Ilene Proctor: 24 Reasons Why You Should Never Respect Larry Elder
Republican Larry Elder is trying to become the next governor of California through a recall election for Governor Gavin Newsom on September 14. (Gage Skidmore)
September 9, 2021
By Ilene Proctor
Despite the fact that California Governor wanna-be Larry Elder has voiced support for former President Donald Trump, praising him on Twitter,[31][34][35] as "almost god-sent" and described his presidency as a "miracle, and despite the fact that the ex-president’s verbal abilities equal those of a kindergarten dropout, and despite the fact that Elder reveres the cruel, drooling "[37] Stephen Miller, the Rasputin-like senior adviser in the Trump administration and has proffered him up to be the best presidential candidate for 2024. and despite the fact that Elder has argued that it is unfair to blame Trump for the ,Jan 6th insurrection, I can’t recall at the moment all the other reasons why I can’t respect this Elder.
EXCEPT
4. He called for abolishing the Internal Revenue Service, creating a national sales tax
5. , wants to reduce government by 80%, ending welfare and entitlements, abolishing the minimum wage, and eliminating corporate taxes.[39][40]
6. opposes minimum wage laws, arguing that The ideal minimum wage is $0.00."[41]
7. opposes universal basic income.[42]
8. opposes California's unpaid family leave law.[30] In his 2020 film Uncle Tom: An Oral History of the American Black Conservative, Elder criticizes the War on Poverty.[43]
9. critical of public-sector labor unions, especially the California Teachers Association.[47] He contends that some 15,000 California teachers are "incompetent"[47] and previously proposed that thousands of teachers in the state be fired.[33] He later said that he favored more charter schools and private schools instead.[33]
10. disparages women. Elder has contended that "Women know less than men about political issues, economics, and current events"; stated that women who took part in the 2017 Women's March were obese and unattractive; scoffed at premenstrual syndrome by saying PMS stands for "Punish My Spouse",
11. endorses pregnancy discrimination by employers; and claimed that statistics about domestic violence against women are exaggerated to promote feminism.[48]
12. Elder has often denied that a gender wage gap exists.[49][50] Elder contends that employers should be allowed to discriminate in employment against women who plan to have children, and in his 2002 book he wrote that women who choose to have children are not "dedicated" to their jobs and suggested that they lacked a "commitment" to work.
13. Elder opposes abortion,[54] calling it "murder."[30] He has argued that Roe v. Wade should be overturned,[33] calling the decision "one of the worst decisions that the Supreme Court ever handed down."[30] He believes that abortion laws should be decided at the state level.[33][30]
14. Elder has a history of making anti-LGBT remarks on Twitter. He has repeatedly used male pronouns when referring to transgender women, such as Playboy model Ines Rau and fellow gubernatorial candidate Caitlyn Jenner.[31]
15. In 2021, Elder accused California of having a "soft-on-crime ethos"; he opposes a California law that banned police from using certain chokeholds.[416.7]
16. Elder opposes 2014 California Proposition 47, which reclassified as misdemeanors many lower-level drug and property crimes that had formerly been felonies, and said that if elected governor he would press for the proposition to be repealed.[47]
17. During his media career, Elder published and gave airtime to misinformation and fringe views on scientific topics, such as secondhand tobacco smoke, climate change, and COVID-19 treatments.[30]
18. In a 2000 book, Elder suggested that the health hazards of secondhand tobacco smoke had been exaggerated, rejecting the scientific consensus that secondhand smoke is a serious threat that caused 2.5 million deaths in the half-century before 2014.[30]
19. Elder's website once described climate change as a "myth"; in a 2008 interview, he called climate change a "crock," disparaged Republicans such as John McCain and George W. Bush, who acknowledged climate change, and said that global warming is not a "big peril" to planet Earth.[30]
20. In 2021, Elder acknowledged that the climate is warming,[30] but refused to accept the overwhelming scientific consensus that human activity is the primary contributor,[33] claiming that concern about climate change is "alarmism."[33][30]
21. In 2021, Elder pledged to remove current statewide public health mandates for state government workers in California, such as COVID-19 vaccine requirements, face mask requirements, or regular COVID-19 testing.[33]
22. In 2020, while denying that Donald Trump mismanaged the response to COVID-19, Elder sought to justify Trump's refusal to wear a mask in public and defended Trump's mass political rallies that he continued to hold at the height of the pandemic.[55] In 2021, he did not challenge a call-in listener to his radio show who espoused COVID-19 misinformation suggesting that COVID-19 vaccines were dangerous and part of a Bill Gates-orchestrated plot
22. Elder has proposed suspending or waiving the requirements of the California Environmental Quality Act, contending that doing so would speed up housing construction.[47][33][30]
22. He called systemic racism a lie, and blamed Black Lives Matter for rising crime. He thinks welfare is more harmful to Black families than slavery and that the poor performance of Black children in school would be remedied by school choice.[56]
23. Elder has also argued for reparations to descendants of slave owners who lost property (the slaves) as a result of the end of slavery.[57]
24. I rest my case. You decide.
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