http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/07/obama-harvard-video-derrick-bell-protest_n_1327320.html?ref=black-voices&ir=Black%20Voices





A young Obama, about 20 years ago. Protesting ...



Before Andrew Breitbart's unexpected death, the conservative blogger and journalist had promised to release video footage of President Barack Obama that he said would change the election. Now, BuzzFeed has unearthed the video it believes Breitbart was referring to, according to the site's editor-in-chief, Ben Smith.

If this is indeed the footage in question, it's not particularly controversial.

In the 1991 video, which BuzzFeed licensed from WGBH Boston, a young Obama is shown speaking in support of Harvard's first tenured black law professor, Derrick Bell. Bell was staging a protest over the lack of female black professors at the school, and was taking an unpaid leave until Harvard hired a woman of color.

As Bell said at the time, "My major effort in teaching is to convince students ... that they should be ready and able to take risks and make sacrifices for the things they believe in, and their real success in life will come from making those sacrifices and taking those risks, regardless of outcome. The best way to teach that is to practice it."

In the video, Obama, who was then president of the Harvard Law Review, is shown praising Bell, while the professor stands nearby and a crowd cheers. Obama recalls how Bell spoke at an orientation for first-year students, and instead of lecturing the students, encouraged conversation.

Obama doesn't sound much different than he does today, though his presentation has improved (he keeps his hands stuffed in his pockets during his entire speech). He employs his now-signature charm, flattering Bell's "good looks" and the "excellence of his scholarship."

The video ends with Obama urging the crowd to open up their hearts and minds to Bell.

Big Government, a conservative website founded by Breitbart, is claiming that the video released by BuzzFeed is selectively edited. It promises more video to come shortly.

BuzzFeed denied editing the video, and said the site published the video they purchased from WGBH in its entirety.

UPDATE: Two Breitbart.com editors went on Sean Hannity's Fox show on Wednesday night and revealed a slightly longer version of the video.

The difference between BuzzFeed's video and the one provided by Breitbart.com? A hug between Obama and Bell.

Hannity also showed a new video, this one of Harvard professor Charles Ogletree taken during a lecture. Ogletree plays the video of Obama at the 1991 protest, and quips that the clip had been "hidden" during the 2008 election. "Of course we hid this throughout the 2008 campaign," he said, as students laughed. "I don't care if they find it now."

Although the clip of the two men hugging may not be well-known, it hasn't exactly been hidden from the public. It was included in the 2008 FRONTLINE special, 'The Choice 2008.'

President Obama took a stand for women

March 2, 2012, 12:55 pm


Obama Backs Student in Furor With Limbaugh on Birth Control

By JONATHAN WEISMAN

8:50 p.m.
Updated WASHINGTON — The election-year fight over the administration’s birth control policy escalated Friday, with two unlikely figures — a Georgetown University law student and the conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh — taking center stage in the politically charged conflict and pulling much of official Washington into the fray.

Sandra Fluke attends law school at Georgetown.On Friday, one day after Senate Democrats beat back a Republican challenge to the new policy, President Obama called Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown student who had come under incendiary attack from Mr. Limbaugh, to thank her for publicly backing his regulations mandating contraception coverage.
The call by Mr. Obama to Ms. Fluke, an activist on the issue who had been barred by Republicans from testifying at a House hearing last month, provided new fuel to a dispute that has already spilled over into Congress and onto the campaign trail and was becoming a major source of contention between the two parties. Republicans have tried to use the issue to rally conservatives and Catholic voters who see the contraceptive mandate as an infringement on religious liberty.

But in Ms. Fluke and the scorn she has drawn from conservative commentators, Democrats may have found a symbol for what they have called a Republican “war on women” that could spell more difficulty for a Republican Party already showing signs of trouble with female voters.

