This is one of the greatest speeches in Convention history, as a shot across the Republican Partys bow, in an otherwise awful year for Cuomos party. https://youtube/watch?v=kOdIqKsv624 A shining city is perhaps all the President sees from the portico of the White House and the veranda of his ranch, where everyone seems to be doing well. But theres another city; theres another part to the shining the city; the part where some people cant pay their mortgages, and most young people cant afford one; where students cant afford the education they need, and middle-class parents watch the dreams they hold for their children evaporate. There are ghettos where thousands of young people, without a job or an education, give their lives away to drug dealers every day. There is despair, Mr. President, in the faces that you dont see, in the places that you dont visit in your shining city. Maybe, maybe, Mr. President, if you visited some more places; maybe if you went to Appalachia where some people still live in sheds; maybe if you went to Lackawanna where thousands of unemployed steel workers wonder why we subsidized foreign steel...maybe, Mr. President, if you asked a woman who had been denied the help she needed to feed her children because you said you needed the money for a tax break for a millionaire or for a missile we couldnt afford to use. President Reagan told us from the very beginning that he believed in a kind of social Darwinism. Survival of the fittest. Government cant do everything, we were told, so it should settle for taking care of the strong and hope that economic ambition and charity will do the rest. Make the rich richer, and what falls from the table will be enough for the middle class and those who are trying desperately to work their way into the middle class.
Posted on: Fri, 02 Jan 2015 01:43:28 +0000