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johnedwards08
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Name: John
Gender: Male
Interests: Basketball, conflict resolution, running, social justice, reading, writing, networking
Expertise: Law, Government, Management
Occupation: Future President
Industry: Government
Message: message me
Website: visit my website
Member Since:
1/2/2007
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This is the moment of truth on Iraq. The veto we knew would come has arrived. Congress must now make a decision: cave in to Bush and extend the war, or send back a binding plan to end it.
I asked my staff to create an emergency television ad that would bring the people's voice directly to Congress, calling on them to make the right choice. They worked late into the night and we now have a powerful message ready to go on the air in D.C. as soon as tomorrow morning.
But I need your help: We need to raise $100,000 in 24 hours to air this ad. If you want to make sure every member of Congress, their staff, and the national press corps see this message at this critical time, I need you to chip in whatever you can afford right now, at:
www.johnedwards.com/wethepeople
Is it normal for a presidential campaign to drop everything and focus on pushing Congress to end a war? Maybe not.
Is it normal for you to contribute money online towards running emergency ads in Washington, D.C.? Maybe not.
But we don't have time for normal. We've got a few days—maybe less—to do absolutely everything we can to ensure this Congress responds to Bush's veto by sending another binding plan to end the war.
This is an all-hands-on-deck moment. I need you to pitch in $5, $50, $500 or whatever you can manage to rush this ad on the D.C. airwaves in the next 24 hours. You can see the ad and make your contribution here:
www.johnedwards.com/wethepeople
And there's another twist. I wanted this ad to be about the voice of the people. And that means I don't just need your help putting it on the air, I need your voice.
We've designed the ad so you can actually add yourself in online. We hope that dozens, hundreds or even thousands of people will send in video clips of themselves echoing the message of the ad — "We the people" are asking Congress to stand up to Bush.
If you have a video camera, or you can borrow one, please take a minute to send a clip of yourself saying "We the People" that we can put into the online version of the ad—and get your friends to do the same.
You can see the ad, make your contribution, and send in your video clips online at:
www.johnedwards.com/wethepeople
Seizing this moment and ending this war is going to take every single one of us chipping in and adding our voice. But I believe we're up to the challenge. And with your help, I believe we'll succeed.
Thank you,
--John Edwards
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
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| Are you ready to end this war? Then it's time to act.
In the last 48 hours both houses of Congress passed a bill to end the war by funding the troops with a clear timeline to bring them home. Bush's inevitable veto will probably happen in less than 4 days.
Everything depends on what Congress does next. Many in Washington think it's time to give in. We made our point, they argue, and now we should just give Bush another blank check to extend his war.
No. This Congress was not elected to make points—it was elected to end the war. When Bush vetoes, Congress must pass another spending bill just like this one, that funds the troops and brings them home. And they should do it again. And again. Until we end this war.
We've got about 96 hours to flood Washington with the names and comments of constituents calling on Congress to stand firm. We're aiming to deliver 100,000 names and comments from all over the country before Congress decides its next move.
We are not spectators in all of this. Our voice has real power. Please use yours today:
www.johnedwards.com/action/sign-petitions/standfirm
What are we up against here? You've seen it already.
How many times have you already heard things like "Democrats are the party of surrender" or "Democrats want to wave the white flag" from right-wing talking heads?
This is the classic Rove/Bush strategy: Pump the airwaves so full of frightening spin that the Democrats second guess themselves into paralysis and give up.
Not this time.
We will not be intimidated because we see what's behind every empty, chest-thumping right-wing talking point. We see another soldier who will never again leave his wheelchair. We see another American family stricken with grief. And we see hundreds of thousands of our men and women in uniform waking up every morning wondering if their family will be the next to lose someone they love.
That's why we have no choice: we've got to be louder than Rove, louder than Bush, and louder than any fear that might throw Congress off course. That might sound impossible. But if that's what it takes, then we've got to do the impossible—and together I firmly believe that we can.
Please add your name and comments today, and we'll make sure you are heard in Washington at this critical time.
www.johnedwards.com/action/sign-petitions/standfirm
Thank you for taking action when your country needs you most.
