Uprising Radio reports on an item of social justice:
href="http://uprisingradio.org/home/?p=2134">San Diego
County Searches Welfare Recipients’ Homes
Published on 28 Nov 2007 at 12:06 pm
GUEST: Eric Isaacson, Partner in the law firm,
Coughlin-Stoia, and cooperating attorney with the ACLU of San Diego
& Imperial Counties
If you live in San Diego and are a welfare
recipient, investigators from the County’s DA office can show
up unannounced and without a warrant to search your home in order to to
confirm that you are eligible for government aid. Failure to submit to
the searches results in losing your eligibility for welfare benefits.
But attorneys with the ACLU, acting on behalf of six single parents say
the 10 year old practice violates the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits
unreasonable searches. A federal judge ruled the searches to be
constitutional for San Diego County, and a three-judge panel of the 9th
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that ruling in a 2-1 decision.
However, later on, eight judges filed a dissent and argued that the
full 9th Circuit should reconsider the panel’s ruling saying,
“this case is nothing less than an attack on the
poor.” But this Monday the US Supreme Court rejected the
legal challenge to this practice without comment.
Of course, this is perfectly fair. So fair, in fact, that it
ought to be extended.
I thin that it should be extended such that authorities can search the
home of anyone who gets government money. That would include
the judges who ruled in this case, since they get government checks.
It also would include politicians, anyone who gets a mortgage
deduction on their income tax, any corporation that gets a tax break or
any other form of corporate welfare, or really anyone who gets more out
of society than what they put in. Probably the only people it
would not include would be migrant farm workers,
who put in more than they get out.
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