StopLouBarletta.com

[The following is an email I received a few days ago. I've reprinted it here with permission.]

I was at the Nanticoke Music Fest last weekend, near the Chamber of Commerce tent when Lou Barletta showed up. I tried to ignore him, I really did, but as I was angling away from him, he walked around me and stuck out his hand and said Hi Mr McDonald (it seems that local women who was with him pointed me out as a local businessman and former President of the Chamber) and I didn’t extend my hand back. He said “no, no, no, do you know who I am” and I replied “oh I certainly know who you are”.

He said “so you’re not going to shake my hand because I’m a Republican” and I said “No, I won’t shake your hand because you, sir, are a bigot”. He went spastic, up in my face, finger waging and decrying how illegal immigrants are committing all the crime and ruining “his” town. I said “that is a lie, you must know the statistics that illegal immigrants commit much less crime than citizens in general, they pay more taxes and more social security and don’t receive services for their efforts at all because they often file under improper social security numbers”.

He said “no, legal immigrants do and they commit less crime, I am all for legal immigration”. I said “that too is a lie because you have stood against even President Bush’s (and he isn’t exactly a liberal on any issue) and his plan to document new arrivals. So if you don’t want to document people and you don’t want undocumented people here, then you are really saying that you don’t want people to come at all”.

After fifteen minutes or so of this, his people literally pulled him away from me after I requested he step away from me 3 times. Another five minutes passes and he comes back with his hand extended saying he would like to apologize and of course this time I shook his hand yet he would not stop there. He said then “but let me tell you blah, blah, blah,” and I stopped him and said that “yes it is true that I don’t know what is in your heart and even if it were not true, why have you never reached out to the Latino community, if you are not a bigot then at least you are a political opportunist, lending your efforts to those who hate.” he said stammering “oh I have, I have lots of Latinos, legal Latinos, supporting me” and I said that is another lie you have virtually no support in that community. You want to build a fence to keep people out when you should be saying tear down this wall Mr Gorbichev. Is that because you hate Mexicans?”

Then he said and I am quoting him exactly “no, no, no it’s the Dominicans. They are all in gangs. And they are really coming through the Port of New York. They came here and stabbed a women in my town 37 times (I might be wrong he might have said 47). Do you want that in your town?” I said “well that guy is a criminal and you should go all out against criminals especially violent ones and also have a concerted effort against violent gangs and you should also go after the Mafia with a vengeance too but you don’t hold all Italian Americans responsible for the Mob do you”.

Well I thought the vain in his forehead was going to explode. I continued saying “you should stop blaming people who come to your town trying to make a better life and contribute just because your downtown went to shit. And that is because you have not reinvested in your downtown, the outlying areas are booming with industry. And he went off again on how they stabbed that women, bla, bla, bla. Till I finally said “sir you need to take your message of hate and get away from me and preferably leave my town alone”.

So let me ask you, do you think this precludes me from getting a job on his Congressional staff? We should start a Dominican appreciation day in Hazelton. What it does say is that he has a very hot temper and lacks the dignity required for such an important job. His admission that “it’s the Dominicans” that he hates is easily the most opprobrious statement I’ve have heard a modern politician utter”. You’re right that this man must be stopped. Keep up the good work, kid.

-Bob McDonald

This entry was posted on Friday, June 13th, 2008 at 8:20 am and is filed under What Others Say . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.