Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Edwards tours Cleveland on poverty tour

Here's a great article on John Edward's day in Cleveland, OH. He is on an eight state swing to highlight poverty issues.

As one could predict, his moneyed detractors can't understand how someone with means can sympathize with the poor.
"It's difficult to relate to the homeless when you reside in a 28,000-square-foot mansion," [Chris] Taylor [regional press secretary for the Republican National Committee] said. "This is a guy who has taken fees for speaking about the poor in the past."
So what?

If I were poor I would rather have someone who has the means to do something trying to help me out, than continue to suffer among other poor people who haven't the means to do anything. That's the problem with Republicans. They want those who haven't got boot straps to pull themselves up by them. They should instead be doing what Edwards is doing — offering to help them get find bootstraps.

Edwards took on predatory lenders during his Cleveland stop calling for national regulations.
Edwards said that without national regulations predatory lenders who offer higher-priced loans to people with tarnished credit or low incomes "just move to another place where they are not regulated."
He called for a national assistance fund to provide help to working people at risk of losing their homes.
"It's not a Cleveland problem or a New Orleans problem, it's an American problem," Edwards said.


Read the rest and see some great pictures at the Sacramento Bee.

2 comments:

Christine said...

Just received an update from the Sacramento Bee that both Edwards and Obama are addressing poverty. I am so thrilled! One could only hope in this culture of war, power and violence to obtain even more power, candidates who focus on poverty will be front runners in this election, and make the election about ideas, solutions, humanitarian issues!

Christine said...

This is the quote of the week from SoJo:

"These things matter. It is not about party; it's about eyeballs. And there are sights that need seeing."

- Dee Davis, director of the Center for Rural Strategies in Whitesburg, Kentucky, on presidential candidate John Edwards' tour of rural American poverty. (Source: NPR)