Maine GOP governor Paul LePage: 47 percent of ‘able-bodied’ Maine residents don’t work
theGRIO REPORT - Controversial Maine governor Paul LePage recently made some comments about his state's residents, which are eerily similar to Mitt Romney's wildly unpopular remarks about 'the 47 percent' from the 2012 election...
Controversial Maine governor Paul LePage recently made some comments about his state’s residents, which are eerily similar to Mitt Romney’s wildly unpopular remarks about “the 47 percent” from the 2012 election.
LePage was surreptitiously recorded addressing a group of conservative women when he said, “About 47 percent of able-bodied people in the state of Maine don’t work.”
According to blogger Mike Tipping, who originally leaked the recording, “Currently, around 65 percent of Mainers over the age of 15 are working or are unemployed and actively seeking work. Of the remaining 35 percent, almost all are retired, are caring for children or other family members, are pursuing education or training or have a disability that prevents them from working. Only a tiny fraction aren’t working for other reasons. The conservative Heritage Foundation, using U.S. Census data, puts this number at 1.1 percent nationally.”
LePage has suffered from bad approval ratings and has made headlines consistently for making off-color remarks.
After claimed he would tell President Obama to “go to hell” if elected, he went on to claim (in another leaked recording) this summer that the president “hates white people.”
During the 2012 election, GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney never recovered after a video of him claiming that there are “47 percent” of Americans “who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them,” went public.
