The Party Of New Ideas

When I lived in Buffalo, Carl Paladino was I name that I saw everywhere. He’s a wealthy developer in the region. Paladino is running for the GOP nomination for the governor of New York (he’s taking on Rick Lazio in the primary) and he’s a complete nutter:

Back in April, emails from Paladino surfaced in which he forwarded bestiality videos and tons of racist jokes. He fired back, saying, in short, that he’s not racist and he doesn’t enjoy watching horses have sex with women. But whatever, the past is the past, right? Since then he’s been laying down his platform, and taking on issues the Tea Party loves to hate, like welfare. Besides reducing the state’s budget by 20 percent and cutting taxes, Paladino has a solution for people on welfare: relocate them to prison dormitories. Paladino spoke to the AP:

Instead of handing out the welfare checks, we’ll teach people how to earn their check. We’ll teach them personal hygiene … the personal things they don’t get when they come from dysfunctional homes.”

You have to teach them basic things – taking care of themselves, physical fitness. In their dysfunctional environment, they never learned these things.”

Paladino cites the positives of moving poor people into prison dorms — they have access to “basketball courts, bathroom facilities, toilet facilities.” What’s not to like about that? And Paladino has the type of street cred the average Tea Party Joe is looking for. He’s a wealthy real estate developer and is opposed to Muslims building things in America.

I’m sure he’s got even better ideas. What about debtor’s prison and indentured servitude? I don’t think those have been tried in a while.

I find this new “libertarian” Republican party a bit confusing. They still want to control uteruses and they want government intervention in where religious centers are built (if they’re the “wrong” religion). Now Paladino also wants a massive government internment of poor people because they need to play basketball and learn hygiene.