from the Houston Chronicle Sorry, I'm biased twords this guy. Now that he's no longer running for anything you will start to see him here more. Here is video from a presser in Houston as well as a snippet from an article about it. He's urging lawmakers to help halve the number of poor over next 10 yearsBy DALE LEZONFormer U.S. Sen. John Edwards stopped in Houston Wednesday on a national tour to tout an anti-poverty campaign that aims to cut the number of the country's poor in half in a decade.Edwards, from North Carolina, said he would "fight with every fiber of my being" to help low-income Americans.The former Democratic vice-presidential candidate and one-time presidential hopeful joined local community and political leaders in a private roundtable discussion on poverty, the...
from TimeBy SEN. JOHN EDWARDSIf we want to end the great moral shame of America — the 37 million Americans who are denied economic justice in our country — then we need to ask the most basic question: why? Not why are "they" struggling every day, but why do we accept things as they are?Why do we accept that the waitress who just brought us lunch needs the church's food pantry to feed her daughter for the rest of the month? She's working and that should be enough.Why do we accept that the man who just bagged our groceries is 72 years old and lost everything when his wife got sick? He's worked all of his life and retirement shouldn't mean more work.Why do we accept that the men and women who wore our uniform are committing suicide in their trucks because they can't afford to see a...
from The Philadelphia Inquirer By Thomas FitzgeraldINQUIRER STAFF WRITERFormer Democratic Sen. John Edwards is scheduled to hit the campaign trail this morning in Philadelphia, making his debut as chairman of a new effort to cut poverty in the United States by 50 percent during the next decade.The effort – called Half in Ten - is a partnership of the Center for American Progress Fund, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), the Coalition on Human Needs, and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.Leaders say the group's campaign will focus on building support for practical legislation to attack poverty. The group, for example, plans to lobby to expand the Earned Income Tax Credit, which helps low-income families; to raise both state and federal minimum...
from The Washington PostBy Dan Balz and Chris CillizzaWashington Post Staff WriterCLEVELAND-Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards defended himself against criticism that his expensive haircuts and lucrative income from a hedge fund undercut his campaign's effort to highlight the issue of poverty in America.In an interview for the washingtonpost.com news program "PostTalk" Edwards said his life and career demonstrate the sincerity of his commitment to the plight of low-income Americans and continued willingness to push the issue forward during the 2008 presidential campaign."Anybody who's running for president ought to be subjected to serious examination from every conceivable angle," Edwards said. "So theres nothing wrong with that. What bothers me about this is, I don't want...
from The Washington PostBy Perry Bacon Jr.Washington Post Staff WriterMARKS, Miss., -- From the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans to the Mississippi Delta to this town where Martin Luther King Jr. began his Poor People's Campaign almost four decades ago, John Edwards's message has been the same: Americans living in poverty are working hard but need more help from the federal government and their wealthier countrymen."A lot of Americans think of people who are struggling as people who don't want to work, and that's nonsense. We need to make sure the country understands that," the Democratic former senator from North Carolina said.On the second day of an eight-state tour of impoverished communities in the South and Midwest, Edwards tried to connect his presidential campaign with the legacy of...
from ReutersBy Matthew BiggNEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards is touring eight U.S. states this week to highlight poverty in America, and put the issue at the heart of his campaign.The decision to focus on poverty serves as a challenge to his top Democratic rivals, Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and enables Edwards to present himself as a leader with a cause bigger than his own ambition, analysts said."This (focus on poverty) is not a political strategy. This is a huge moral issue facing America," Edwards, a former U.S. senator from North Carolina and the 2004 Democratic vice presidential nominee, said at the start of his campaign swing late on Sunday.But analysts said the strategy could backfire in a country where many voters see poverty as...
from The Los Angeles TimesOn his eight-state tour, the Democratic presidential candidate hopes to find that such talk is not, in fact, a politically losing idea.By Mark Z. Barabak, Times Staff WriterSeeking to regain his political footing, White House hopeful John Edwards is pursuing a road less traveled: a three-day, eight-state tour through pockets of urban and rural poverty.Beginning Sunday night in New Orleans and ending Wednesday in Appalachian Kentucky, the former North Carolina senator will reinvigorate an old campaign theme and test an even older notion: that talking about poor people is a politically losing proposition.The poverty rate in America has stayed fairly constant since the late 1960s. But polls show that the issue of poverty and homelessness consistently ranks low among...
