John Edwards Calls For Return Of Depression Era Programs

[Lex]

http://www.wral.com/news/4988718/detail.html

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Edwards Calls For Return Of Depression Era Programs

POSTED: 5:33 pm EDT September 18, 2005
UPDATED: 5:33 pm EDT September 18, 2005

INDIANOLA, Iowa -- Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards called Sunday for a return of depression era jobs programs to rebuild the hurricane ravaged Gulf Coast.

Edwards said those programs would give new hope and money to victims of Hurricane Katrina as well as rebuild shattered cities, such as New Orleans.

He used the Work Products Administration as an example of a depression era program that built parks, bridges and other facilities that are still being used.

"We ought to have a new WPA like was used during the depression to create jobs, and we ought to bring those folks who have been displaced back into New Orleans to rebuild their city," Edwards said. "Give them a decent wage and decent benefits. That's the way to help rebuild New Orleans they way it should be built.

"Not just rebuild the city, but rebuild people's lives," he said.

Edwards spoke to more than 1,300 hard-core Democratic activists at Sen. Tom Harkin's annual steak fry, just outside Indianola.

Since the last presidential election, where he was nominee John Kerry's running mate, Edwards has opened a center for the study of poverty issues at the University of North Carolina.

The rest of the article is good too, saying how Katrina has focused the country on issues of poverty right now and that should be put to good use.

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. in the meantime me worry

has not asked for amy sacrifice from the nation...

[jobycom]

2. While Bush calls for return to Depression Era.

[Robertwf]

3. Let's Call It Depressing Era

Whoa--what a novel idea! Create jobs! Pay people to do meaningful work to save their communities! Maybe they'll even ask us to buy savings bonds like they did during WW II!
When does it START?

[Independent_Liberal]

13. I agree, it is depressing.

You got that right.

[hwmnbn]

4. Might as well get a head start........

on the coming economic depression when our deficit bubble bursts.

It would make more sense to give the displaced persons these jobs first, as they have a stake in the project. It would also stimulate the local economy.

The only downside is that Haliburton's profits would disappear. tsk, tsk. I think the dems should push hard for this.

[Hidden Stillness]

5. Wow--Edwards Understands...

Now I'm really starting to get a sense that Edwards understands the situation and would actually help. You don't have to reinvent the wheel--all these things, and the understanding of how it would work, were already available all those years ago, from the Roosevelt Administration, and could have been having an anti-poverty, civilizing effect on society ever since, if only they hadn't been destroyed by a Republican-packed Supreme Court all those years ago. They would put people back to work, rebuild the infrastructure, and actually save money as there would be no "Halliburton grand larceny. " The most comprehensive plan for good government ever, was the entire, original New Deal, and if it could ever be gotten past the Republican devils and given to the American people, our whole society would be back on track.

[Tace]

6. We're Looking At A "Dark Age"

All this talk about recession or depression all misses the greater point -- we are on the verge of a Dark Age. I'm talking 1,000 years of back-sliding horror.

[kentuck]

7. John, we shall have no Depression Era program before its time...

And it won't be long. There has to be an awareness of the need first. Right now, people are not aware. We have to suffer some more. But thanks for your compassion and thoughtfulness.

[KoKo]

9. True....we have not suffered enough...

Most of us will need one before Bush "ends his reign." :-(

[KoKo]

8. Senator Kennedy was pushing for this right after Katrina...glad to see

that Edwards is on board.

[nadinbrzezinski]

10. many of us are behind it as well as national sacrifice

which Alfred E Neuman (me worry) did not ask for... they are so crass, and so amazing...

[Cleita]

11. What I think is that it's really shitty that we have to go

back to the Depression to reconstruct our country. We should have been way ahead of this by now. I really hate Republicans in ways I can't even describe anymore.

[nadinbrzezinski]

12. I know, I am a writer for crying out loud

and I have run out of words a while ago

[onager]

14. Edwards knows whereof he speaks

When he was a baby, his parents worked in a cotton mill in Upstate South Carolina.

My mother worked in the same mill and sometimes car-pooled with them.

The "elitist trial lawyer" bullshit was a Republican invention, on a par with the Swift Boat Cowards. Just like Bill Clinton and unlike any member of the Bush klan, Edwards earned his success the hard way.

Invoking the WPA might be very smart politics. There are still quite a few Southerners who remember their elderly relatives talking about FDR as the man who gave them hope when they had nothing else, during the Depression.

[nadinbrzezinski]

15. I know he did... I am one of the lucky ones

who was raised in some privilidge and then as my dad likes to point out, chose to marry a USN Sailor...

right now trying to get a home run bidness going to help suport us... huby is now out of the Navy as he retired and now working but still

[IndyJones]

16. Exactly what I wanted to hear last Thursday, but didn't.