I’m blogging from the Bright Hope Baptist Chuch in North Philadepphia. It’s across the street from Temple University. ACORN is hosting a candidate forum. Three presidential aspirants will be speaking shortly (and you can stream it at that second link above). Hillary is speaking at 2:45, followed by Dennis Kucinich at 3:30, and John Edwards at 4:30.
We’ve already heard from Rep. Chaka Fattah and Democratic mayoral nominee Michael Nutter. I thought they both made strong speeches. In fact, I’ve never seen Fattah do a better speech.
If you don’t know about ACORN and the work they do, you should take some time to find out and maybe send them a check. If you care about poverty and housing, you can’t do much better than supporting ACORN.
Star Hillary has entered the building and she’s wearing a bright coral pantsuit.
Will someone list Bill Clinton’s DLC accomplishments in the area of poverty reduction? I can’t get by the “changing welfare as we know” it line. Just what did Republican Lite mean for the poor back in the 90s.
And is Hillary talking about doing more for the poor that seems more than talk?
Compared to Edwards, she brought little to the table.
Edwards is pushed a $9.50 minimum wage, universal health care (Hillary is too), programs to make sure everyone can go to college, expanding the EITC, and also just making poverty the central issue of his campaign.
And isn’t that just why Edwards’ campaign has never gotten off the ground. Since Reagan, the American public just hasn’t given a shit about poverty.
speech starting now.
a little disruption here from a relatively young Muslim man that was holding up a Koran and chanting something incomprehensible and would not shut up.
Ever organized, Hillary’s team has just passed the press her five-point plan for addressing problems in the sub-prime lending mortgage market. It’s basically a plan to increase awareness of predatory loans, increase disclosure requirements, and introduce some kind of foreclosure ‘timeout’ where banks will offer to restructure loans. It’s all fine, except the loans should just be banned outright. If people without sufficient collateral or an acceptable risk factors need a loan, they should get it from government programs that can afford to accept a loss. Banks should not loan money to people unlikely to pay it back, and they especially shouldn’t be able to do it on purpose.
Kucinich just gave a rip-roaring speech that brought the church to its feet.