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Today at the Washington Times, Ted Nugent has emerged again from his ammo bunker with one of his typically freakish rants. Years ago, Nugent’s wild man act used to be amusing, but now it’s devolved into pure right wing hateful ugliness as he advocates “slaughtering” Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and prohibiting citizens on welfare from voting.

The three sacred entitlement cows in the room that no politician wants to poke are Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. A blinding statement of the obvious is that we are never going to get our financial house in order until these sacred entitlement cows are not only poked, but slaughtered. Until the slaughter is over, everything else is just taxation window dressing. …

Let’s also stop the insanity by suspending the right to vote of any American who is on welfare. Once they get off welfare and are self-sustaining, they get their right to vote restored. No American on welfare should have the right to vote for tax increases on those Americans who are working and paying taxes to support them. That’s insane.

President Bill Clinton is calling out Mitt Romney for his latest dishonest attack ad: Bill Clinton Slams Romney ‘Misleading’ Welfare Ad.

“Governor Romney released an ad today alleging that the Obama administration had weakened the work requirements of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act. That is not true.

 “The act emerged after years of experiments at the state level, including my work as Governor of Arkansas beginning in 1980.  When I became President, I granted waivers from the old law to 44 states to implement welfare to work strategies before welfare reform passed. 

 “After the law was enacted, every state was required to design a plan to move people into the workforce, along with more funds to help pay for training, childcare and transportation. As a result, millions of people moved from welfare to work.

 “The recently announced waiver policy was originally requested by the Republican governors of Utah and Nevada to achieve more flexibility in designing programs more likely to work in this challenging environment.  The Administration has taken important steps to ensure that the work requirement is retained and that waivers will be granted only if a state can demonstrate that more people will be moved into work under its new approach.  The welfare time limits, another important feature of the 1996 act will not be waived. 

 “The Romney ad is especially disappointing because, as governor of Massachusetts, he requested changes in the welfare reform laws that could have eliminated time limits altogether.  We need a bipartisan consensus to continue to help people move from welfare to work even during these hard times, not more misleading campaign ads.”

At this point it’s obvious that the Romney campaign has made a strategic decision to completely abandon even the pretense of being truthful about President Obama. They’re going for broke — telling outright, easily debunked lies, deceptively editing videos to change the meaning of Obama’s words, and refusing to back down or even acknowledge it when called out.

And the new ad from the Romney campaign is yet another example. The basis of the advertisement, that Obama dropped the work requirement from welfare laws, is a flat out lie.

Steve Benen has the facts behind this utterly dishonest advertisement: The Scandal Behind Romney’s New Attack Ad.

For those who can’t watch clips online, the ad shows President Clinton signing welfare reform into law in 1996, “requiring work for welfare.” The spot then argues, however, that President Obama “quietly announced a plan to gut welfare reform by dropping work requirements.” The voiceover tells viewers, “Under Obama’s plan, you wouldn’t have to work and wouldn’t have to train for a job. They just send you your welfare check…. and welfare to work goes back to being plain old welfare.”

We then learn, “Mitt Romney will restore the work requirement because it works.”

Romney’s lying. He’s not spinning the truth to his advantage; he’s not hiding in a gray area between fact and fiction; he’s just lying. The law hasn’t been “gutted”; the work requirement hasn’t been “dropped.” Stations that air this ad are disseminating an obvious, demonstrable lie.

All Obama did is agree to Republican governors’ request for flexibility. That’s it. Indeed, perhaps the most jaw-dropping aspect of this is that Romney himself, during his one gubernatorial term, asked for the same kind of flexibility on welfare law that Obama agreed to last month. Romney, in other words, is attacking the president for doing what Romney asked the executive branch to do in 2005.

The entire line of attack is simply insane.

Also see:
The Politics of Resentment Makes a Comeback - the Plum Line
GOP governors who asked for welfare waiver go quiet on Romney welfare ad

Florida’s Tea Party governor Rick Scott is famous for his law that mandates drug testing for all welfare recipients, and at a press conference today Daily Show correspondent Aasif Mandvi pointed out that the law should also apply to governors.

The right wing rhetoric just keeps getting cruder, and the policy suggestions crazier, until today we end up with Matthew Vadum’s column for the far right American Thinker. The title tells you everything you need to know about this ugly article: Registering the Poor to Vote is Un-American.

Why are left-wing activist groups so keen on registering the poor to vote?

Because they know the poor can be counted on to vote themselves more benefits by electing redistributionist politicians. Welfare recipients are particularly open to demagoguery and bribery.

Registering them to vote is like handing out burglary tools to criminals. It is profoundly antisocial and un-American to empower the nonproductive segments of the population to destroy the country — which is precisely why Barack Obama zealously supports registering welfare recipients to vote.

Florida’s Tea Party governor Rick Scott is going to do his part to advance “limited government” by making it mandatory for welfare recipients to be drug tested.

The right wing has been pushing for this disgusting law all over America for years; it looks like Florida will be the first state to actually do it.

Scott’s bill will take it one step further, too. Just to really stick it to the poor, Scott will require welfare recipients to pay for their own drug tests.

“It’s fair to taxpayers,” Scott said after the vote. “They’re paying the bill. And they’re often drug screened for their jobs. On top of that, it’s good for families. It creates another reason why people will think again before using drugs, which as you know is just a significant issue in our state.”

Scott already signed an executive order requiring random drug testing of state workers.

HB 353 requires all adult recipients of federal cash benefits — the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program — to pay for the tests, which are typically around $35. The screen would be for all controlled substances and applicants would have to disclose any legal prescriptions.

Recipients who test positive for drugs would lose their benefits for a year. If they fail a second time, they lose the benefits for three years. Parents who test positive must designate another adult to receive benefits on behalf of their children.

A Dutch citizen of Moroccan descent has more common sense than most multiculturally self-blinded Dutch officials: Amsterdam Mulls Axing Dole for Women in Burqas.

An official in Holland’s biggest city wants to introduce legislation that would ban unemployed women who wear a burqa from receiving welfare payments if it prevents them from finding a job. The issue is the latest Dutch soul-searching over its relations with its own immigrants.

If this burqa is keeping you from getting a job, Amsterdam Social Affairs Alderman Ahmed Aboutaleb argues, you shouldn’t be wearing it.

The Multicultural Netherlands is having a serious identity crisis. These days, the country’s immigrant melting pot is feeling more like a powderkeg. The latest spark in Holland’s mini culture war came this week from the social affairs alderman for the city of Amsterdam, who says women who wear burqas are having trouble finding jobs. His solution? Take it off or lose your benefits.

Ahmed Aboutaleb has proposed introducing legislation that would allow the city to cut welfare payments to women who insist on wearing a burqa if it can prove the full-body covering is the reason she can’t find a job.

“Nobody wants to hire someone with a burqa,” he told the Dutch women’s magazine Opzij. “In that case, I say: off with the burqa and apply for work. If you don’t want to do that, that’s fine, but you don’t get a benefit payment.”

Aboutaleb, a member of Amsterdam’s Labor Party (PvdA) and a Dutch citizen of Moroccan descent, made the comments in response to a recent ruling by Holland’s Equality Commission siding with a Muslim woman who refused to shake hands with men at work.

The politician questioned whether she should be involved in education, with such rigid self-restrictions. “She has to realize that her behavior is building enormous obstacles for her in almost every situation. This woman must recognize that she is sidelining herself and that she runs the risk of being turned down for other jobs, too.”