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low income assistance

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Newt Gingrich’s Attack on Poor Children: A Poor Family’s Perspective

Over the past two weeks I’ve noticed a lot of social media anger and teasing directed towards Rick Perry’s recent “Strong” commercial wherein he gripes about gays being able to serve openly in the military but children not being allowed to pray publicly in school.  Around the same time another Republican made an equally prejudice and cruel comment regarding “really poor children, in really poor neighborhoods [who] have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works”, the “stupidity” of child labor laws, and the idea that poor children should become janitors in their schools. I’m surprised that Newt Gingrich’s speech hasn’t created as strong of an outrage considering how completely insensitive and ridiculous the speech was. When I first heard quotes from his speech on NPR, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Was it a joke? How could somebody be so thoughtless and downright mean?

I took particular offense to Gingrich’s speech because I came from what one could call a (more…)