The White House press secretary, Jay Carney, said the president told Ms. Fluke that he stood by her in the face of personal attacks on right-wing radio. Mr. Obama believes, Mr. Carney said, that Mr. Limbaugh’s comments about Ms. Fluke were “unfortunate attacks,” and Mr. Carney called them “reprehensible.”
Ms. Fluke, 30, also drew support from the president of Georgetown University, who has differed with her in the past over the university’s refusal to provide insurance coverage for contraception.
The university president, John J. DeGioia, said in a statement: “One need not agree with her substantive position to support her right to respectful free expression. And yet, some of those who disagreed with her position — including Rush Limbaugh and commentators throughout the blogosphere and in various other media channels — responded with behavior that can only be described as misogynistic, vitriolic, and a misrepresentation of the position of our student.”
Mr. Obama phoned her just before she was to appear on MSNBC.
“He encouraged me and supported me and thanked me for speaking out about the concerns of American women,” she told the program’s host, Andrea Mitchell. “And what was really personal for me was that he said to tell my parents that they should be proud. And that meant a lot, because Rush Limbaugh questioned whether or not my family would be proud of me.”
The tempest began after Ms. Fluke took public her campaign for contraceptive coverage at Georgetown, a Jesuit university in Washington, as Republicans and Catholic Church leaders were denouncing the Obama administration’s contraception mandate. Mr. Limbaugh subsequently called her a “slut” and a “prostitute,” drawing condemnation from Democrats.
On Friday, the House speaker, John A. Boehner, called the Limbaugh comments “inappropriate.” Rick Santorum, the former senator whose run for the Republican presidential nomination has thrust social conservatism into the spotlight, told CNN that Mr. Limbaugh was “being absurd.”

But, he added, “an entertainer can be absurd.”

In his radio show on Friday, Mr. Limbaugh said Ms. Fluke was being used as a political pawn by Democrats for fund-raising and other purposes.“The Democrats are desperate,” Mr. Limbaugh said. “This is all they’ve got, is to go out and try to discredit their critics, to impugn and discredit the people who disagree with them.”

Democratic groups were trying to capitalize on the fight, circulating calls for support for Ms. Fluke tied to fund-raising appeals.

“Personal attacks on a student — and all women — simply can’t be ignored,” said one appeal from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “Stand with us, and denounce Rush Limbaugh’s vile attacks.”
Ms. Fluke, a third-year law student, was no neophyte to the cause. She served as president and secretary of Georgetown Law Students for Reproductive Justice, as vice president of the Women’s Legal Alliance, and as an editor on The Georgetown Journal of Gender and the Law. In those capacities, Ms. Fluke, a Cornell graduate, had other run-ins with the university over contraception access.
A week after she was shut out of the House hearing, House Democrats gave her a platform at an informal Democratic event where she testified that fellow students at her Jesuit university pay as much as $1,000 a year for contraceptives that are not covered by student health plans.
On his Wednesday show, Mr. Limbaugh said: “What does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute.” Those remarks and others whipped up a frenzy of denunciations, but on Thursday, Mr. Limbaugh held his ground, declaring: “If we’re going to pay for your contraceptives and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch.”
Mr. Boehner condemned those comments Friday, but also denounced Democratic fund-raising efforts stemming from the latest Limbaugh imbroglio.
“The speaker obviously believes the use of those words was inappropriate, as is trying to raise money off the situation,” said a Boehner spokesman, Michael Steel.
Some advertisers also expressed concern. On Friday, as complaints about Mr. Limbaugh’s comments mounted, a handful of companies said that they had halted their advertising on “The Rush Limbaugh Show,” at least temporarily. One of the companies, Quicken Loans, wrote on Twitter, “Due to continued inflammatory comments — along with valuable feedback from clients and team members — QL has suspended ads on Rush Limbaugh program.”

On Thursday, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House minority leader, said in a fund-raising appeal that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s “women’s health rapid response fund” had raised $1.1 million and was nearing 500,000 signatures “on our petition against Republicans’ disgraceful assault on women’s rights.”

By Friday afternoon, the campaign committee had raised $1.6 million since Feb. 24, the day after Representative Darrell Issa’s hearings on the issue. Two petition drives had netted 600,000 signatures; 152,000 signed the Democratic petition on Thursday alone.

Republicans condemned such efforts, but the National Republican Congressional Committee launched its own fund-raising campaign against what it called “the Obama administration’s decision to trample on the religious liberty of Christian charities — forcing them to provide free birth control.”
.

Sunday, February 5, 2012

President Obama Will Be Vindicated

As Ryan Lizza writes in the New Yorker: “Obama didn’t remake Washington. But his first two years stand as one of the most successful legislative periods in modern history. Among other achievements, he has saved the economy from depression, passed universal health care, and reformed Wall Street.”

