Saturday, October 11, 2008

Franklin D. Roosevelt Inauguration Speech: 1933


This is as relevant today as it was then
"President Hoover, Mr. Chief Justice, my friends:

This is a day of national consecration. And I am certain that on this day my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our people impels. This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper.

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and of vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. And I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.

In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common difficulties. They concern, thank God, only material things. Values have shrunken to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; and the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone.

More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.

And yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.

True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They only know the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.

Yes, the money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.

Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and the moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days, my friends, will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.

Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing. Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, and on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live.

Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This Nation is asking for action, and action now.

Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our great natural resources.

Hand in hand with that we must frankly recognize the overbalance of population in our industrial centers and, by engaging on a national scale in a redistribution, endeavor to provide a better use of the land for those best fitted for the land. Yes, the task can be helped by definite efforts to raise the values of agricultural products and with this the power to purchase the output of our cities. It can be helped by preventing realistically the tragedy of the growing loss through foreclosure of our small homes and our farms. It can be helped by insistence that the Federal, the State, and the local governments act forthwith on the demand that their cost be drastically reduced. It can be helped by the unifying of relief activities which today are often scattered, uneconomical, unequal. It can be helped by national planning for and supervision of all forms of transportation and of communications and other utilities that have a definitely public character. There are many ways in which it can be helped, but it can never be helped by merely talking about it. We must act. We must act quickly.

And finally, in our progress toward a resumption of work we require two safeguards against a return of the evils of the old order; there must be a strict supervision of all banking and credits and investments; there must be an end to speculation with other people's money, and there must be provision for an adequate but sound currency.

These, my friends, are the lines of attack. I shall presently urge upon a new Congress in special session detailed measures for their fulfillment, and I shall seek the immediate assistance of the 48 States.

Through this program of action we address ourselves to putting our own national house in order and making income balance outgo. Our international trade relations, though vastly important, are in point of time and necessity secondary to the establishment of a sound national economy. I favor as a practical policy the putting of first things first. I shall spare no effort to restore world trade by international economic readjustment, but the emergency at home cannot wait on that accomplishment.

The basic thought that guides these specific means of national recovery is not narrowly nationalistic. It is the insistence, as a first consideration, upon the interdependence of the various elements in all parts of the United States of America--a recognition of the old and permanently important manifestation of the American spirit of the pioneer. It is the way to recovery. It is the immediate way. It is the strongest assurance that recovery will endure.

In the field of world policy I would dedicate this Nation to the policy of the good neighbor--the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others--the neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a world of neighbors.

If I read the temper of our people correctly, we now realize as we have never realized before our interdependence on each other; that we can not merely take but we must give as well; that if we are to go forward, we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline, because without such discipline no progress can be made, no leadership becomes effective. We are, I know, ready and willing to submit our lives and our property to such discipline, because it makes possible a leadership which aims at the larger good. This I propose to offer, pledging that the larger purposes will bind upon us, bind upon us all as a sacred obligation with a unity of duty hitherto evoked only in times of armed strife.

With this pledge taken, I assume unhesitatingly the leadership of this great army of our people dedicated to a disciplined attack upon our common problems.

Action in this image, action to this end is feasible under the form of government which we have inherited from our ancestors. Our Constitution is so simple, so practical that it is possible always to meet extraordinary needs by changes in emphasis and arrangement without loss of essential form. That is why our constitutional system has proved itself the most superbly enduring political mechanism the modern world has ever seen. It has met every stress of vast expansion of territory, of foreign wars, of bitter internal strife, of world relations.

And it is to be hoped that the normal balance of executive and legislative authority may be wholly adequate to meet the unprecedented task before us. But it may be that an unprecedented demand and need for undelayed action may call for temporary departure from that normal balance of public procedure.

I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require. These measures, or such other measures as the Congress may build out of its experience and wisdom, I shall seek, within my constitutional authority, to bring to speedy adoption.

But in the event that the Congress shall fail to take one of these two courses, in the event that the national emergency is still critical, I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then confront me. I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis--broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.

For the trust reposed in me, I will return the courage and the devotion that befit the time. I can do no less.

We face the arduous days that lie before us in the warm courage of national unity; with the clear consciousness of seeking old and precious moral values; with the clean satisfaction that comes from the stern performance of duty by old and young alike. We aim at the assurance of a rounded, a permanent national life.

We do not distrust the future of essential democracy. The people of the United States have not failed. In their need they have registered a mandate that they want direct, vigorous action. They have asked for discipline and direction under leadership. They have made me the present instrument of their wishes. In the spirit of the gift I take it.

In this dedication of a Nation we humbly ask the blessing of God. May He protect each and every one of us. May He guide me in the days to come."

Franklin D. Roosevelt - March 4, 1933

Hear it on audio

read more
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Atheism: The Honor of Facing Our Condition Without God

What is more conducive to atheism than the study of religion?

I attended Roman Catholic Seminary throughout my high school years, as a willing and obedient believer in Church doctrine - every bit of it! But over the years, it has become plain to me that God is simply irrelevant to any question of acting morally: if you do right because you desire Heaven or fear Hell, you are not truly doing Right; you are merely economically efficient.

God is likewise unhelpful in figuring out moral questions. If you don't know enough not to steal, lie or kill, then you are a very foolish person indeed. And on the harder moral questions, God is unhelpfully vague.