Sincerely,
--John Edwards
Friday, April 27, 2007 | | |
| Elizabeth and I are so grateful for your prayers and wishes. Your support means a great deal to us during this difficult time.
As
you may have heard, yesterday we found out that Elizabeth's breast
cancer is back, but confined mainly to her bones. Although this isn't
the news we wanted to hear, we are very optimistic. Having been through
many struggles together in the past, we know that the key is to keep
your head up, keep moving and be strong. And that's exactly what we
intend to do.
Elizabeth and I have been married for nearly 30
years and we will be in this every step of the way together. We will
keep a positive attitude and always look for the silver lining—that's
what we do.
Although the cancer is no longer curable, it is
treatable, and many patients in similar circumstances have lived full,
energetic lives. We expect nothing less for Elizabeth. She expects to
do all the things next week that she did last week.
Our campaign
goes on and it goes on strongly. We are so proud of the campaign we are
running—a campaign based on ideas and reaching out to people. This
campaign is not about me or Elizabeth—it's about all the people we have
met these past few years and people like them all across America and
the world—people worried about feeding and clothing their kids; people
without health care; people facing hardships overseas.
Both of
us are committed to this campaign. We're committed to this cause and
we're committed to changing this country we love so much.
Thank you again for your support and for standing with us.
John Edwards
P.S.-- Many of you have asked how to contact our family and the campaign. You can click here to send us a note. Quite a few supporters and friends have already e-mailed and blogged such kind messages. Thank you so much. | | |
| Remarks as prepared for delivery
Manchester, New Hampshire
A
little more than three years ago, I gave a speech here in New Hampshire
I called "In Defense of Optimism." Some of you probably wonder if I
could give a similar speech today. After all, a lot has happened since
then – and a lot of it hasn't been good – the escalation of the war in
Iraq, the aftermath of Katrina, health care costs rising, incomes
staying flat, mounting evidence of global warming. I could go on.
But
as a matter of fact, I am still optimistic – maybe even more so than I
was then. I am still optimistic that America can be a country where
anyone who works hard is able to get ahead and create a good life for
their family. I am optimistic that we can restore America's moral
authority. The challenges may be larger, and we may have even more work
to do to build a country that lives up to our ideals and our potential.
But we can do it.
I am optimistic we can do these things because
my own life says it is possible. I am optimistic we can do these things
because everything I love about America and our entrepreneurial spirit
and sense of decency says it's possible. But most of all, I am
optimistic because of you and the millions of people like you. You
don't have to look very far or dig very deep to find people determined
to make the changes we need. Millions of people are impatient to take
control of their own lives and to take the responsibility to get our
country back on track. Millions of people who know we can't just wait
for the next president to come in and fix all of our problems or for
government to do what needs to be done.
Millions of people who
know that America is so much more than just a place – America is an
idea. And the idea of America – real, fundamental equality – equality
of opportunity, equality of culture, equality of respect – equality for
all – matters more than ever. Our job is to make the idea of America
real for all Americans, and to rekindle that idea around the world.
So
I want to take a few minutes today to talk about some of the challenges
we face. But I want to spend most of my time talking about the
opportunities before us if we have the courage to do what it takes.
Because
we have not yet realized the promise of America; we still struggle to
live up to the idea. There are still two Americas here at home, one for
the powerful and another one for everyone else. And there are two
Americas in the world, the America that we aspire to and has been a
light to the world, and the one you've seen too often on the news
lately.
Here at home, the country with the most advanced health
care in the world, we have more Americans without health care – 47
million – not fewer.
In the richest country in the history of
the globe, we have more millionaires and more billionaires that ever –
but we also have more Americans living in poverty – 37 million people
unable to fulfill their basic needs of food and shelter, no matter how
many jobs they work – not less.
As someone who grew up in the
segregated South it hurts me to say that more than 50 years after the
Brown decision, we still have two school systems – one for people who
live in the right neighborhoods and one for everyone else. And the
truth is that opportunity is too often denied to people because of the
color of their skin, their ethnic background, their gender, or their
sexual preference.
And you all know that we are not leading the
world in a way that lives up to the idea of America – or is good for us
here at home.
