"We are not the country of the Superdome in New Orleans after Katrina. We can prove it by fulfilling our moral responsibility to get New Orleans back on its feet."
– John Edwards
His plan includes ideas to rebuild infrastructure, create jobs, and make the city safe, including fixing the levees. He expands each of these ideas into some detail in the fact sheet.
Edwards is the only candidate for president who has a plan to end poverty in the United States in the next 30 years and combat poverty worldwide. He is even willing to raise his own taxes, and those of other wealthy people, to do so, which seems to me to be a clear example of his integrity.
In the next few days, he will be touring impoverished areas of the United States to shine a light on the problems and solutions. He spoke recently at the NAACP presidential forum about the upcoming tour.
VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6-bvNUvCxk
I will have much more on the Road to One America Tour in the next few days.
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Comments: 25
Looking forward to more reports from the Road.
Regardless, billions has been sent to Louisiana and a lot of it is unaccounted for. When are we going to stop letting the mismanaging idiots who run that state get away with blaming Washington and Bush? Yeah I know if you are democrats you want to believe it's all because of Bush. But pull your heard out of your ass and read the freaking constitution!
Why is it that all the hurricane states that had hurricane disasters in past years have we heard stories of heroism and the ability to overcome and rebuild? Why is it that the only state that has no such stories is the only state run by democrats?
Then again finger pointing is an easy way out for the dumb....
The missing money : Federal no bid contracts.
States elect politicians to be represented in Washington. Has the democratic party in Louisiana done a good job? They got funding yes not only from Washington but from people who gave to charity. What happened Louisiana????
Don there are no federal no bid contracts in state matters you dip shit.
Edwards is the best choice for me for 2008.
Anyway, the 28%ers are obviously quite worried about John Edwards and his Road to One America Tour, judging from the number of underbridgers already commenting on this diary.
Jeff - that is total BS. Large disasters of this sort are the responsibility of FEMA - a federal agency. And guess what? Mr. 28% approval rating gave his buddies at Halliburton a bunch of no bid contracts to clean up the mess, only they obviously haven't done very much.
If you'd like to know what's going on, read "The Politics of Disaster: Katrina, Big Government, and a New Strategy for Future Crisis" by Marvin Olasky. He spells out the ideological basis behind how the Bush administration deals with disaster and disaster planning, and he's all for it. The simple answer: they don't think the Feds should have any responsibility.
I did not need John Edwards to make these needs apparent to me. In fact I have stated one or more them in my own communications with various public official over the years along with more specific suggestions for achieving some of these aims.
I also am inclined to believe they are not news to any of the other candidates, Democrat or Republican, who seek our support for the Presidency of the United States and I am grateful to all of them for not insulting my intelligence by stating the obvious and then supplying the details of why it should be obvious.
We need more than candidates who state broad goals that we already know we need to aim for or state impossible goals such as "eliminating poverty". Regarding the latter the best any candidate is pledge to do is to reduce poverty. When it come to broad goals we need to know how candidates intend to reach them even if that is no more assembling a team of creative people to brainstorm and suggest more detailed and possibly multiple plans for achieving these goals.
Also, we need candidates who do not say the same things over and over again to try and persuade us to vote for them. Repetition of a old answer is sometimes inevitable when answering a variation on an old question, but otherwise it become boring and we cease to listen. When it comes to repetition John Edwards is proving himself quite quite capable of that, but until he come up with more substantive recommendations for achieving his goals I have no reason to believe he is anymore capable of achieving them than the other candidates who have stated similar goals.
FEMA is a federal agency. They were responsible for the funds that we received (or didn't). I had to fight in federal court to get my LITTLE bit, over six months after my daughters and I lost everything. I was one of the lucky ones. My husband was denied any benefits... for no real reason.
ALSO... all of us were made to fill out a loan thru the SBA before we could be processed for FEDERAL assistance. What a nightmare that was, that process alone took me over 6 months to complete, only to be denied because my living and work situation was too unstable at the time to qualify for the loan! Being an evacuee made me a risky loan candidate.
I had to wait for the Federal Government to confirm my address and the damage to my property... oh the federal issues go on and on.....
Not to mention that the damage here was faulty construction of our levee system by the federal government. Now should they not be liable for fixing and repairing all the damage they caused?
But I'll spare you my trials.
I applaud Edwards for coming here, even if he doesn't win I really appreciate him using his position to spotlight the issue of poverty and the issues faced daily by low and moderate income workers in this country. This man has a proven track record of action... just look at the six states he helped raise the minimum wage in.
Nearly two years after the storm and he is making sure that we in New Orleans remain in the hearts and minds of the American people.
NOLA ACORN, thanks for your comment. It's a national disgrace that New Orleans has essentially been abandoned by the federal government and that it's taking this long to rebuild it. I hope that Edwards putting some pressure on will help something to finally get done.
I respond to your articles because when I am bored I browse political articles in Gather and you send articles out. If you can't stand the fact that laws prohibit people from disagreeing with you that's your problem not mine. I haven't seen an article from you for months until this one. Wonder how you treated the thousands of dollars spent on Edwards hair stylists or his thousands of dollars collected on giving his 2 Americas speeches to pay for his mansion.
Aside from that yeah I like your articles. They are generic and aren't very deep into anything real which makes them easy to pick apart.