So when are President Obama’s critics, people like Paul Krugman and Mitt Romney, going to offer President Obama an apology? Both have often loudly predicted that he made the economy worse and was putting America on the wrong economic path. Both are being proved wrong by the economic comeback we are in. I mention them not to pick on Krugman, who I respect or even on Romney (who I regard as a vapid twit bought and paid for by corporate interests) but to make a point: President Obama is going to have the last laugh on his critics, no matter what ideological spectrum they hail from.

President Obama is succeeding in spite of the fact that he’s been up against a Republican Party willing to destroy the economy in order to destroy him.

As the New Yorker notes:

“Two well-known Washington political analysts, Thomas Mann, of the bipartisan Brookings Institution, and Norman Ornstein, of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, agree. In a forthcoming book about Washington dysfunction, ‘It’s Even Worse Than It Looks,’ they write, ‘One of our two major parties, the Republicans, has become an insurgent outlier—ideologically extreme, contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime, scornful of compromise, unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science, and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.’"

We all know the Right's critique of the President has failed. Rush Limbaugh did not get his wish! But what of the Left? The tone of the criticism of the President on lefty blogs has been persistently negative and none too prescient. According to his critics on the Left President Obama "sold out to Wall Street." He didn't "bring the change he promised," he "is just like the Republicans," etc., etc.

And I'm not even counting the shrillest voices on the Left and Right who have accused President Obama of either/or undermining national security -- by being a "secret terror-codling Muslim" -- or using drones to "murder civilians," because "he is just like the Republicans and part of the corporatist elite."

I happen to be a white 59-year-old former Republican. I happen to be a former religious right leader who came to my senses in the mid 1980s and quit the hate and fear religious right machine. (I explain about why I left the religious right in my book Crazy For God.) I also happen to have been one of the most vocal (and one of the first) Huffington Post bloggers. I was blogging there when we emailed in blogs then were called by the person who posted them. I supported then Senator Obama, just about every week during the Democratic primary season in 08. Back then I had lots of company at HP from the top down. It seemed we were all rooting for Obama.

Not anymore. I still blog at HP and other sites like Alternet but have actually been kicked off several progressive sites for continuing to support the president. (No kidding.)

About 6 months into his presidency lots of bloggers at HP and elsewhere seemed to run out of patience not just with President Obama but with reality itself. President Obama "disappointed" them. I stuck with the President because I believed then, and believe now, that he is smarter, kinder, more reliable and morally superior to his critics let alone to the political alternatives. I also know that the presidency is not as powerful as many people seem to think it is including many liberal commentators who claim to live in a fact-based world. I'm grateful if any president can get anything good done at all.

The Left and Right have united in predicting President Obama's failure and even seeming to root for it, if nothing else to prove they were right. So will the "sky is falling" prophets of doom on the Left and Right -- who have made it a national pastime to predict the "failure" of the Obama presidency -- start to climb down now that all their dire predictions are falling flat re the economy (that Obama did not ruin!) and wars ending (that Obama did not start!)?

The wars are ending and the economy is coming back. Good for the country. Bad for the doom pundits of the Left and Right.

Anyone who thinks Obama didn't "bring change" fast enough is living in a fact-free dreamland. First, they have no, to little, idea about how limited the president’s powers are. Second, they have no idea what this president in particular faced. We'll get the change promised but it will take 2 full terms and it will never live up to the expectations of the utopian groupies of the Left who thought they’d voted for a messiah not a mere president.

So why has change taken "so long"?

Because:

• President Obama inherited a far bigger economic and foreign policy mess than anyone predicted....
• The Republicans obstructed our first black president far more ruthlessly (and with racist overtones) than any (sane) person would have predicted...
• President Obama's "friends" on the Left were as shortsighted and mean-spirited as his enemies on the Right...
• And until the Occupy Wall Street Movement came along the President wasn't getting the help he needed from the street to make the unfairness of American life that he's trying to fix into an issue.
• 
  The President - thanks to Occupy Wall Street – now controls the debate with the handy phrase of "the 1% v the 99%." Occupy Wall Street did more for moving the country forword and did more to help President Obama, than all the President's lefty critics combined.

Occupy Wall Street is doing what MLK and the civil rights movement did for Johnson: it provided the heat Johnson could then use to move his agenda forward. Obama too now has the wind of change at his back.

Sure, I, like anyone else, wish for more action from the President on many fronts. For instance I wish the President had not been so in love with the idea that we could be moving into a post-partisan world of cooperation.