from International Herald Tribune The Associated PressThursday, July 12, 2007WASHINGTON: The campaign of presidential hopeful John Edwards has a ready answer for all the criticism about his expensive haircuts and expansive home: A man can be wealthy and care about the poor, too.Just look at a Democratic hero — Robert F. Kennedy.Edwards, the 2004 vice presidential nominee, plans to spend three days next week on a poverty tour reminiscent of Kennedy's 1968 trip while he was running for president. Edwards even plans to end his journey where Kennedy did some 40 years ago, in Prestonsburg, Kentucky.However, Kennedy, the former attorney general and brother of President John F. Kennedy, did not make it to the November 1968 elections. He was shot to death after a campaign appearance in Los...
from US NewsDemocratic presidential hopeful John Edwards’s planned three-day swing through hard-pressed neighborhoods and communities next week has been designed to wake up the press and public officials to the issue of poverty, the candidate’s national campaign manager, former Rep. David Bonior, said Monday.“We want to force this issue into the debate,” Bonior said during an afternoon conference call with reporters in which he gave details of Edwards’s “Road to One America” tour, which will begin Monday in New Orleans. Last December, Edwards announced his candidacy in the city’s Katrina-devastated Ninth Ward. The campaign swing echoes a 1968 poverty tour by Robert F. Kennedy, who shortly afterward announced his candidacy for president.The effort, which will take Edwards...
from MSNBCBy Alec MacGillisALLENDALE, S.C. - His rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination were busy April 26 preparing for their first televised debate, but John Edwards was 45 miles south, strolling along a dirt road in this struggling town in South Carolina's Low Country to chat with what few people he could find among the many abandoned houses."We've got 37 million people who wake up every day in poverty," he declared moments later to residents gathered outside a local church, under the shade of a giant live oak. "This is not okay, not in the richest country on the planet."As he makes his second bid for the White House, the former senator from North Carolina is sounding a clarion call of a sort not heard on the presidential campaign trail since Robert F. Kennedy's run in 1968....
from The Seattle Post IntelligencerBy MIKE GLOVERDES MOINES, Iowa -- Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards argued on Tuesday that his work for a hedge fund shouldn't overshadow his efforts on poverty and other issues after the 2004 campaign."If you look at what I've done since the last election, it is true that I did consulting work for a hedge fund, part time," Edwards told The Associated Press in a brief interview. "It's also true that I started a poverty center at the University of North Carolina, that I led minimum wage initiatives in six states - all successful - that I started a college-for-everyone program for poor communities in eastern North Carolina, that I helped organize thousands of workers into unions, that I did humanitarian work in Africa."Edwards, the Democrats'...
from Yes WeeklyFour months after North Carolina Senator John Edwards lost a bruising presidential election as Democratic nominee John Kerry's running mate in 2004, UNC-Chapel Hill announced that the defeated candidate would lead the new Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at the university's law school.With the stated goal of bringing together "faculty and other national public policy experts to examine innovative and practical ideas for moving more Americans out of poverty and into the middle class," the center might have seemed a ready-made opportunity for Edwards to keep his name in the national spotlight and develop policy ideas as he considered another run for president."I don't think it requires any stretch of the imagination to conclude that the poverty center was a political...
from The Herald SunBy Emily CoakleyCHAPEL HILL -- Former Sen. John Edwards has left the UNC Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity he founded three years ago to make a second run for president.Edwards gave up the UNC job Thursday, the day he made official what he had long hinted and was revealed a day earlier when his campaign accidentally went live with his "John Edwards '08" Web site, that he will be a candidate for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.Edwards chose the back yard of a victim of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans' devastated Ninth Ward to declare his candidacy Thursday.Edwards, 53, called for an increase in community service and cuts in poverty, global warming and troops in Iraq. He said he made a mistake in voting for a resolution to go to war with Iraq, but noted...
from The Knoxville News SentinelBy MIKE BAKER, Associated Press WriterDecember 16, 2006CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (AP) _ At a time when the political passions of many Americans are focused on Iraq and national security, John Edwards remains focused on poverty and economic inequality.Don't expect anything different should he again run for president. ''Edwards has identified a message area that will give him a niche,'' said Chris Lehane, a longtime Democratic strategist who has worked on several presidential campaigns. ''The issue of poverty reminds people about Democratic values. It reflects his character and distinguishes him.''Not long after Edwards and running mate John Kerry lost the 2004 election, the former North Carolina senator set up shop at the University of North Carolina at Chapel...