Moran: Gov. Chris Christie's condescending speech out of touch with Americans' reality

[FourScore]

Moran: Gov. Chris Christie's condescending speech out of touch with Americans' reality
Published: Thursday, April 12, 2012, 8:00 AM
Tom Moran/ The Star-Ledger

...Kathleen DiChiara has been running the Community FoodBank of New Jersey for 37 years. What she sees is not a country of louts, but one with lots of decent people who are down on their luck.

"I was at our pantry in Atlantic City and I saw this well-dressed man on line," she said. "He sold furniture by commission, and when the casinos started laying off people, he lost a lot. He said he was losing his house. He had three kids. This was a man who had worked all his life. He said, ‘I just can’t go home tonight without food for the kids. If you want me to kneel down, I will. I’ll do anything to not have to go home and let my kids be hungry again.’

"He had tears in his eyes. These people don’t feel entitled. They feel embarrassed to be asking for help."

It is bad enough that economic royalists such as Christie are pushing for tax cuts that are heavily tilted toward the rich. Do we really have to hear his morally superior lecture on top of that?

The answer is yes. Because to justify shrinking government as much as Republicans want and to justify big tax cuts at the same time, you have to build a story that turns government into the enemy. So programs that provide help are turned into demons that corrupt our collective spirit.

Without a doubt, there are louts out there. That probably helps explain some of the sharp increases in disability benefits in the Social Security program. But Republicans use this narrative to attack college scholarships, job-training programs, even visits to the doctor.

Christie, despite his pledge on taxes, has actually increased taxes on the working poor by shrinking the earned income tax credit. Does a parent unlucky enough to be raising a family on minimum wage really need the governor’s condescending kick in the pants?

The response to this nonsense was sustained applause from the audience stacked overwhelmingly with white men in expensive suits. Karl Rove was there, as was Henry Kissinger and the former President George W. Bush, the grandmaster of tax cuts that don’t work...

http://blog.nj.com/njv_tom_moran/2012/04/gov_chris_christies_condescend.html#incart_hbx

[HiPointDem]

1. A sharp increase in people collecting SS disability during the longest economic downturn since

the Depression is due to the beneficiaries being "louts"?

Even as DiChiara chastises Christie she does the same thing he does through the back door.

[FourScore]

2. She's using the word to emphasize what Christie is essentially calling

people in need right now.

did you read the whole article? It's obvious if you did.

[HiPointDem]

3. I read this. Don't know if it's her or the writer saying it, but there's no question about the

meaning:


"Without a doubt, there are louts out there. That probably helps explain some of the sharp increases in disability benefits in the Social Security program. But Republicans use this narrative to attack college scholarships, job-training programs, even visits to the doctor. "

[Zalatix]

4. Wow, that was pretty heartless.

Hard to interpret that any other way.