Hello all,
We haven't talked too much about Elizabeth so I thought while covering what John has been up to I should chat about her too. She is an integral part of this campaign, more then I think most possible First Ladies have been.
Eliabeth has been a very busy person and is getting quite the rave reviews on the campaign trail. She is also addressing some of the criticisms about John in a very straightforward fashion.
Link here
New Hampshire Union Leader columnist John Clayton reports from a John Edwards campaign event in New Hampshire yesterday that Elizabeth Edwards is gaining rock-star status on the campaign trail: Although her official role in the campaign is to act as a surrogate for her husband, many "of the folks who came to Edwards HQ yesterday were drawn by the woman herself," Clayton notes
Link here
As the two campaigned this past week through Iowa and New Hampshire, she became a draw in her own right. Supporters waved signs that said "Iowa Lives Strong for Elizabeth" and "Elizabeth for First Lady," and staff quickly put up rope lines around her at the end of campaign events to control the well-wishers who mobbed her.
Here she addresses the war vote:
She was opposed from the beginning. She did not feel there was provocation for war and she did not trust President Bush with the authority. But John Edwards decided to vote the opposite way and she did not try to change his mind.
As time passed, John Edwards began to believe he made the wrong decision. "We talked about it a lot," Elizabeth Edwards said, "and he was saying to me that it was so hard to come to that conclusion because young men and women lost their lives. . . . Then he decided, ‘Let’s face it, I was wrong and I’m going to have to say it, even though I know what it means.’ "
In longhand, he wrote out an explanation for his vote that began: "I was wrong." He submitted the draft to his aides. They advised him to cut those first three words.
"I talked to Elizabeth about it and I said, ‘I really feel this is what I need to say,’ " he said. "And she said, ‘Of course that’s what you need to say if that’s what you feel.’ "
I like how she addresses the house issue. It is their rewards to themselves for the hard work they have done in their lives. Who does not wich to retire to a nice house? Admittedly most of us will never be able to afford what they have but still, most of us want a house in the woods or our own little castle.
Elizabeth Edwards said she and her husband did not grow up with much; she on military bases, her husband in mill towns where his father worked. That is why they decided to build their dream home on 102 wooded acres near Chapel Hill, N.C. It is a decision she says she does not regret.
"I’m not going to apologize for the house," she said. "We don’t go on fancy trips, we don’t buy fancy cars – this is how we want to spend the money that John earned."
"If I were trying to be solely political, I would have said, let’s not build that part yet," she said of the recreational building.
"On the other hand, when he comes home during campaigning and goes down and shoots baskets with Jack, I think I’m just so glad we have this. So you know, I honestly feel two ways about it."
I like how she states her that she could have done more re: her cancer. We all have to pay attention ot our health.
She said she has another regret: failing to get mammograms that could have detected her cancer earlier and stopped it from spreading to her bones.
"I am responsible for putting myself, this man, my family and, frankly, putting you all at risk, too, because I think you deserve the chance to vote for this man," she told voters in Davenport, Iowa.
Later, John Edwards said he thought she was being too hard on herself. But audience member Pat Baxter-Redal was thrilled with the example Elizabeth Edwards is setting as a respected voice for women’s health.
Link here
Here she addresses things about terrorism that only women seem to know. Killing adults creates child terrorists, hate begets hate. Men in power never want to talk about the effect of war and hate on children but her and Edwards address it.
On how to address terrorism, Edwards said the approach is twofold.
"There are adult terrorists who mean to do us harm," she said. "We need to grab them and put them where they cannot harm us or anyone else. We're not going to change their minds."
But she said there is a new generation emerging — young people whose minds can change.
"We can reach them," she said. "We need an international coalition to educate those ages 6 through 15 in real public schools, and we need to be the benefactor. We need to be the good guy again. We are the good guy, but we have not been him lately. If we did this, our children, my children 6 and 9, will graduate into a safer world."
Urging all those gathered to get informed, Edwards said this is a very important campaign.
"Ask questions of me, and of my husband," said Edwards. "Ask questions of all the candidates. You need all the answers to make the right choice."
I like how they are including dental in their health care plan. Hell, most companies don't include dental, or if they do it tends to be crap coverage.
The same sort of principles apply to prescription drug costs. Edwards said people should have all the information and know what choices they can make.
"We have gross patent abuse," she said. "If we have a larger smorgasbord, we will have cheaper drugs. We can buy peas, pet food, if you dare, but we cannot buy drugs from Canada. The same drug that sells for $14 in France sells for $75 here."
Portsmouth resident Nancy Beach talked about the trouble she is having getting dental care for her son. She said he has Down syndrome and was forced into the Medicaid system, where his dental coverage is very limited.
"Dental care will be included in this plan," said Edwards. "We all need reasonable dental care
So that's a catch up on Elizabeth. Now to John.
John's netroots staff is kicking butt. He is first to respond to the DFA request for candidates to talk about their environment plan. I think he films these at home on his "days off" because the background is always the same. I would imagine that is the view out of his front yard. I like how he is always dressed casual and like a person, not a candidate when he does these little videos. He also is good at humbling himself as he ends this on "If you want to read about these plans, not just hear me talk about them go to...." His tone of voice is very congenial and down to earth.
Here's the link:Clicky clicky
John also got some interesting mixed press on his poverty plan. The Washington Post wrote a 3 page article re: Edwards plan. In it they state that they are not sure the housing vouchers would work and that it needs better framing.
