Word: newt
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...definition, revolutions revolt against something. Newt's target is the "current welfare state," which owes its shape to Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty. Thirty years ago to the day of Gingrich's speech last week, L.B.J. urged Congress to pass Medicare, one of the many programs he promised would "eliminate poverty from the land." They haven't, of course, and that's what spurs the G.O.P. critique. Between 1965 and 1992, the gross national product grew 53.2%. Yet 38 million Americans (including 14.6 million children, or 1 of every 5 kids) still live in poverty -- a higher percentage...
...that a new Newt delivering his inaugural address as Superspeaker last week? It certainly seemed to be. The meanspirited rantings Gingrich's conservative audiences eagerly expect were gone. In their place, as Representative Charles Schumer says, was a speech "most any liberal Democrat" could have given, a talk remarkable for its professed compassion. "You can't believe in the Good Samaritan," Gingrich said, "and explain that as long as business is making money we can walk by a fellow American who's hurt and not do something." Newt even acknowledged that his pet project, a balanced-budget amendment...
...most progressive form of taxation, the one that forces the well-off to pay more than others. All the government's other revenue raisers -- from national- park admission fees to gas and cigarette taxes -- can still be hiked by majority vote. Those levies, which will probably rise if Newt's other tax- cutting schemes become law, are the regressive ones, which hit the middle class and poor hardest. Make no mistake. Upward income redistribution -- leaving the less fortunate less protected -- is part of what Newt's revolution is about...
...them" is really "us." Millions of Americans are only one disaster away from poverty. A divorce, an arrest, a disabling illness can destroy a working family's financial resources. It's fine to be charmed by Newt's revolution -- some of his prescriptions deserve support -- but we should think twice before we cut. "Poverty," said that ancient futurist Aristotle, "is the parent of crime and revolution" -- a wise warning about an upheaval far different from the one Gingrich has in mind...
...been a less abusive word than "bitch," Newt Gingrich might not have been thrown off-message on the biggest day of his political life. Long after the debate is over about whether Connie Chung should have broadcast Kathleen Gingrich's recollection of what her son thought of the First Lady, the epithet of choice against uppity women will hang in the air, a reminder that women have not come such a long way. Like the word penis (before one was cut off), bitch (before the Speaker's mother used it) seldom found its way onto the nightly news...