What we used to call foreign policy has such a
profound effect on our everyday lives that there really is no such
thing as purely foreign policy anymore. Trade policies affect jobs and
wages here and throughout the world. Energy policy affects climate
change here and all over the world, and it impacts domestic and foreign
security. Poverty is an issue for us here – I could talk about that all
day long – but poverty is also an issue directly related to the rise of
terrorism and our place in the world economy. A well-known politician
from a neighboring state used to say that all politics is local. Today,
all policy is local.
We are not going to solve these problems
with the usual approaches. These challenges are too big, too connected,
and too complicated to be answered with the same old politics of
incrementalism. Meeting them requires more than just a new president—it
requires an entirely new approach.
To build the America we
believe in requires fundamental, transformational change. Not change
for the sake of change, but change for the sake of getting to where we
know the country and the world can be, should be, and needs to be. Not
incremental, baby-step changes, but invigorating, uplifting,
challenging, daring, boundary-pushing changes that address the root
causes and understand the complexity of our challenges.
So if we
are going to lead from this point in the 21st century, we must lead
with a bold and confident step – confident in the greatness of the
American idea, and bold in our plans to make it real.
To lead the world in addressing the challenges of our century, America must restore our moral authority.
Restoring
our moral authority isn't just about feeling good about ourselves. When
the world looks to America for leadership, we are stronger and safer,
and so is the rest of the world.
Restoring our moral authority
means leading by example, and making clear that hard challenges don't
frighten us, but call us to action.
To me, there is no better
opportunity to make this clear than the enormous challenge of helping
the 37 million Americans who live in poverty.
Maybe you've heard the phrase "it's expensive to be poor." Well, it's also expensive for America to have so many poor.
We
all pay a price when young people who could someday find the cure for
AIDS or make a fuel cell work are sitting on a stoop because they
didn't get the education they need.
And don't think for a second
that addressing poverty is charity – addressing poverty makes our
workforce stronger and our economy stronger.
That is why I've
set a national goal of eliminating poverty in the next 30 years – and
laid out a detailed plan to do it by creating what I call a "Working
Society," building on what we've learned to create solutions for the
future.
In a Working Society, we will reward work with a higher
minimum wage, stronger labor laws, and tax credits for working
families. We will offer affordable housing near good jobs and good
schools, and create a million stepping-stone jobs for people who cannot
find work on their own. We will help workers save for the future with
new work bonds and homeownership tax credits. And we will all take
responsibility for the problem of poverty and not just leave it to
government.
By building a Working Society, we won't just try the
old solutions and the old politics. Instead, we will work, as a nation,
to change fundamentally the culture of poverty itself and create the
conditions that allow people to lift themselves up into the middle
class.
Rebuilding our middle class for the 21st century also
means getting at the root of one of the main obstacles to middle class
prosperity -- the cost of health care.
Americans spend more than $2 trillion per year on heath care –- more than any other country on earth.
Despite this incredible expenditure, more than 47 million Americans don't have any health insurance at all.
That's not just morally wrong. It undercuts our personal security and our competitiveness in the global marketplace.
That's
why I've introduced a true universal health care plan to cover every
man, woman and child in America – by the end of my first term as
President. I'm proud to be the first and only candidate to do so.
We
cannot wait to transform our health care system. My plan sets up health
care markets around the country to give people a choice of good health
care plans, including a choice between private and government plans. It
provides access to preventive care. It creates efficiencies that don't
exist today by dramatically lowering administrative costs. Under my
plan, if you don't have health care, you will. If you have health care,
your costs will go down.
It may seem complicated in its details,
but I see health care as a simple matter of right and wrong. I believe
every single one of us has equal worth, and we should not treat anybody
as better than anybody else. Every American – rich or poor, no matter
which America we live in – has the right to health care. My plan
delivers it.
Our domestic problems are intertwined with our
global challenges, and nowhere is this truer than at the nexus of
global warming and energy independence.
Global warming is a
problem that is here, now, and not going away. The United States must
lead – lead smart, lead courageously, and lead by example.
