Rep Candidate NY: Turn Prisons Into Dorms For Welfare Recipients

Republican Candidate for New York Governor: Turn Prisons Into “Dormitories” for Welfare Recipients

Published on 08-24-2010

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Source: AP

Republican candidate for governor Carl Paladino said he would transform some New York prisons into dormitories for welfare recipients, where they could 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, isn’t saying the state should jail poor people: The program would be voluntary.

But the suggestion that poor families would be better off in remote institutions, rather than among friends and family in their own neighborhoods, struck some anti-poverty activists as insulting.

Paladino 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.

Asked at the meeting how he would achieve those savings, Paladino laid out several plans that included converting underused state prisons into centers that would house welfare recipients. There, they would work
for the state — “military service, in some cases park service, in other
cases public works service,” he said — while prison guards would be
retrained to work as counselors.

“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
said.

New York, like other states, 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.

New York’s welfare rolls have grown slightly during the recession, while food stamp eligibility has almost doubled, according to the state.

Paladino told The Associated Press would give welfare recipients an opportunity to take public, state-sponsored jobs far from home.

“These are beautiful properties with basketball courts, bathroom facilities, toilet facilities. Many young people would love to get the hell out of cities,” Paladino he said.

He also defended his hygiene remarks, saying he had trained inner-city troops in the Army and knows their needs.

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

Ketny Jean-Francois, a former welfare recipient and a New York City advocate for low-income people, said Paladino’s idea shocked her.

“Being poor is not a crime,” she said. “People are on welfare for many reasons … Is he saying people are poor because they don’t have any hygiene or any skills?”

A Lazio spokesman didn’t immediately return a message.

Paladino said he based his ideas on the Civilian Conservation Corps, a federal program that paid young unemployed men during the Great Depression to plant trees, build roads and develop parks.

Paladino said he would open the program both to long-term welfare recipients and to people who had lost their jobs during the recession. He said that he didn’t know how he would pay for it but that prisons
could be consolidated to make room.

Paladino rejected any notion that his proposal resembled the economic stimulus programs promoted by many Democrats since the recession began.

“They just sent $26 billion to feed public employee unions,” Paladino said of a bill passed by Congress this month to save teaching jobs around the country. “That money’s not going to poor people. It’s going
to people who are well off and comfortable.”

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Comment by Sweettina2 on August 28, 2010 at 10:59pm: Right on! Good info Burbia! Really? The dog is channeling? holy crap

Comment by Burbia on August 28, 2010 at 8:48am: Not stated are the privatized prison facilities not making any money, leaving the newly built prisons empty. He was just short of saying these are castles for everyone to enjoy. Maybe Paladino can set up headquarters in one of these empty prisons. He is using his dead son as a platform to run for governor in New York. It gets bizarre after this. The Paladino couple say the family dog 'channels' his son, who happened to over dosed on drugs and wait a minute. Didn't some one else say a dog told him to do things? Yeah, it was David Berkowitz. It should come as no surprise he donated money to the likes of Hillary Clinton and Al Gore in the last 25 years. Apparently, Paladino is known for making racially charged comments. Who knew he is Tea Party? He is pledging $10 milliion dollars of his own money for his campaign and I repeat and has a donation button on his website for his candidacy as governor.

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2010/08/22/2010-08-22_not_your_...

http://www.ellicottdevelopment.com/about-us/carl-paladino/

http://www.paladinoforthepeople.com/

http://www.npr.org/blogs/politicaljunkie/2010/04/14/125998730/the-s...

Comment by Sweettina2 on August 26, 2010 at 4:35pm: Right on Tara! These people are nothing but out of touch liars, the truth is not in them. They can candy up and sugar coat anything they want, truth is they are inciting a war/revolution in this country and it will be a bloodbath.
Let the dance begin!

Comment by Tara on August 26, 2010 at 4:20pm: I love it when these idiots talk about teaching 'personal hygiene' to poor people because they didn't learn it in dysfuntional homes. How insulting is that? I was poor growing up but we knew how to bathe ourselves and we're very clean unless we dirtied ourselves up outside playing. What a friggin jerk-off this Paladino is! And then he's got the audacity to make this program sound like it's a Country Club or something with the statement: “These are beautiful properties with basketball courts, bathroom facilities, toilet facilities. Many young people would love to get the hell out of cities,” Paladino he said. It's a damn prison you tard, what a joke!

Comment by Sweettina2 on August 26, 2010 at 2:41pm: Absolutely right Joshua! I have a vid here, from last year I believe, where the police in Florida took boxcutters to tents of the homeless.
Yes, I hear them also, millions of people slaughtered all over this land. And I am sick of this place, surely God must be also.

Comment by Joshua Geyer on August 26, 2010 at 12:53pm: That's real shallow talk when they take boxcutters to homeless families tents. It amounts to forced relocation.

I can hear the Indians saying "Remember the Trail of Tears? Cry us a river."

Comment by Sweettina2 on August 25, 2010 at 5:33pm: I hear you man. Payday is coming..

Comment by Sweettina2 on August 25, 2010 at 5:04pm: Absolutely, Vincent! There is a documentary called "China Blue", the same sweat shop, slavery camps are going on right now everywhere...including America. They make the clothes we wear and just about everything else. Almost everything in Walmart is made in these camps.

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