I had to triple check this to make sure that it wasn’t a joke.  Indeed it is not.  Republican politicians have been accused of having no ideas with respect to how to support the poor and the middle class. Turns out that this is untrue…

Republican candidate for governor Carl Paladino has a plan for welfare reform: He wants to turn prisons into dormitories for welfare recipients so they can get state-sponsored jobs, employment training and lessons in “personal hygiene.”

Paladino is a wealthy Buffalo real estate developer popular with many Tea Party activists. He’s competing for the Republican nomination with former Rep. Rick Lazio; the primary is Sept. 14.

Paladino said the dormitory living would be voluntary, not mandatory, and would give welfare recipients an opportunity to take public state-sponsored jobs far from home.

He also defended his remarks about the hygiene of welfare recipients, saying he had trained troops from inner city communities during his years in the Army and was familiar with their needs.

(Copyright ©2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

One hardly knows where to begin in commenting on this.  He knows about welfare recipients because he trained troops from the inner city while he was in the Army????  The racism and sheer low-rentness of this statement are too much. I have no problem with the idea of creating subsidized employment for those who need it. In fact, I would love to see the federal government create a WPA for the 21st century. However why should people in need of employment be subjected to living in prisons and then also be forced to participate in classes about hygiene? This is preposterous and offensive.