recently mowed down by one such stupid driver. She was totally sober, it seems, so the fact that the man is in the hospital with massive injuries, his wife is dead, but apparrently that's not important, because there is no requirement for intelligence or common sense, or even paying attention to what you're doing behind the wheel of a car these days.

I'm sure that the story will be "I didn't see them" and that will be that, but if you've ever been on a bike, you know that two riders on two bikes have just the same number of headlights as a car riding side-by side, and look just like a car at night, too. Luckily, stupidity has not been made illegal, and one person has been killed because of this fact.

The vast majority of cannabis users tend to do so when they know they're not going anywhere, and most often, this is either while they're at home, or at a friend's house, and most people have enough sense to know when they're not at their best and stay off the roads. This actually has always been the case, as the vast majority of people DO tend to act responsibly most of the time...except for our government officials.

I see the difference between DWI and being stupid as follows:

A stupid person cannot help being born stupid and had no choice in the matter. I person who chooses to drive while intoxicated intentionally operates a vehicle while at a reduced level of ability. Intentionally imparment of the ability to drive by means other than intoxication is already chargeable under "reckless driving"

Actually, since Barack Hussein Obama(aka: Bary Soetoro, et al) has openly admitted to using cannabis, this law should be utilized to remove him from office. If he shouldn't have received any college or university funding, he should also be required to repay all advanced funds immediately, with interest from the date that those moneys were initially received by him.

If they're going to keep this ridiculous law, at least they could use it against those who have already openly admitted that they acted against it. d=^)

electropig,I agree with you 100% my friend.

Can we just go back to no federally funded loans for anyone please?

What about the Mongomery GI bill? People who serve in the armed forces should never be denied this "Federally funded"educational opportunity.tO THINK OR SAY ANY DIFFERENT IS UN-AMERICAN!

GI BILL? You must have never served because you must fund your own GI bill. You must put your own money in the Montgomery GI bill program to qualify. You can be a felon in prison and still use this program.

If you paid into the GI program.