Let me tell you what values mean to me and John Edwards.
Values mean creating opportunity and fighting for good paying jobs that let American families actually get ahead. It means fighting for tax cuts for middle class families -- to help provide relief for Americans who are getting squeezed. The wealthiest Americans don't need more tax cuts, but middle class families do. We will cut taxes for 98 percent of Americans. And we will add new middle class tax cuts to help families pay for health care, college tuition and child care -- they'll help hard working Americans get ahead.
Creating opportunity also means creating good-paying jobs. More than a million Americans who were working three years ago have lost their jobs. African-American unemployment is now at 10 percent -- double the rate for whites. And the new jobs finally being created pay an average of $9,000 less a year.
We have a plan to keep and create good paying jobs here at home. Did you know that right now your tax dollars are being used to ship jobs from Philadelphia and Baltimore, Detroit and Boston overseas? That's inexcusable. When I am president, no longer will American workers have to subsidize the loss of their own jobs.
Values also mean giving all our children a first-rate education, with smaller classrooms and better paid teachers. Today, we see two school systems in America: one for the well off and one for the left out. For us and for you values mean opening the doors of opportunity to all our children. John Edwards and I have a plan to invest in our future, provide the needed funding and put a good teacher in every classroom - so that finally and truly no child is left behind.
Values mean making health care affordable and accessible for all Americans. In the last four years, four million people have lost their health insurance. Millions more are struggling to afford it. When I am in the White House we are going to change that. We are going to stop being the only industrial nation on the face of the earth that doesn't understand that health care is not a privilege for the wealthy, the connected or the elected. Health care is a right for all Americans.
We've got a plan to get the waste and greed out of our health care system and help families save up to $1,000 on their premiums.
Values mean making our country independent of Mideast oil. We've got a plan to invest in new technologies and alternative fuels and protect our environment, so that no young American in uniform is ever held hostage to our dependence on oil from the Middle East.
Values mean building a strong military and leading strong alliances, so no young American is ever put in harm's way because we needlessly insisted on going it alone. In our Administration, we'll never go to war because we want to; we'll only go to war because we have to.
Finally, I believe in the value of American leadership in the world. Today, a massive humanitarian crisis is unfolding in Darfur, Sudan, where 300,000 people or more may die in the coming months. This administration must stop equivocating. These government sponsored atrocities should be called by their rightful name -- genocide. The government of Sudan and the people of Darfur must understand that America stands prepared to act, in concert with our allies and the UN, to prevent the further loss of innocent lives. The United States must lead the UN Security Council in sanctioning the planners and perpetrators of genocide and authorizing an international humanitarian intervention. As president, I will bring the full weight of American leadership to address this crisis and to promote the democratic hopes of people throughout Africa, Haiti and the Caribbean.
And no crisis challenges the American conscience more than the growing global AIDS pandemic. This audience needs no reminder of the bitter toll that AIDS has exacted here at home. As president, I will make a commitment that by 2008, we will double the amount that America spends fighting global epidemics like AIDS to $30 billion. Fighting AIDS will make us safer, because societies ravaged by AIDS are more likely to become failed states and havens for terrorists. But more than that, fighting AIDS is a moral obligation. How can we see the suffering of so many and turn aside or do too little? If we do not help, who will?
This is the most important election of our lifetime. Our health care is on the line. Our jobs are on the line. Our children's future is on the line. America's role in the world is on the line.
That is why we cannot accept a repeat of 2000. This November, thanks to the efforts of the NAACP and heightened vigilance across the nation, we are not only going to make sure that every vote counts; we're going to make sure that every single vote is counted.
One way to do that is to fulfill the promise of election reform by reauthorizing the expiring provisions of the Voting Rights Act, and vigorously enforcing all our voting rights laws. It is a great injustice to us all when African-Americans are denied their fundamental right to vote. On Election Day in your cities, my campaign will provide teams of election observers and lawyers to monitor elections and enforce the law.
I am also happy to report that we have included language in our convention platform calling for legislative action that will ensure that voting systems are accessible, independently auditable, accurate and secure. We intend to enforce the fundamental constitutional right of every American to vote - to ensure that the Constitution's promise is fully realized and that, in disputed elections, every vote is counted fully and fairly. We learned our lesson in 2000, and I add my voice to those who have vowed: never again.
But this election is more in your hands more than in mine. Over the next four months, we need you to do what nobody in America does better -- register voters and get them to the polls.
We can provide a new direction for America if we remember that in all the great movements for civil rights and equal rights, the environment and economic justice for all, we have come together as one America to give life to our highest ideals.
When I was in Vietnam, I served on a small boat in the Mekong Delta with men who came from places as diverse as South Carolina and Iowa...Arkansas and California. We were literally all in the same boat -- and we came together as one. No one asked us our politics. No one cared where we went to school or what our race or backgrounds were.
We were just a band of brothers who all fought under the same flag and all prayed to the same God. Today, we're a little older, we're a little greyer. But we still know how to fight for our country. And what we are fighting for is an America where all of us truly are in the same boat.
My friends, the America we believe in is calling us to service once again, and we must answer.
The great poet Langston Hughes put it this way:
Let America be America again...Let it be the dream it used to be...for those whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain, whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain must bring back our mighty dream again.
With your help, in 2004, we can...we must...we will...bring back our mighty dream again.
Thank you and God bless you all.
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the next "black president"?
"front-porch tour"? sounds kinda racist to me
maybe if they are sitting on their "front porch", they aren't looking for a job and could care less how many jobs have been created but care about the size/increase of their unemployment check ...
calls Bush is a divider of "race" yet herman munster here is the one comparing whitey stats to blacks, brings up the "genocide" of blacks in sudan, voting issues based on the color of their skin, lack of health care based on race, yada-yada-yada...ya, some uniter...
this guy is a card carrying certified arse-clown if there ever was one - he maybe more full of it than slick willie, and i did not think that was possible..
'NEVER AGAIN" --- LOL what a clown