It is
time to ask the American people to be patriotic about something other
than war. We need investments in renewable energy – more efficient cars
and trucks – and a national cap on carbon emissions.
By taking
personal responsibility for our energy use, we can all reduce our
impact on the environment in big ways and small. This week, I announced
that we're going to do exactly that in our campaign – our campaign is
going to be carbon neutral.
Tackling global warming through
responsibility and conservation helps reduce our reliance on foreign
oil. And reducing our reliance on foreign oil strengthens our national
security. But we won't stop there.
By creating a new energy
economy – by transforming our energy infrastructure and investing in
research, development and deployment of alternative energy technologies
– we can not only address global warming and energy independence, we
can create more than a million new jobs in America, and lay the
foundation for a secure middle class and a manufacturing base for
America in the 21st century.
Our education system, too, needs
fundamental change. As I said a few minutes ago, more than 50 years
after Brown v. Board of Education, our education system remains
shockingly unequal. There are nearly 1,000 high schools where more than
half of the students won't graduate. Minority 12th-graders read at the
same level as white 9th-graders.
Our education system
shortchanges the skills our children need for the future – math and
science, creativity and critical thinking. Every day you can read
reports about how we're falling behind in math and science – our
9th-graders are 18th in the world in science education. We need to
fundamentally change the discussion about education in our country, to
move beyond a focus on testing and get to the issue of educating our
children for the challenges of the 21st century.
We need a
serious, sustained effort to turn around failing schools. We should
invest in our teachers – the most important part of any school. We need
to do more to recruit them, train them, and pay them, particularly in
math and science and other places where there are teacher shortages.
Finally,
it has been more than a century since we made high school universal,
but high school graduates from well-off families are five times more
likely to enroll in college. Those who do go to college pick up larger
and larger debts. I have a plan called College for Everyone that will
pay for the first year of college for anyone willing to work part-time.
And this is one of the hallmarks of the fundamental changes we need, we
as Democrats. Work and personal responsibility are good things – and we
should be encouraging both.
When we're serious about moral leadership at home, we have the standing to assert moral leadership in the world.
And
I believe we can begin by leading in areas that – at first glance –
might not seem directly related to our self-interest. I'm talking about
global poverty, primary education. But I believe if you look closely,
it's clear that these areas are in fact directly related to our present
and future national security.
We know that terrorists thrive in failed states, and in states torn apart by internal conflict and poverty.
And
we know that in many African and Muslim countries today, extreme
poverty and civil wars have gutted government educational systems.
So what's taking their place? The answer is troubling – but filled with opportunity if we have the courage to seize it.
A
great portion of a generation is being educated in madrassas run by
militant extremists rather than in public schools. And as a result,
thousands and thousands of young people who might once have aspired to
be educated in America are being taught to hate America.
When
you understand that, it suddenly becomes clear: global poverty is not
just a moral issue for the United States – it is a national security
issue for the United States. If we tackle it, we will be doing a good
and moral thing by helping to improve the lives of billions of people
around the world who live on less than $2 per day – but we will also
begin to create a world in which the ideologies of radical terrorism
are overwhelmed by the ideologies of education, democracy, and
opportunity. If we tackle it, we have the chance to change a generation
of potential enemies into a generation of friends. Now that would be
transformational.
But the challenge is great – generational
struggles require generational solutions – so we must meet the
challenge with an audacious plan.
As President I would implement
a four-point plan to tackle global poverty – and improve the national
security of the United States:
First, we would launch a sweeping effort to support primary education in the developing world.
More
than 100 million young children have no school at all, denied even a
primary education to learn how to read and write. Education is
particularly important for young girls; as just one example of the
ripple effects, educated mothers have lower rates of infant mortality
and are 50 percent more likely to have their children immunized.
As
president, I will lead a worldwide effort to extend primary education
to millions of children in the developing world by fully funding the
Millennium Development Goal of universal primary education by 2015. The
U.S. will do its part by bringing education to 23 million children in
poor countries, and we will ask our allies to step up and do the rest.
It's not just good for our security; it's good for theirs.
Second, we will support preventive health care in the developing world.
