Meet Lou Barletta (Penn): America's Anti-Immigrant Mayor Heads to Congress

[Shallah Kali]

Following last Tuesday's election, RWW will bring you our list of the "The Ten Scariest Republicans Heading to Congress." Our sixth candidate profile is on Lou Barletta, America’s anti-immigrant mayor
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/meet-lou-barletta-americas-anti-immigrant-mayor-heads-congress

As copy-cat laws started to pop up in towns around the country, Barletta became a hero to anti-immigrant and nativist groups. When he ran for Congress in 2008, Barletta’s campaign received $10,920 from the Minuteman PAC, the political spending arm of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, a vigilante border-patrol group that the Southern Poverty Law Center calls “nativist extremist.” It was the largest donation the Minuteman PAC made to a candidate that year.

In 2009, Barletta drew fire for speaking at a conference hosted by The American Cause, a group that had earlier that year released a report urging the Republican Party to not “pander to pro-amnesty Hispanics and swing voters,” and instead to put anti-immigrant policies at the forefront of the party’s strategy. The report was authored by several anti-immigrant advocates, many who had clear records of dabbling in white supremacy. The executive director of the group, and main author of the report, had even been charged with a hate crime against an African American woman. The immigrants’ rights group America’s Voice described the 2009 conference as “a forum for white nationalists to forge ties with ‘mainstream’ media commentators and conservative leaders.”

Although Barletta frames most of his politics through the lens of illegal immigration, he has also embraced Tea Party talking points on social issues, the environment, and the scope of government. In a candidates’ debate, he said his first action as a member of Congress would be to vote to repeal health care reform. He says the Affordable Care Act brought about “nationalized health care” and said it would put “life-affecting health decisions in the hands of bureaucrats,” and echoed the false claim raised by many in the Tea Party that health care reform “will take $500 billion out of Medicare." He told a forum in Pocono, "We're afraid of our government. We're afraid of what our government is going to do” and claimed on his campaign website that President Obama and Democrats in Congress are “spending our country into servitude.”

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Barletta opposes marriage equality, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repeal, and abortion rights. He has also embraced right-wing conspiracy theories about government-run “death panels” and the imminent risk of human cloning, stating on his website, “I will oppose the efforts of some to increase or expand the protection or establishment of legal euthanasia, abortion, and human cloning. As Congress begins to tackle the issues of Medicare and health care reform, I will never support a program that results in rationing of life-saving procedures to those covered under those programs.”

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http://politicalcorrection.org/video/201011040007

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHqeIxj78rY

Much more at this link: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/meet-lou-barletta-americas-anti-immigrant-mayor-heads-congress


Read the other profiles of the Ten Scariest Republicans Heading to Congress: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/category/subjects/-ten-scariest-republicans-heading-congress

[MissMarple]

1. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out.

It's a bit like watching a train wreck rolling your way. You hope you can get out of the way fast enough, and that the carnage can be cleaned up. I hate it when Dems clean up gopper messes and get no thanks for it.

[Shallah Kali]

2. Yeah the ones doing clean up duty get kicked in the fork for not doing it faster

then the ones who mucked up the joint get elected to foul it up some more...