Man who threw money at Parkinson’s patient calls behavior ‘shameful’

Health-care bill opponent says he snapped during confrontation at rally

The healthcare reform debate has familiarized many people with increasingly ugly events that are difficult to imagine as right-wing protests against progress on health-care reform legislation.  

Except that the vitriolic tone of attacks mirrors the expressions of  GOP leadership from their seats in elected office or the wide-open commercial market of ideas, on Fox.

As far as I know, they've not killed anyone.  Yet, at least, but it seems that this phase of the GOP's Waterloo has only begun.

From spitting on or berating Congressional Black Caucus civil-rights heroes to cutting the natural-gas lines feeding the erroneously-targeted house of an intended target's sibling, the depths of ugly have yet to be fully mined by the GOP, its Tea Party allies, or their operatives.

One of the more reprehensible acts that's been caught in video was seen by enough of a virally-propagated Internet audience to evoke words of remorse and acts of repentance by the man who's now afraid that he's hunted for involvement in the act (video).

Chris Reichert stepped aggressively into the rolling record of a camera field in order to angrily throw dollar bills onto the seated pro-healthcare reform demonstrator, Robert A. Letcher, holding a sign that read, "Got Parkinson's? I do. You might,"  

Reichert apparently followed the lead of a second tea party demonstrator who'd just recited to Letcher that "If you're looking for a handout, you're on the wrong end of town," when Reichert stepped up to shout, 

"I'll pay for this guy. Here you go. Let's start a pot, I'll pay for you. I'll decide when to give you money. Here. Here's another one."

Reichert, a registered Republican, said he is not politically active nor is he affiliated with the Tea Party movement or Americans for Prosperity, two conservative groups who organized the rally (although the video shows him carrying one of the latter's signs)

Now, Chris Reichert's remorseful and wants to make it all better, 

"I made a donation (to a local Parkinson's disease group), and that starts the healing process."

Apparently, quid pro quo tithing is a start on healing but insufficient to undo what is done, "I wanted this to go away, but it won't, and I'm paying the consequences," said Chris Reichert.

As for Letcher, "I'm touched by his donation to the Parkinson's Society, but you can't just buy your way out of this," he said.

On the other hand, Robert Letcher acknowledges that tea comes in more than one flavor. He described his appreciation for the concern shown by another demonstrator in the same event who advised that he should remove himself from traffic lanes: "And he was a Tea Bagger."