Carl Paladino also proposes to give welfare recipients state-sponsored jobs, employment training and take lessons in personal hygiene, The Associated Press reports.
“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.”
Paladino, a favorite of Tea Party activists, is competing for the Republican nomination with former U.S. Rep. Rick Lazio. The primary will be held on Sept. 14.
Throughout his campaign, Paladino complained bitterly that New York’s “rich menu” of social service benefits encourages illegal immigrants and needy people to migrate to the state. Paladino pledges a 20 percent reduction in the state budget and a 10 percent income tax cut if he wins the election.
There is a not-so-subtle racial component interwoven into this inflammatory campaign pledge. Since the image of an average welfare recipient is a black woman with a large nest, despite statistics that reveal the exact opposite, it is likely to gain more support than it otherwise would.
New York already receives a federal block grant to provide cash and other forms of welfare to very low-income residents. Federal law already requires welfare recipients to do some form of work to receive benefits, but Paladino believes it is grossly insufficient.
Paladino’s plan, however, is extremely problematic on multiple fronts:
1. Sequestering welfare recipients in reformed prison dormitories will only serve to demonize and shame the population, amplifying their low self-esteem.
2. Paladino presupposes that all welfare recipients stink and never were given instruction on proper hygiene.
3. If the government transformed the almost-criminal educational system, there would be less of a need to transform welfare recipients when they become adults.
4. Since the Clinton administration, there has been a welfare-to-work program in place. But most jobs that welfare recipients are trained for are low-paying, unskilled jobs that force people to continue to live hand-to-mouth.
5. Since New York and other states are collapsing under the oppressive weight of the recession, shuttering jobs considered vital to the state, what exactly would be left for welfare recipients to get trained for?
6. There is a threat of a “slippery slope” in play here. If this passes, then what will stop the state or country from establishing “concentration camps” for other undesirables such as pimps, prostitutes, drug addicts and other so-called societal deviants?
Paladino’s proposal has to be dismissed as the usual variety of hollow political rhetoric designed to tickle the electorate into voting for him. –terry shropshire