As the New Yorker put it,

“Predictions that Obama would usher in a new era of post-partisan consensus politics now seem not just naïve but delusional. At this political juncture, there appears to be only one real model of effective governance in Washington: partisan dominance, in which a President with large majorities in Congress can push through an ambitious agenda… Many of Obama’s liberal allies have been disillusioned, too. When Steve Jobs last met the President, in February, 2011, he was most annoyed by Obama’s pessimism—he seemed to dismiss every idea Jobs proffered. ‘The president is very smart,’ Jobs told his biographer, Walter Isaacson. ‘But he kept explaining to us reasons why things can’t get done. It infuriates me.’ “Yet our political system was designed to be infuriating. As George Edwards notes in his study of Presidents as facilitators, the American system “is too complicated, power too decentralized, and interests too diverse for one person, no matter how extraordinary, to dominate.” Obama, like many Presidents, came to office talking like a director. But he ended up governing like a facilitator, which is what the most successful Presidents have always done. Even Lincoln famously admitted, ‘I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events controlled me.’"

Given my religious right background I'm one of the President's most unlikely fans. Maybe that's because I really know the alternative-- from the inside. I fear the alternative to the President - far right loons of the Tea Party/evangelical religious right ilk -- and have never felt I had the luxury of being an armchair lefty critic demoralizing Obama’s supporters because he’s the only person who stands between the village idiots and us.

Try Romney and the Mormons on for size if you think Obama has been “slow” to embrace gay marriage! Try Gingrich and the "Christian Zionists" if you think we tilted too far to the far right West Bank settlers and Israeli hardliners! Try the Koch brothers’ cronies if you think our president is “owned by Wall Street!”

I know what the stakes are. I know from the inside just how deranged, corrupt and awful the marriage between Wall Street and the unwashed Tea Party/Religious Right anti-abortion, racist, homophobic and misogynist mob really is. I know that these people will buy elections then try and turn America into a theocracy -- on matters of personal morality -- and into an Ayn Rand libertarian and heartless swamp where the 1% eat the rest of us-- when it comes to the economy.

So I've been grateful that a man of integrity, brains and kindness and reasonable moderation (not to mention moderate progressive religious faith) is leading America. I didn't just read about the alternative and "other" side. I was the other side and know what they are capable of.

When we hear that jobless numbers are going down faster than expected, that shoppers spent money over the holidays, that economic forecasts are being revised upward, that we are out of Iraq, that bin Laden is dead, that gays can serve in the military, that Wall Street and the banks are now under investigation, that a woman's right to choose is being protected... it's time for a reassessment of the President's critic's.

And NO I'm NOT saying that any president is above rebuke when you think he's wrong. But fair rebuke is one thing. The endless drip, drip of mindless "disappointed" negativity that has been the hallmark not just of Fox News but has been found on progressive blogs too, is another thing altogether. Enough already! Or at least have the integrity to admit when you're wrong.

The President keeps proving himself smarter than his detractors. More power to him.

President Obama will win in 2012. And 4 years later all that will be remembered about his critics is that they were impatient, deluded and wrong.

Given what was on his plate when he took office and the fact that we're successfully struggling out of both recession and 2 wars -- and succeeding -- President Obama is one of the best of the American presidents already. His second term will consolidate that verdict and bodes greatness as his legacy.

Frank Schaeffer is a writer.

http://dwightmckissic.wordpress.com/2010/05/05/is-anglo-criticism-of-president-obama%e2%80%99s-policies-racist/

