“Everyone Is Entitled To His Own Opinion . . .

by Stuart Shapiro

. . . but not his own facts,” said the late great Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.  Governor Nikki Haley of South Carolina does not appear to agree.  In supporting drug testing for the unemployed, she trotted out an anecdote about how half of the applicants at the Savannah River nuclear site failed a drug test.  Ummmm, no.

Jim Giusti, a spokesman for the Department of Energy, which owns the River Site, told HuffPost he had no idea what Haley was talking about with regard to applicants flunking a drug test.

“Half the people who applied for a job last year or year 2009 did not fail the drug test,” Giusti said. “At the peak of hiring under the Recovery Act we had less than 1 percent of those hired test positive.”

The River Site doesn’t even test applicants. “We only test them when they have been accepted,” Giusti said.

A spokesman for Gov. Haley did not respond to requests for comment.

Governor Haley is considered a rising star from the right wing of the Republican Party.  Well, it looks like she will fit right in.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.