people can succeed. look, the genius of america is the free enterprise system and freedom. and the fact that people can go out there and start a business, work on an idea, make their own decisions. but as abraham lincoln understood, there are also some things we do better together. so in the middle of the civil war, abraham lincoln said let s help to finance the transcontinental railroad. let s start the national academy of sciences. let s start land grant colleges, because we want to give these gateways of opportunity for all americans, because if all americans are getting opportunity, we re all going to be better off. that doesn t restrict people s freedom. that enhances it. so what i ve tried to do as president is to apply those same principles. and when it comes to education. what i ve said is we ve got to reform schools that are not working. we used something called race to the top. it wasn t a top-down approach
let s start land grant colleges, because we want to give these gateways of opportunity for all americans, because if all americans are getting opportunity, we re all going to be better off. that doesn t restrict people s freedom. that enhances it. so what i ve tried to do as president is to apply those same principles. and when it comes to education. what i ve said is we ve got to reform schools that are not working. we used something called race to the top. it wasn t a top-down approach governor. what we ve said to states, we will give you more money if you initiate reforms. and as a consequence, you had 46 states around the country who have made a real difference. but what i ve also said is let s hire another 100,000 math and science teachers to make sure we maintain our technological lead to make sure our skilled and able to succeed and hard-pressed states right now can t all do that. in fact we ve seen layoffs of hundreds of thousands of teachers over the last several
teachers and he ll refurbish the school buildings. grant it the aft like it maybe your people like it but it isn t a national plan for economic development and tonight they said what s your difference and that s all he could come up with is something about the teachers. where s the national macroeconomic plan to get us out of these doldrums. i think he talks about education in a much different way as well. and not just talk about. he s done it. he talked about the race to the top tonight. as a former urban school superintendent that s done more to reform schools across the country than anything else the federal government has ever done but there needs to be more than that as well. he s talked about manufacturing and tax policy that s rewarding job growth and wage growth in the united states. that s what the people that i represent want after two decades of declining median family income they d like to see some economic growth and wage and growth and they believe he s more capable o
i know that that could have been me. because they threaten me with the death penalty. another advantage to living in minimum security is visitation. these inmates can receive visitors three days a week. kiss. i have mixed emotions when i m in visit with my mother. i know that she s hurting for me being in here. i know she may blame herself sometime for what happens. her birthday is next week. mine is coming up. you think she s going to be mad if i won t be able to get anything? no. i m going to get them something. so you don t have to worry about that. we need him at home if we can ever get him there. there we need him at home. it s really painful to visit. when you see that person, your loved one walking out and you re walking back to be strip searched, i mean, that s just deep. i ve been locked up virtually since age 12 in reform
producers they were wrongly convicted. innocent of their crimes. they long for the day when they re free again. that s what made the case of richard z. hall so baffling. when we met him, ziggy was fighting to stay in prison. life out on the street wasn t all that great. so i just looked arod me and say, hey, this is where it s at. we met ziggy at the river bend maximum security institution in tennessee, the last stop in a long life of incarceration. i ve been locked up virtually since age 12 in institutions and reform schools and prisons and penal farms, and i m in here this time for prying into an empty drawer in the lobby of a hospital. i received a life sentence under what they called the habitual criminal clause because i ve been convicted so many times before for theft, shoplifting,