Remarks by the President to UAW Conference


Washington Marriott Wardman Park

Washington, D.C.
11:30 A.M. EST


THE PRESIDENT: How's it going, UAW? (Applause.) It is good to be with some autoworkers today! (Applause.) All right. Everybody have a seat, get comfortable. Go ahead and get comfortable. I'm going to talk for a little bit. (Applause.)
First of all, I want to say thank you to one of the finest leaders that we have in labor -- Bob King. Give it up for Bob. (Applause.) I want to thank the International Executive Board and all of you for having me here today. It is a great honor. I brought along somebody who is proving to be one of the finest Secretaries of Transportation in our history -- Ray LaHood is in the house. Give Ray a big round of applause. (Applause.)
It is always an honor to spend time with folks who represent the working men and women of America. (Applause.) It’s unions like yours that fought for jobs and opportunity for generations of American workers. It’s unions like yours that helped build the arsenal of democracy that defeated fascism and won World War II. It's unions like yours that forged the American middle class -- that great engine of prosperity, the greatest that the world has ever known.
So you guys helped to write the American story. And today, you’re busy writing a proud new chapter. You are reminding us that no matter how tough times get, Americans are tougher. (Applause.) No matter how many punches we take, we don’t give up. We get up. We fight back. We move forward. We come out the other side stronger than before. That's what you've shown us. (Applause.) You're showing us what’s possible in America. So I’m here to tell you one thing today: You make me proud. (Applause.) You make me proud.
Take a minute and think about what you and the workers and the families that you represent have fought through. A few years ago, nearly one in five autoworkers were handed a pink slip -- one in five. Four hundred thousand jobs across this industry vanished the year before I took office. And then as the financial crisis hit with its full force, America faced a hard and once unimaginable reality, that two of the Big 3 automakers -- GM and Chrysler -- were on the brink of liquidation.
The heartbeat of American manufacturing was flat-lining and we had to make a choice. With the economy in complete free fall there were no private investors or companies out there willing to take a chance on the auto industry. Nobody was lining up to give you guys loans. Anyone in the financial sector can tell you that.
So we could have kept giving billions of dollars of taxpayer dollars to automakers without demanding the real changes or accountability in return that were needed -- that was one option. But that wouldn’t have solved anything in the long term. Sooner or later we would have run out of money. We could have just kicked the problem down the road. The other option was to do absolutely nothing and let these companies fail. And you will recall there were some politicians who said we should do that.
AUDIENCE: Booo --
THE PRESIDENT: Some even said we should "let Detroit go bankrupt."
AUDIENCE: Booo --
THE PRESIDENT: You remember that? (Applause.) You know. (Laughter.) Think about what that choice would have meant for this country, if we had turned our backs on you, if America had thrown in the towel, if GM and Chrysler had gone under. The suppliers, the distributors that get their business from these companies, they would have died off. Then even Ford could have gone down as well. Production shut down. Factories shuttered. Once-proud companies chopped up and sold off for scraps. And all of you, the men and women who built these companies with your own hands, would have been hung out to dry.
More than one million Americans across the country would have lost their jobs in the middle of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. In communities across the Midwest, it would have been another Great Depression. And then think about all the people who depend on you. Not just your families, but the schoolteachers, the small business owners, the server in the diner who knows your order, the bartender who’s waiting for you to get off. (Laughter.) That’s right. (Applause.) Their livelihoods were at stake as well.



And you know what was else at stake? How many of you who’ve worked the assembly line had a father or a grandfather or a mother who worked on that same line? (Applause.) How many of you have sons and daughters who said, you know, Mom, Dad, I'd like to work at the plant, too? (Applause.) These jobs are worth more than just a paycheck. They’re a source of pride. They’re a ticket to a middle-class life that make it possible for you to own a home and raise kids and maybe send them -- yes -- to college. (Applause.) Give you a chance to retire with some dignity and some respect. These companies are worth more than just the cars they build. They’re a symbol of American innovation and know-how. They're the source of our manufacturing might. If that’s not worth fighting for, what's worth fighting for? (Applause.)
So, no, we were not going to take a knee and do nothing. We were not going to give up on your jobs and your families and your communities. So in exchange for help, we demanded responsibility. We said to the auto industry, you're going to have to truly change, not just pretend like you're changing. And thanks to outstanding leadership like Bob King, we were able to get labor and management to settle their differences. (Applause.)

We got the industry to retool and restructure, and everybody involved made sacrifices. Everybody had some skin in the game. And it wasn’t popular. And it wasn’t what I ran for President to do. That wasn’t originally what I thought I was going to be doing as President. (Laughter.) But you know what, I did run to make the tough calls and do the right things -- no matter what the politics were. (Applause.)
And I want you to know, you know why I knew this rescue would succeed?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: How did you do it? (Laughter.)
THE PRESIDENT: You want to know? It wasn’t because of anything the government did. It wasn’t just because of anything management did. It was because I believed in you. I placed my bet on the American worker. (Applause.) And I’ll make that bet any day of the week. (Applause.)



And now, three years later -- three years later, that bet is paying off -- not just paying off for you, it’s paying off for America. Three years later, the American auto industry is back. (Applause.) GM is back on top as the number-one automaker in the world -- (applause) -- highest profits in its 100-year history. Chrysler is growing faster in America than any other car company. (Applause.) Ford is investing billions in American plants, American factories -- plans to bring thousands of jobs back to America. (Applause.)

