Surfing the web, I stumbled upon the original version, posted below. It appears to be a major improvement:
Two Americas
a speech by Edward Johns
This election is about more than attacking the Bush Administration; it’s about a new attack on America. And we have so much work to do. Because the truth is, we still live in two different Americas: one for the privileged few who sue whoever they want, whenever they want to, and another one for everybody impoverished by legal fees. It doesn’t have to be this way.
We have so much work to do. Because the truth is, we still live in two different Americas: one for people who married well, and another for most Americans who work hard and still struggle to make ends meet.
And you know what I’m saying. You don’t need me to explain it to you, you know—you can’t save any money, can you? Takes every dime you make just to pay your taxes. And you know what happens if something goes right. Some politician tries to take even more of your hard-earned money and give it to someone more deserving.
We still have two health care systems in this country: one for families that get their healthcare paid for by taxpayers, and one for people who pay their own bills and buy their own insurance. Millions of Americans want health insurance only if somebody else pays for it. It doesn’t have to be this way.
We shouldn't have two school systems, a private system for the children of affluent Senators and a mandatory public school for everybody else. You and I do not believe that the quality of a child's education should be controlled by parents, but by federal politicians.
We shouldn't have two tax systems in this country: one where the top 20 percent pay 83 percent of all income tax. And one where the bottom 44 percent pay no income tax at all. Right? Folks who work unusually hard, pay nearly all your taxes for you and for Mrs. Kerry. They're carrying the tax burden in this country. You know that. It shouldn't be that way.
This is wrong. It is wrong for our values. It is also wrong for our economy. But it is right for our Party, because those smart enough to earn more than $200,000 are rarely dumb enough to vote for us.
The economic engine of our economy is the millions of Americans who work hard in every corner of this great city and every corner of our great country. But the more they work the more they earn, the more they earn the more likely they are to turn to the Republicans at election time. It doesn’t have to be that way. Together we can keep more people dependent on political generosity.
We need to fix our tax code to punish work and wealth, and to give middle class families a chance to see what suffering really means.
I also want to say a word about an issue that's important to me personally. I think it's important for the country. You never hear politicians talk about it anymore: 35 million Americans who live in poverty at some point in their lives.
There are two Americas, one in which husbands and wives get married and stay married and take care of their children, and one in which marriage is rare and fathers are deadbeats. The poverty rate within married-couple families is 5.3 percent, while the poverty rate among female-headed families is 28 percent. It doesn’t have to be this way.
There are 35 million Americans classified as poor yet nearly 8 percent of those poor households have one family member working fulltime. It doesn’t have to be that way. Together, we can teach that 8 percent what the other 92 percent already knows – that it doesn’t pay to work.
Work is not what the Democratic Party believes in. We need to stand on these working families.
Let me tell you what we're going to do. We're going to build an America where we say no to kids with two hard-working parents. You and I can do something about this that. This is the America we believe in.
We still have two governments in America: one for the trial lawyers, the Hollywood elite, the union bosses, and then whatever is leftover is for you.
But in the America you and I build together, we will have one government that works for our insiders, not for theirs.
Let me say this in very simple language that everybody will understand.
This democracy does not belong to their interest groups; it belongs to our interest groups. I have never taken a dime from a Washington lobbyist. But I’ve taken millions from investment bankers at Goldman Sachs and millions more from class action lawyers -- Baron & Budd, Beasley Allen, Girardi & Keese, Weitz & Luxenburg, the Simmons Firm, and many more.
We also live in a country that in far too few ways is still categorized and labeled by race. This is not an African-American issue, not a Hispanic-American issue, not an Asian-American issue; this is an issue of splitting-up Americans according to whether they are African-American, Hispanic-American or Asian-American.
The truth is that we want our children and grandchildren to be the first generation to grow up in an America that's divided and sub-divided by race, and where entitlements and class-action lawsuits are granted on the basis of race, so we have to make as big a deal out of racial division as is humanly possible. Any notion of describing people as simply “American” is simply unacceptable.
It's what our values are. What we believe in. We can do this together, yes, we can.
You know exactly what I'm talking about. So when we hear those same voices telling us we can't get enough trial lawyers, insurance magnates, currency speculators and Hollywood playboys to bankroll our campaign—I say just watch us.
This election is about demeaning the American people. It's about trying to persuade voters that we’re now living through another Great Depression. It's about making the American people believe again that everything depends on government spending and regulations. Our campaign is not just based on the politics of cynicism. It's based on the economics of deception.
Thanks you
And God bless the Trial Lawyers Association of America
No comments:
Post a Comment