This is the direct download link for John Edwards' latest Podcast episode, which includes his speech to the National Press Club.

It is inspiring to hear a leading candidate for the Presidency in 2008 making issues of the poor his top priority. This guy could be talking about anything (or nothing).

God bless him.

In an email this morning from the One America Committee, John Edwards says " I believe we can end poverty in the United States within 30 years. We can start by cutting poverty by one-third over the course of the next decade. That's moving 12 million Americans out of poverty in ten years."

The Senator goes on to say "Achieving bold goals like ending poverty in the United States within 30 years will not be easy. It will take the best in us - our sacrifice, commitment, hard work and deep faith. But how we respond to the plain fact that millions of our own people are living in squalor and despair says everything about our Party and the country we believe in."

Here's the full report, as printed in the Sunday April 2nd Edition of The Guardian.

The most important statistic may just be found in the following.

Though the headline and slant of the story relates mostly to expectations that Katrina would change things, and that those expectations haven't panned out, it is astonishing to me that something approaching two-thirds of respondents "support state intervention to reduce poverty." Far from eliciting disappointment that the post-Katrina "bounce" wasn't greater, this information should give us hope that there is broad support for anti-poverty efforts.

Read the News Release on the Stanford Report noted in the AP Story.

Here's one final question to ponder. Why are those "who don't believe in the state's ability to reduce poverty or inequality" labelled "realists?" The overwhelming body of evidence over the last seventy years could not be more to the contrary. Government policy, in particular tax policy, has had a major impact (for better or worse) on the rate and the severity of these social ills.

The National Community Action Foundation has issued this press release on the Bush Administration's 2007 Budget Proposal, which includes the termination of CSBG, a freeze in Head Start, a cut of nearly 1/3 to Weatherization Assistance and a freeze or reduction in LIHEAP.