All told, the entire industry has added more than 200,000 new jobs over the past two and a half years -- 200,000 new jobs. And here’s the best part -- you’re not just building cars again; you’re building better cars. (Applause.)


After three decades of inaction, we’re gradually putting in place the toughest fuel economy standards in history for our cars and pickups. That means the cars you build will average nearly 55 miles per gallon by the middle of the next decade -- almost double what they get today. (Applause.) That means folks, every time they fill up, they're going to be saving money. They'll have to fill up every two weeks instead of every week. That saves the typical family more than $8,000 at the pump over time. That means we’ll cut our oil consumption by more than 2 million barrels a day. That means we have to import less oil while we're selling more cars all around the world. (Applause.)
Thanks to the bipartisan trade agreement I signed into law -- with you in mind, working with you -- there will soon be new cars in the streets of South Korea imported from Detroit and from Toledo and from Chicago. (Applause.)
And today -- I talked about this at the State of the Union, we are doing it today -- I am creating a Trade Enforcement Unit that will bring the full resources of the federal government to bear on investigations, and we're going to counter any unfair trading practices around the world, including by countries like China. (Applause.) America has the best workers in the world. When the playing field is level, nobody will beat us. And we're going to make sure that playing field is level. (Applause.)



Because America always wins when the playing field is level. And because everyone came together and worked together, the most high-tech, fuel-efficient, good-looking cars in the world are once again designed and engineered and forged and built -- not in Europe, not in Asia -- right here in the United States of America. (Applause.)



I’ve seen it myself. I’ve seen it myself. I've seen it at Chrysler’s Jefferson North Plant in Detroit, where a new shift of more than 1,000 workers came on two years ago, another 1,000 slated to come on next year. I’ve seen it in my hometown at Ford’s Chicago Assembly -- (applause) -- where workers are building a new Explorer and selling it to dozens of countries around the world.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I'm buying one, too.
THE PRESIDENT: There you go. (Laughter.) I’ve seen it at GM’s Lordstown plant in Ohio -- (applause) -- where workers got their jobs back to build the Chevy Cobalt, and at GM’s Hamtramck plant in Detroit -- (applause) -- where I got to get inside a brand-new Chevy Volt fresh off the line -- even though Secret Service wouldn’t let me drive it. (Laughter.) But I liked sitting in it. (Laughter.) It was nice. I'll bet it drives real good. (Laughter.) And five years from now when I’m not President anymore, I’ll buy one and drive it myself. (Applause.) Yes, that's right.

AUDIENCE: Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!

THE PRESIDENT: I know our bet was a good one because I had seen it pay off firsthand. But here’s the thing. You don't have to take my word for it. Ask the Chrysler workers near Kokomo -- (applause) -- who were brought on to make sure the newest high-tech transmissions and fuel-efficient engines are made in America. Or ask the GM workers in Spring Hill, Tennessee, whose jobs were saved from being sent abroad. (Applause.) Ask the Ford workers in Kansas City coming on to make the F-150 -- America’s best-selling truck, a more fuel-efficient truck. (Applause.) And you ask all the suppliers who are expanding and hiring, and the communities that rely on them, if America’s investment in you was a good bet. They’ll tell you the right answer.

And who knows, maybe the naysayers would finally come around and say that standing by America's workers was the right thing to do. (Applause.) Because, I've got to admit, it's been funny to watch some of these folks completely try to rewrite history now that you're back on your feet. (Applause.) The same folks who said, if we went forward with our plan to rescue Detroit, "you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye." Now they're saying, we were right all along. (Laughter.)
Or you've got folks saying, well, the real problem is -- what we really disagreed with was the workers, they all made out like bandits -- that saving the auto industry was just about paying back the unions. Really? (Laughter.) I mean, even by the standards of this town, that’s a load of you know what. (Laughter.)
About 700,000 retirees had to make sacrifices on their health care benefits that they had earned. A lot of you saw hours reduced, or pay or wages scaled back. You gave up some of your rights as workers. Promises were made to you over the years that you gave up for the sake and survival of this industry -- its workers, their families. You want to talk about sacrifice? You made sacrifices. (Applause.) This wasn't an easy thing to do.
Let me tell you, I keep on hearing these same folks talk about values all the time. You want to talk about values? Hard work -- that’s a value. (Applause.) Looking out for one another -- that’s a value. The idea that we're all in it together, and I'm my brother's keeper and sister's keeper -- that’s a value. (Applause.)
They're out there talking about you like you're some special interest that needs to be beaten down. Since when are hardworking men and women who are putting in a hard day's work every day -- since when are they special interests? Since when is the idea that we look out for one another a bad thing?
I remember my old friend, Ted Kennedy -- he used to say, what is it about working men and women they find so offensive? (Laughter.) This notion that we should have let the auto industry die, that we should pursue anti-worker policies in the hopes that unions like yours will buckle and unravel -– that’s part of that same old "you are on your own" philosophy that says we should just leave everybody to fend for themselves; let the most powerful do whatever they please. They think the best way to boost the economy is to roll back the reforms we put into place to prevent another crisis, to let Wall Street write the rules again.



