— He wants to create a national plan to pay ONE YEAR of public-college tuition, fees and books for more than two million students.
— Was the first candidate to create an agenda to address climate change, answering student activists and calling for a ban on all new coal plants.
— Edwards supports civil unions, but not gay marriage.
— He wants to end poverty completely at home by the year 2036, but has been criticized for that $400 dollar hair cut.
— Wants to have universal healthcare by asking businesses and government to work together and wants to create better healthcare markets that are more fair, diverse and extensive. And once insurance is affordable, require everyone to have it.
— Wants to stop the escalation and start an immediate drawdown of troops in Iraq.
— Wants to encourage and reward responsibility from fathers, requiring fathers on welfare to work and help them find jobs to help support single mothers. This is currently not a law in place for welfare reform.
— He wants to strengthen public schools by investing in good teachers and the retention of candidates in rural and urban districts.

— Wants to make sure we work with the cooperation of international community to aggregate intelligence to root out and shut down terrorist cells.
— Wants to control borders, stop illegal trafficking and at the same time end the backlog of background checks for people who already live in this country and are applying to become citizens. He does not think it is realistic to deport more than 12 million people, but rather believes that keeping families together should be a priority of immigration laws.

Some interesting personal facts:
— Four children: Wade (killed at age 16 in car accident), Cate (attending Harvard Law School), 25, Emma Claire, 9, and Jack 7.
— His wife, Elizabeth, is battling breast cancer; they met in law school.
— His favorite musician is Bruce Springsteen.
— His favorite movie is "Shawshank Redemption."
— First Car: Plymouth Duster

OK, this is just a start. Get your brains working, and I know you will have plenty to ask about. Ask him to prove it, to back it up, counter his views, state your opinions, and let's make sure these politicians know exactly how loud we can be!

xoxo

MTV, CBS and the New York Times did a poll of 659 17-29 year olds to ask them a whole lot of questions about politics, life, and this upcoming election. It’s a big study, so I just pulled some interesting facts I thought you guys might want to know about before asking that amazing question online at MySpace on Thursday!

--80% of you guys believe you will have an impact on this election. (Now let’s turn that into a promise!)
--More of you gals out there believe you will have an impact on this election than our male buddies. (Not that the brothers aren’t out there!)

--Here are the top 5 issues that you care most about:
1. Jobs/Economy (including the issue of job training.)
2. Iraq (most of you think that things are going very badly over there.)
3. Education (especially the issue of student loans)
4. Environment (with a big want to reduce oil consumption.)
5. Health Care Coverage (duh!)

--When asked if our President is doing a “good job”: 70% of the guys and 62% of the ladies disapproved.
--When asked the general question: is this country going in the right direction or on the wrong track? It was an almost even distribution of guys and girls saying we are on the wrong track.

Some other interesting facts: 7 out of 10 of those polled said they had no problem voting for someone who has smoked marijuana. (I don’t know, that made me kinda laugh, so I thought I’d throw that in there….just goes to show, maybe we’re a lot more concerned with some REAL issues.)

Another interesting Wiki fact, this is the first election without incumbents in the primaries since 1928! It just makes things more exciting…new blood, fresh ideas, BIG POTENTIAL FOR CHANGE!

Just a little research to help you get those burning questions out there on Thursday!

xoxo