Women
and children bear the burden of poverty and disease in the developing
world. Women in our poorest countries have a 10% chance of dying during
childbirth. More than 10 million children die each year from
preventable diseases. Many of these diseases are preventable with clean
water and basic sanitation or affordable immunizations.
As
president, I will convene a worldwide summit on low-cost investments in
clean drinking water and sanitation. Under my plan, the U.S. will
increase its investment in clean water six-fold.
Third, we can
get to the root of global poverty by increasing opportunity, political
opportunity and economic opportunity. Democratic rights allow poor
citizens to force their countries to create more progressive laws,
fight oppression and demand economic stability. Economic initiatives
like microfinance and micro-insurance can spark entrepreneurship,
allowing people to transform their own lives.
And fourth, I
would appoint an individual in the White House, reporting directly to
me, with the rank of a Cabinet member, to oversee all of our efforts to
fight global poverty. Despite its importance to our national security,
the United States still lacks a comprehensive strategy to fight global
poverty. We need to embrace the vision of John F. Kennedy, who
recognized that "the Nation's interest and the cause of political
freedom require" American efforts to lift up the world's poor.
Our
current effort has plenty of bureaucracy – over 50 separate U.S
agencies are involved in the delivery of foreign assistance. What it
lacks is efficiency and accountability. As President, I'll change that.
Accomplishing
these goals – ending poverty in America and transforming our approach
to poverty around the world, creating a new energy economy, bringing
health care to every American, and building an educational system that
helps to build and support the middle class of the 21st century– will
not be easy.
And attempting them will require a change in our politics.
We
can no longer accept having the course of our country dictated by a
relatively few people who push onto the rest of us policies that suit
their particular interests. We need leaders who insist that all voices
are heard, leaders who will take the role Harry Truman defined so
clearly: a president who is the lobbyist for all the people who don't
have, don't want, and can't afford one.
But this is not just
about the leaders. It is also about you taking responsibility for your
own country, for your own government, for your own community, for your
own family. I was only in the Senate for 6 years, but that was more
than enough time to learn firsthand what I feared and what you know: if
you see a problem, you can't wait for the government to fix it.
We are at one of those rare moments in history – a time when two paths are clear before us.
On one side is the path we have been on.
It
is a path in which we argue over fuel standards while global warming
gets worse; where the Senate passes non binding resolutions on the war
in Iraq while the war escalates; where the middle class shrinks and
disappears while tax cuts for the wealthiest set in; a path where the
two Americas is still there and still wrong.
On the other side
is that future which we have all long imagined - a future in which
America's moral leadership once again makes us strong and secure.
A
future in which the gulf between the haves and have-nots is fading
because we are actively working to lift our fellow human beings up from
poverty. Where every American has health care. Where America leads the
world in creating a new global economy powered by clean energy. Where
women around the world enjoy the same opportunities as men. A future in
which we recognize that our security is not just measured by our
military might, but by our ability and determination to build a more
peaceful, more prosperous, more stable world.
I believe that
future is ours for the taking. We can make it real. We know that. We –
the American people – have changed the world before.
Nearly 70 years ago, another generation of Americans faced a world darkened by insecurity.
The
storm clouds of fascism and totalitarianism were gathering over Europe
and Asia. We were struggling to emerge from the depths of the Great
Depression. And it was easy to think then that our problems at home
were too big for us to try to tackle the problems mounting abroad.
Yet that generation of Americans saw in the challenges of their day not a cause for despair, but a call to greatness.
And
they answered it. Not meekly, not uncertainly. But proudly,
confidently, and with conviction. Because they had what we have – the
idea of America. It's right here.
And in answering that call,
not only secured freedom for the people of Europe and Asia – they laid
the foundation for a new American economy that produced the greatest
expansion of the middle class and the sharpest reduction of poverty in
the history of the world.
They turned the 20th century into the American century.
Now it is our turn – to see the challenges we face with an unblinking eye and once again to answer the call.
Proudly, confidently, and with conviction.
It
is our responsibility. As Abraham Lincoln once called us, we are still
the "last best hope of earth." If America does not lead, who will?
I believe we are up to the task. I am certain of it.
After all, I am an optimist. | | |
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