Should be required to protect her children and report child abuse if they no were suspected to be occurring. That is always been law of the land but sadly our recent court of appeals decision ignored decades of precedent. Lets see that matter straight. Lets get it straightened out. Protect every single child in new mexico. [applause] in addition to making sure children are safe we must ensure they are well cared for and provided safety nets that is why i support expanding the breakfast after the bell Program BeyondJust Elementary School to middle and High School Students as well. We will continue to expand the Summer Food Program because a little ones deserve to look forward to the summer break, not dreaded out of fear that they we will be happy. Happy. Now our greatest calling is to improve life for our children because they we will take place monday. And i want them to be better than we were better educated, better jobs stronger communities the spirit of a child is an amazing thing. Sadly, i interacted with children under the worst of circumstances throughout my career as a prosecutor. It was hard. My goal was to do justice for them and then ask god to give them the resilience and the ability to overcome the stars, the pain and that hurt. Looking back over a lifetime of service many of them did just that. Those those kids will tell me later i was determined not to let the adversity of my youth stand in the way of being the person i know that i was created to be. That is why it is so important that as leaders we never make decisions. Put the field on there potential. We have grown our economy to empower them so that when we tell them they can grow up to be anything they want they can be confident in that promise. We turn around a struggling school to empower the kids evaluate and help our teachers ensure they can read. Now. Now i will ask you to allow me to introduce to young people from oslo who are overcoming their very own adversity. I have gotten to no them. A gun to no them well over the past year ever since they became the victim of a horrible act of gun violence at the middle school. School. The last time we were gathered in this chamber together. In fact we were were both in the hospital receiving treatment for their injuries thankfully you have seen the beautiful smiles on the news a few times sense. This is Kendall Sanders and nathaniels device. So grateful to have them here. Lets give them a warm welcome. [applause] [applause] s. [applause] [applause] kendall needed to surgeries including one to replace a punctured artery. Nathaniel is blind in his left eye. Theirs was an unthinkable experience and the road to recovery we will belong. Kendall has said she wonders if she will ever be loved because of the scars she has yes, you are and will always be loved. We are going beyond that. You will also be successful. You too. Taking a Group Picture with several kids trying to get an. I almost tripped and fell. Such quiet confidence and with your injury he quietly said dont worry ill catch you. [applause] we are pulling for both of you, and it is my hope that our actions in this legislative session will stay firmly that we are pulling for every new mexico child to be as successful as their hearts desire, to go as far as they want to go to be whoever in life they want to be a the matter how they grew up no matter their background and no matter the adversity that they face. To do good and to be better than we were. Ladies and ladies and gentlemen, now is the time to choose progress over politics. Politics. Now is the time to be courageous and bold not comfortable and apathetic. Now is the time to commit to change and to reform that will better the lives of our children because they deserve our very best and best, and we should resolve to give it to them. [applause] [applause] our best days are ahead of us. God us. God bless you all. God bless our great state. Lets move forward for our children. Thank you. God bless new mexico. Here are a few of the comments we recently received. Very excited. I would have liked to here him talk a bit more about job security. I would like to here what policies are going to be in place here help people to hold onto the jobs that they have and people who are having a difficult time finding work. Well, i was actually unimpressed. You know maybe know, maybe i am a Little Old School but to me that universally paid Even Community college really takes away the initiative out of the student. I dont know. Maybe back in my error we had to work our way through college. We found a way to get through college. College. To those that have nothing that are flat broke potentially are should be some help but i think we have to be cautious and judicious on how we are throwing that money out and not just from a budgetary standpoint but what it does or doesnt do for the recipient. The republicans from iowa did make a comment that said you dont need to come from wealth and privilege to understand what is right for this country. I just want want to let everyone no that i am a firstgeneration american so i do understand what it means to build from nothing, to come to something that you can be proud of. We need to let go of old ways of thinking and embrace where we are as a country today. We need to continue to salute our troops and their sacrifices and embrace where our future is headed. I also want want to say that we still have so much ahead of us mastery is proven that we can be judgmental of our leaders. I just hope that in the next two years we can keep focused and hold tight to our values despite party lines to continue to grow our country. And continue to let us know what you think about the programs are watching. Call us. Email us. Send us a tweet. For every weekend the only Television Network devoted to nonfiction books and authors. Watch us an hd like us on Facebook Follow us on twitter. Recently sworn in for a 4th term during a ceremony at the state capital. He previously served as governor from 1995 until 2,003 