Paladino Engages In Dangerous And Disgraceful Stereotyping Of Welfare Recipients

Maybe Taylor was more clairvoyant than we all knew.

Sadly, there are thousands of people who will vote for this far-right Republican extremist, Carl Paladino, running to become governor of New York. It's stuff like this, what you will read below, that makes you wonder about the direction that some of the most extreme of the GOP seem to want to take this country.

Screw it, lets just get right to the excerpt ... roll it:

Republican candidate for governor Carl Paladino said he would transform some New York prisons into dormitories for welfare recipients, where they would work in state-sponsored jobs, get employment training and take lessons in “personal hygiene.”

Paladino, a wealthy Buffalo real estate developer popular with many tea party activists, is competing for the Republican nomination with former U.S. Rep. Rick Lazio. The primary is Sept. 14.

Paladino first described the idea in June at a meeting of The Journal News of White Plains and spoke about it again this week with The Associated Press.

Throughout his campaign, Paladino has criticized New York’s rich menu of social service benefits, which he says encourages illegal immigrants and needy people to live in the state. He has promised a 20 percent reduction in the state budget and a 10 percent income tax cut if elected.

This is the kind of negative stereotyping we're hearing and seeing from far too many people on the far right extreme of the political spectrum.

Notice how he links being a welfare recipient to all of these negative characteristics? He seems to see people on welfare as lazy, unmotivated and having poor hygiene. He wants to put their asses in "dormitories," get them "employment training" and get them "state-sponsored jobs." He wants to put them in dormitories? Hmm... I am guessing these will not be your college dormitories. I wonder ... is that similar to the way we wanted to put Japanese Americans in "resort communities" during World War II? The implications of what this man is saying is chilling and is beyond offensive.

I thought Republicans were all about government getting out of the lives of Americans? This GOPer wants to tell these Americans how they should live while putting them down as being lazy, as moochers, as dirty and so on and so forth.

Fortunately, even some Republicans are criticizing him (though I suspect not enough to spark any significant change).

How do people of conscience vote for a man of this nature? Actually, I don't want to know.

It Always Goes Back To Race For Rush Limbaugh

Rush Limbaugh, the conservative commentator who has assumed a prominent leadership role in the Republican party, is up to his old tricks. Nothing fires up Limbaugh’s extremist and blood-thirsty base than attempting to portray minorities as lazy and shiftless individuals who are all too eager for an undeserved handout.

Here is what Limbaugh said on his nationally syndicated show:

LIMBAUGH: As the economy performs worse than expected, the deficit for the 2010 budget year beginning in October will worsen by $87 billion to $1.3 trillion. The deterioration reflects lower tax revenues and higher costs for bank failures, unemployment benefits and food stamps. But in the Oval Office of the White House none of this is a problem. This is the objective. The objective is unemployment. The objective is more food stamp benefits. The objective is more unemployment benefits. The objective is an expanding welfare state. And the objective is to take the nation’s wealth and return to it to the nation’s quote, “rightful owners.” Think reparations. Think forced reparations here if you want to understand what actually is going on.

Limbaugh is an old-school conservative who likes trying to portray minorities in this stereotypical way. The tired reparations debate is an old and obviously controversial one. Conservatives like to go to this weapon because it makes it easier for them to push their case that minorities want something they don’t deserve or are just whining about issues of the past (such as slavery). Of course, now that we have a president of color in the White House (Barack Obama) you can bet this will not be the last time we hear this kind of talk from conservative Republicans. This is another way of trying to rile up conservative white Republicans by pouring gasoline on the fire (telling them that undeserving people of color are attempting to take from them what they have “earned” through their lives).

Think Progress:
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/05/11/sessions-limbaugh-unemployment/