But it is on the question of the afterlife that God still holds a promise: not that we will necessarily be rewarded or punished, but that we will not cease. Something in us fears The Great Dark, and no intellectual argument can still that fear. Along these lines, I enjoyed the following recent essay by Steven Weinberg
"The more we reflect on the pleasures of life, the more we miss the greatest consolation that used to be provided by religious belief: the promise that our lives will continue after death. As religious belief weakens, more and more of us know that after death there is nothing. Living without God isn't easy. But it offers an important consolation.

CONTINUED ..."
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Thursday, October 09, 2008

The Giant Pool of Money --- from "This American Life"

I enjoyed and learned a lot from This American Life's episode "The Giant Pool of Money" which could also be entitled "The Anatomy of a Lending Crisis".

It tells how a loosely regulated financial industry managed to bring the worlds markets to their knees using the voices of all involved: home buyers, storefront lenders, and Wall Street titans now struggling to survive.

Transcript (PDF)

Hear the Audio
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Wednesday, October 08, 2008

Debugging With A Yardstick

I was contracted with a company to implement a system (written by one of the smartest guys in the business - just ask him - he'll tell you!) for printing store signage, e.g. "Socks $2.99".

The idea was that, instead of the old system in which the main office printed signs and overnighted them to its 40+ stores, a clerk in the main office would format the signs, and then each store manager would fire up the printer every morning to automagically print them on light card stock kept in the printer's 2nd paper tray. (The enthusiasm of store managers for having yet another task piled on them, for no additional compensation, can easily be imagined.)

The system worked great at the home office, but none of the stores could get the signs to print. I spent hours on the phone talking through the procedure. We were not allowed to physically visit any of the stores since the client decided it'd be a waste of time.
ME: "You have the 2nd paper tray."
CLIENT: "Yes."
ME: "It's filled with light card stock."
CLIENT: "Yes."
ME: "The signs aren't printing."
CLIENT: "Correct."
Finally, I got a yardstick.
ME: "My printer unit is 17 inches tall. How tall is yours?"
CLIENT: "13 inches."
ME: "That means your 2nd paper tray is not attached to the bottom of your printer."
CLIENT: "It has to be attached to the bottom of the printer?"
ME: "..."
Repeat 40+ times. Eventually the system "worked".

Monday, October 06, 2008

KEATING ECONOMICS: John McCain & The Making of a Financial Crisis

History Repeats Itself: the question is whether we're smart enough to notice.
  • In an economic crisis,
  • Financial institutions that made big money from insanely risky loans
  • Now have big problems because (after all) those loans were insanely risky,
  • Seek help in the form of taxpayer dollars, so they
  • Offer to help John "I Am A De-Regulator" McCain with an election campaign, and
  • He helps them ... and then denies it.
From http://www.keatingeconomics.com/:
"The current economic crisis demands that we understand John McCain's attitudes about economic oversight and corporate influence in federal regulation.

Nothing illustrates the danger of his approach more clearly than his central role in the savings and loan scandal of the late '80s and early '90s. John McCain was accused of improperly aiding his political patron, Charles Keating, chairman of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association. The bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee launched investigations and formally reprimanded Senator McCain for his role in the scandal -- the first such Senator to receive a major party nomination for president.

At the heart of the scandal was Keating's Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which took advantage of deregulation in the 1980s to make risky investments with its depositors' money. McCain intervened on behalf of Charles Keating with federal regulators tasked with preventing banking fraud, and championed legislation to delay regulation of the savings and loan industry -- actions that allowed Keating to continue his fraud at an incredible cost to taxpayers.

When the savings and loan industry collapsed, Keating's failed company put taxpayers on the hook for $3.4 billion and more than 20,000 Americans lost their savings. John McCain was reprimanded by the bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee, but the ultimate cost of the crisis to American taxpayers reached more than $120 billion.

The Keating scandal is eerily similar to today's credit crisis, where a lack of regulation and cozy relationships between the financial industry and Congress has allowed banks to make risky loans and profit by bending the rules. And in both cases, John McCain's judgment and values have placed him on the wrong side of history."

Learn more at http://www.keatingeconomics.com

Fact Check Confirms The Video

"The Verdict: True. McCain did push to delay regulations that would have cracked down on savings-and-loans practices and intervened on Keating's behalf, although he was cleared of wrongdoing in the "Keating Five" case."

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/10/06/fact-check-did-mccain-intervene-on-behalf-of-charles-keating/#more-23012


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Sunday, October 05, 2008

Duck And Cover!

I enjoy Duck And Cover, a blog commenting on a badly-written political comic, for reasons that (I ponder) may give a useful general formula:
  • Its focus is narrow enough that you know what you're getting when you go there (unlike, for example, REWinn Scrapbook)
  • It has new material often enough, but not too often.
  • The rate of new material is predictable: there's one new strip a day, therefore one new blog entry a day.
  • It lets visitors address serious issues (politics, sexism, lousy writing) in a light-hearted way
  • Its audience is small enough that you can make a noticeable comment, without being washed away by a thousand others.
All things come to an end; if publicizing Duck And Cover attracts fans, I may someday mournfully blog "Nobody goes there no more, it's too crowded!"