They think the best way to help families afford health care is to roll back the reforms we passed that’s already lowering costs for millions of Americans. (Applause.) They want to go back to the days when insurance companies could deny your coverage or jack up your rates whenever and however they pleased. They think we should keep cutting taxes for those at the very top, for people like me, even though we don’t need it, just so they can keep paying lower tax rates than their secretaries.

Well, let me tell you something. Not to put too fine a point on it -- they’re wrong. (Laughter.) They are wrong. (Applause.) That’s the philosophy that got us into this mess. We can’t afford to go back to it. Not now.
We’ve got a lot of work to do. We’ve got a long way to go before everybody who wants a good job can get a good job. We’ve got a long way to go before middle-class Americans fully regain that sense of security that’s been slipping away since long before this recession hit. But you know what, we’ve got something to show -- all of you show what’s possible when we pull together.
Over the last two years, our businesses have added about 3.7 million new jobs. Manufacturing is coming back for the first time since the 1990s. Companies are bringing jobs back from overseas. (Applause.) The economy is getting stronger. The recovery is speeding up. Now is the time to keep our foot on the gas, not put on the brakes. And I’m not going to settle

for a country where just a few do really well and everybody else is struggling to get by. (Applause.)
We’re fighting for an economy where everybody gets a fair shot, where everybody does their fair share, where everybody plays by the same set of rules. We’re not going to go back to an economy that’s all about outsourcing and bad debt and phony profits. We’re fighting for an economy that’s built to last, that’s built on things like education and energy and manufacturing. Making things, not just buying things -- making things that the rest of the world wants to buy. And restoring the values that made this country great: hard work and fair play, the chance to make it if you really try, the responsibility to reach back and help somebody else make it, too -- not just you. That’s who we are. That’s what we believe in. (Applause.)
I was telling you I visited Chrysler’s Jefferson North Plant in Detroit about a year and a half ago. Now, the day I visited, some of the employees had won the lottery. Not kidding. They had won the lottery. Now, you might think that after that they’d all be kicking back and retiring. (Laughter.) And no one would fault them for that. Building cars is tough work. But that’s not what they did. The guy who bought --
AUDIENCE MEMBER: What did they do?
THE PRESIDENT: Funny you ask. (Laughter.) The guy who bought the winning ticket, he was a proud UAW member who worked on the line. So he used some of his winnings to buy his wife the car that he builds because he’s really proud of his work. (Applause.) Then he bought brand new American flags for his hometown because he’s proud of his country. (Applause.) And he and the other winners are still clocking in at that plant today, because they’re proud of the part they and their coworkers play in America’s comeback.

See, that’s what America is about. America is not just looking out for yourself. It’s not just about greed. It’s not just about trying to climb to the very top and keep everybody else down. When our assembly lines grind to a halt, we work together and we get them going again. When somebody else falters, we try to give them a hand up, because we know we’re all in it together.
I got my start standing with working folks who’d lost their jobs, folks who had lost their hope because the steel plants had closed down. I didn’t like the idea that they didn’t have anybody fighting for them. The same reason I got into this business is the same reason I’m here today. I’m driven by that same belief that everybody -- everybody -- should deserve a chance. (Applause.)

So I promise you this: As long as you’ve got an ounce of fight left in you, I’ll have a ton of fight left in me. (Applause.) We’re going to keep on fighting to make our economy stronger; to put our friends and neighbors back to work faster; to give our children even more opportunity; to make sure that the United States of America remains the greatest nation on Earth. (Applause.)

Thank you, UAW. I love you. God bless you. God bless the work you do. God bless the United States of America. (Applause.)
END

11:55 A.M. EST