It’s Friday night, so instead ranting about the looming shutdown of the government by republicans who are angry that everyone might enjoy healthcare, let’s talk about their sponsors, our corporate slave masters who violate the 4th Amendment of the Constitution that bans  “unreasonable searches and seizures” every time they drug test employees.

The real puppet masters of our society – the mega and trans-national corporations that sponsor the politicians that we vote for –  have so cunningly taken over our democracy, and successfully duped the general population into submission, that they are able to lawfully demand urine or hair follicles for the purpose of drug testing as a condition of employment.  If you are accused of a crime by the state, the police and the district attorney would be required to get a search warrant to compel you to offer up any bodily fluid, since our Constitution demands at least proof in the form of “probable cause” a reason for the government to search you or seize your property.  Yet in our time, despite the growing and historically high gap of wealth inequality between the 1 percent and the rest of us, the capitalists that own and run the government have somehow gotten the rest of us 99 percenters to agree to submit to drug testing, through surrendering samples of our body, for them to scrutinize our private lives when we are off the clock.

So, as part of the so called “war on drugs” workers of all stripes are compelled to give up their 4th Amendment rights to our employers to search and seize us and our DNA to see if a “crime” might be being committed in our private time that might make us less productive on their production line.  This low bar to override the 4th Amendment is not allowed in a court of law, even if the police and state are trying to catch a rapist/murderer who could be connected to the crime.  Yet the bar is much lower for employers demanding a window into your private life, for such important matters as determining if you smoke marijuana, or drink to much, as this could make you lazy in their eyes.  Or if you smoke tobacco, as this might add to their insurance costs.

What is sickening is that even though the overwhelming majority of us work for the small majority of wealth and capital owners, we often times go along with their fascist justifications.  We say things like “well of course, if he drives a fork lift or mows city lawns, we need to know if he’s high or drunk or not.”  Even though we are letting them peer into our private lives that may have nothing to do with an accident at work. Judging a person on how they perform at work or if they show up sober or not or call out sick an inordinate amount of time is not enough for our slave masters.  They must know that in our private lives, they can have a peek at our personal habits and be able to make a prediction, and condition of employment based on their self righteous standards.  And because they have us desperate for a job, these “job creators” get away with it, and we may bitch and moan, but we comply because we don’t want to go hungry or without shelter.

This is not right, it is a form of fascist extortion.  The same powers have abused the NSA and forced our society into accepting that all our phone calls and internet communications are intercepted by the government to protect us from “terrorism,” the 4th Amendment be damned.

Civil rights and the Bill of Rights are under assault in this country, and have been for a long time, and it’s time we realize that we are allowing private wealth to dictate our private lives and to surrender our private life information as a condition of employment.  A lot of passion is stirred up by gun owners over their right to bear arms, but how many of them are subject to drug testing for their survival – you know, putting food on the table by having a job from our bullshit portrayed,. benevolent “job creators?”

It’s Friday night, so as you raise that glass of wine or smoke that bowl or cigarette, look over your shoulder and make sure that the rich piece of shit that you work for isn’t looking, because he might not approve and might instead hire someone more desperate for work and willing to work for a poverty wage in a society he has built and written the rules for.