only to return to the office again in 2011. This is 20 minutes. Thank you very much. I want to briefly recognize my two sisters who have come here today and, and, of course my son, logan. I also want to thank the general from the American National guard and the superintendent of the state police and all our 1st responders for everything they do. Wish you had tickets. I certainly wish i had. But it is amazing. I saw a guy on friday in fullblown front on beaver regalia black black sneakers, or depends, black shirt, or jacket black with an orange beaver on the and the a great big go ducks yellow sticker on his chest. Sure you felt the same, but all these people packing together all walks of life, and it doesnt matter. United united in the common cause of making sure that there team wins. Sometimes i wonder what it would take. Childhood hunger or education or creating jobs in and oregon. Thats what i want to talk to you about briefly this morning. 197936 years ago. Getting sworn in as a freshman member of the house of representatives. Right before we swore in a 32nd governor. I remember the 1st time. That was 30 years ago presiding over the 1985 legislative session and looking out at the names that are engraved. The men and women of our state. As it turns out, i spent most of my dough was in this building and love it very much. Since i had just been sworn in for the very last time ever take a few minutes and reflect about what i have learned over the last 36 years why did it. A little personal information, although thanks to our friends at all think there is much left out there my career really was the result of two things. The 1st was the fact that 67 years ago i was born to parents who were members of what was called the greatest generation. My mother was born in oregon in 1917 and they met in Washington University in 1939 and got married the next year. When the us entered the 2nd world war my father was drafted and left his wife of less than two years and boarded a troop transport for the dangerous trip across the north atlantic. Just before the ship sailed a red cross volunteer came on board and told my father his 1st child had been born. My father landed in france and launched across europe. And from the day he was drafted including the seven months he was with patents army in europe the parents wrote to each other almost every day. I always thought it was kind of a poignant tribute that they kept all those letters. In 2002 my father edited them and put them in a volume that he simply called the war letters. This is really a remarkable document. And it chronicles the lives of two ordinary people, regular citizens and the amazing sacrifices that they made to win the war and to rebuild the world and its aftermath. Before he died i used to father of every year on june 6, 6th the anniversary of dday and would thank them for seven the world. That is exactly what the generation did. Not only did they win the 2nd world war, they created a Higher Education system, gave us gave us the Civil Rights Movement and landmark environmental legislation, put in place the great social programs Social Security and medicare and medicaid and in their spare time they cured polio eradicated smallpox and went to the moon. So i grew up in an era where people still believe in government and believe that it was a vehicle through which we can do Amazing Things for a whole society. I still believe it. Im here today because i still believe in our government does a competence are only possible if they are driven by a sense of common purpose. It was very clear and unambiguous, to defeat not to germany and the axis powers rebuild america and do all that they could to make sure that their children were better off than they were. Today things are a little more ambiguous. Problems are more complex, often interrelated, a little Obvious Solutions with little low hanging fruit and almost no quick fixes in a a nation addicted to fast food and instant gratification. The need for common purpose is just as important today as it was 70 years ago. A sense of common purpose is the one essential ingredient necessary to build community which allows people to come together and do collectively things that we will be difficult or impossible for them to do by themselves and as a sense of common purpose which offers the adhesiveness oppose us together and allows us to act in concert as a community. That brings me to Robert Kennedy and the influence he had on my life. 21yearold College Student when Bobby Kennedy ran for president , and it was a remarkable campaign, unlike any ive seen before or after. It was a campaign that after. It was a campaign that truly focused on equity and opportunity, a campaign about unrepresented farmworkers in california, i campaign about poverty and hunger and children starving to death in the mississippi delta and on the Pine Ridge Reservation can i campaign that asked difficult and disturbing questions about gdp that measured wealth but not wellbeing by questions about how we can allow this to exist these contradictions, and it asked questions about who we were and how we treat one another as americans and fellow human beings. A very short campaign, lasting 8282 days from when he announced and so when he was assassinated on june 6 which interestingly enough was the 21st anniversary of dday. I was inspired by that campaign because of his sincerity, his passion his courage to speak from the heart and say things that needed to be said and for the moment that he died in los angeles i knew that this is where i wanted to be an wanted to commit myself to public service. To me the central message and Bobby Kennedys last campaign was this a sense of common purpose is essential to build community and if community is what allows us to come together to do collectively things that we cannot do individually and the strength of the community is inversely proportional to the level of disparity or inequality that exists within a. What Robert Kennedy was doing in that