Here
Now mind you the study they did was federal and depending on who was in charge who knows how reliable it is but:
If there is a personal imprint on Edwards's plan, it is his argument for reducing racial and economic segregation -- that, as he put it in one speech, "if we truly believe that we are all equal, then we should live together, too." To achieve this, Edwards proposes doing away with public housing projects and replacing them with 1 million rental vouchers, to disperse the poor into better neighborhoods and suburbs, closer to good schools and jobs.
The idea sounds bold, but it faces a deflating reality: A major federal experiment conducted for more than a decade has found that dispersing poor families with vouchers does not improve earnings or school performance, leaving some economists puzzled that Edwards would make such dispersal a centerpiece of his anti-poverty program. Edwards said he was unaware of the experiment.
"The Edwards proposal is a good idea, but I don't think it's likely to accomplish the primary aim he intends," said Jeffrey Kling, a Brookings Institution economist who has studied the experiment.
Missing from Edwards's approach, some thinkers on the subject say, is the same crucial component lacking in past proposals: a way of framing the problem that can inspire political will to help a segment of society that tends not to vote.
Meanwhile, a separate debate has been underway within the Democratic Party, over how aggressively to fight for the poor. After pushing through the major anti-poverty programs of the past century -- the New Deal of the 1930s and the Great Society of the 1960s -- the party has had to defend some of the programs against charges that they are wasteful and promote dependency. Democratic candidates have urged help for the disadvantaged, but more often have couched economic issues in terms of helping the middle class.
But there is extensive evidence that it is going too far to expect that replacing public housing projects with a million new vouchers will alleviate poverty. In 1994, the Department of Housing and Urban Development launched a program called Moving to Opportunity for Fair Housing, under which 1,820 families living in public housing in five cities were given housing vouchers that they were required to use in low-poverty neighborhoods.
The results startled researchers. The families who moved reported improved health, and girls in the families fared better overall. But to researchers' surprise, boys in the families fared worse than those who remained in public housing, getting into more trouble with the law and feeling out of place.
Most notably, the families did not fare better economically, nor did their children's school performance improve. Among other reasons, many families did not move very far from their old homes, partly because of a shortage of affordable housing in better areas, while others reported missing the contacts they had used in their old neighborhoods to find jobs.
"In terms of breaking the intergenerational cycle of poverty, it's not a magic bullet," said Greg Duncan, a Northwestern University economist. Duncan brought up the findings at Edwards's November 2005 symposium; according to a transcript, no one responded.
Now for all the evidence in this article there is another one that disputes these findings.
Linkalicious goodness
This article has good comments too:
The trick is to a) get the right combination of ideas working together, and b) build the political will to implement them. Edwards understands both.
(Full disclosure: I’m not working with his campaign in any capacity, but I did write a chapter for a new book on these issues that Edwards edited.)
What’s particularly upsetting about the Post article is that they ignore a new, important report by the Center for American Progress (CAP) Task Force on Poverty that emphasizes many of the same ideas Edwards has been promoting, ideas that meet both the "right combination" and political criteria just noted (and for the record, the CAP report was covered in the Post itself!).
Re political will, both the Edwards anti-poverty campaign and the CAP report support a poverty-reduction target, a tangible goal that will focus policy makers on the steps that need to be taken to get from here—37 million people in poverty—to there: a stated amount of poverty reduction by a particular time. This strategy of setting a poverty target has been highly effective in the UK.
Then there are the policies. Among others, Edwards stresses higher minimum wages, expanding the Earned Income Credit (a wage subsidy for low-income workers), second chance educational opportunities, an ambitious housing policy, and direct job creation for those whose boats don’t get a lift even in a strong economy.
That’s right, these are old ideas, but they work (and Edwards has some new ones too, like the poverty target and some asset-building ideas). In the 1990s, amidst truly tight job markets, a big EITC expansion, higher minimum wages, and welfare reform that spent more, not less, on training and work supports, we made huge progress against poverty. CAP did a careful analysis of the impact of their ideas, and found that they would reduce poverty by half, at a cost of $90 billion per year (hey, you don’t get something for nothin’ and, anyway, that’s about the value of Bush tax cuts to the top 1%).
So there is some give and take on his plans. Whether or not his plans are perfect the fact is he is addressing them. Oh and Edwards latest response to the whole house issue is the following:
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DES MOINES, Iowa - Presidential candidate John Edwards said Monday it's silly to suggest that his wealth and expensive tastes have hurt his credibility as an advocate for the poor.
"Would it have been better if I had done well and didn't care?" Edwards asked.
Edwards noted that some of the most acclaimed anti-poverty advocates came from privileged backgrounds, including Franklin Roosevelt and Bobby Kennedy.
It's just where my heart and my passion are," said Edwards, adding that his emphasis on poverty issues resonates with activists, because few other candidates focus on the issue.
"The reality of poverty is a very complex thing," said Edwards. "One problem compounds the next problem."
Also Onecorps, the service group Edwards promotes is holding the following:
This month, John's asking all of us to do the same. We've put together a simple, powerful plan to combat the worst effects of poverty in our communities today while building the support we need to end poverty in America tomorrow, and we need you to take the lead.
Please sign up to host an event on Saturday, May 19th. All you have to do is set up a table outside of a supermarket to collect food goods for a local food bank, pass out information about the Edwards plan to end poverty, and sign up people who want to join the cause
So if you aren't a member of One Corps yet and you feel strongly on this, perhaps would be a good day to join. Perhaps we should also check to see that the foods donated are Gluten Free.
At any rate that is your Nightly Roundup.
Thanks for reading.