campaign was calling out the disparities and the inequalities in our society and asking people why we allow them to exist. That exist. That made a lot of people really uncomfortable. It was 46 years ago, and asking the same questions today still makes a lot of people really am comfortable, but those questions need to be asked and answered because disparity is the enemy of community separating us, divides us, reflects inequality reflects a lack of fairness and says somebody is being left behind, somebody is being excluded and if you are the person being excluded from the community, then there is no sense of common purpose. Without common purpose you can have community, and if we dont have community we dont have the capacity to meet the challenges that face us today as a society and the state. Last week i had the honor of speaking at our state business summit. The theme of that summit was in it together. A commitment to ensure that all of us have the opportunity to achieve a greater share of prosperity prosperity command i must tell you i am proud to live in a state with the business communitys end that set goals for collective action around education infrastructure, rural economic development. Even if we are successful in meeting those goals and i support each and every one of them we we will not succeed in getting all oregonians a greater share of prosperity was going to have the courage and honesty to question one basic fact the inherent contradiction between a growing economy and the increasingly desperate plight of hundreds of thousands of our fellow oregonians. Sometimes i feel i feel a bit disingenuous using the word economic recovery because i am certain that that term does not have much meaning for hundreds of thousands of people in the state today. We currently measure economic recovery in two ways, how many jobs we are creating and how fast the state gdp is growing. By those metrics we are doing really well. We had gained back all the jobs were lost and as measured by growth from gdp we have the 5th Fastest Growing economy in the nation in 2,011. Here is the question, how does that actually translate into the wellbeing of our fellow oregonians . In terms of an ability to support families and meet basic needs to treat kids and the answer is not very well not very well. It is not that we are creating wellpaying jobs. We are. This is actually something that has been going on for a long time between 1945 the end of the 2nd world war and the mid1970s mid 1970s, productivity grew 96 percent and wages grew by 94 percent. Between the mid1970s and 2011 productivity 2011 productivity increased 80 percent and wages increased 10 percent. The. Is, our workers are more productive than ever before but are not sharing equitably and the welfare helping to create. That trend is increasing. It seems to me that should be troubling to all of us because one of the basic predicates is to believe that an america hard work is actually rewarded with a better life. That is something not not the case for a growing number of people. A growing number of people are trapped in lowpaying jobs which they cannot possibly raise a a family with absolutely no hope of moving our moving up. Why . s wire one out of five still living in poverty . Why are over 30 of our children facing Food Insecurity on a regular basis . Why is unemployment among latinos 27 and among africanamericans, native americans, hawaiians, pacific islanders, and those with disabilities over, and those with disabilities over 30 percent. Most importantly, why is this acceptable . I think we can all agree that the situation is not only unfair but it divides us and adds to the disparities in our community and makes it harder for us to come together in common cause. The answers to these questions are complicated. I know that. But if we begin to ask the right questions, if we begin to ask direct questions i know we can make progress. An organ economy that move some and leaves others behind slows down progress for all of us. As thomas been shot observed in his novel if they can get you asking the wrong questions you dont have to worry about the answers. If the only questions we are asking is how fast the state gdp is growing and we dont have to worry about the quality is. But if we are willing to come together and ask these are questions and hold on for the purpose that it is our intent to lift up the whole community, not just part of it confidence we can move ahead. Forty years 40 years ago i finished up my in denver colorado. Twentyseven yearold invincible er dr. Who is young and really naive and idealistic. Ten years later in 1978 four years later, ten years after Bobby Kennedy was killed try to save the world but my parents had. I have learned a few things along the way. Saving the world is a lot harder than it sounds. It does not happen with a flash of lightning or a cup of thunder command it does not flow from inspirational speeches. Robert kennedy was inspirational but i have absolutely no idea whether he would have been a good or effective president. To achieve what Robert Kennedy dreamed would have taken a lot of hard, unglamorous work in the trenches making compromises dealing with egos balancing egos, balancing conflicting agendas, being patient and tenacious in the face of setbacks showing up hanging in there not giving up. The role of government is not to fix things but to create a space where people can fix things for themselves and you cannot advance the common good from salem but only by engaging people where they live and showing them that they have a stake in the problem in some sense of ownership in the solution. We are doing that every day here throughout Regional Solutions committees coordinate a chair organizations, Early Learning hubs watershed councils, watershed councils and through the Oregon Business plan. Here is Something Else i learned my people in our state and across this land want community. They year and for a sense of belonging and some greater common purpose. After