To this end, Roosevelt House offers year-round student internships to engage the student community, offering opportunities to develop public programming, conduct applied research and coordinate community engagement efforts at Roosevelt House.  Roosevelt House is currently accepting applications for its 2013 Summer Internship Experience.  Please see the following page for detailed descriptions and eligibility requirements.  

All interns will be paired with a staff member for the duration of their summer internship. Interns will have the opportunity to attend special brown-bag lunch discussions on various policy and human rights topics with experts in the field.  Roosevelt House interns must be self-starters, willing to work with minimal supervision, extremely organized and eager to learn. 

2013 Paid Summer Internship Opportunities at Roosevelt House

Interns are expected to work 15-20 hours per week over the course of the summer and should also be current Hunter College students (both undergraduates and graduates are welcome to apply).

All interested applicants should send a cover letter and resume to roosevelthouse@hunter.cuny.edu.

Preference will be given to students who apply before May 30, 2013.

Public Programs and Special Events Internship:

Roosevelt House seeks an intern to support its public programs, including its fall series dedicated to analyzing the city’s challenges preceding the New York City Mayoral Election. The series will feature panel discussions, lectures, book discussions, and film screenings that will culminate with a mayoral leadership symposium in the Spring of 2014 on the administration and legacy of Mayor John Lindsay. Among other tasks, the public programs intern will help develop thoughtful, well-rounded programs, engage Hunter’s student community, and conduct research on various policy and political issues that may be used to create “buzz pieces” for pre- and post-event audience engagement.  The intern will also be expected to help plan policy and human rights lectures, discussions, roundtables and conferences, conduct background research for book discussions and other public programming, and write briefings on policy issues.  The intern will also have the opportunity to develop guest lists and work at special events throughout the summer.

Roosevelt House Digital Strategy and Online Resources Internship

Roosevelt House seeks an intern with graphic design and HTML skills to support the Institute’s website and communications team.  The Institute is currently expanding its online resources and hopes to develop and post policy briefs and online faculty forums on various policy and human rights issues.  The intern will support this expansion and also serve to collect content and research from faculty and help format and edit content for e-publication.  The intern will assist with updating Roosevelt House’s social media accounts (facebook, twitter, google+, etc.)  and will work on new projects and ideas to bolster and expand Roosevelt House’s online presence and community.  Please note that only applicants with competency in Adobe Creative suite, HTML/CSS, and social media platforms will be considered for this internship.

Roosevelt House History and Exhibits Internship

Roosevelt House seeks an intern to continue research on the history of the Roosevelt family in New York City.  The intern will work on several different projects, including a historical timeline, family history, and a virtual walking tour of the Roosevelt House.  The intern will also help develop materials and content for the House’s online historical resources and work with staff to curate exhibits for the website and lower floors of the Roosevelt House.

If you have additional questions, please contact Ellen Murray at 212-650-3174 or roosevelthouse@hunter.cuny.edu

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Beginning this Sunday, May 12th, and continuing through the month, C-SPAN 3 will air highlights from the academic portion of our Spring 2013 Presidential Leadership Symposium: Ike Reconsidered, a program on the present-day policy implications and the lessons we can draw from the Eisenhower Legacy for the 21st Century.

The programs will be shown during the “Presidency” slot of American History TV – which airs Sundays at 8:30 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. ET on C-SPAN 3.

President Eisenhower’s Leadership will air on Sunday, May 12th and features Moderator Fred I. Greenstein, Professor of Politics Emeritus, Princeton University, along with panelists Kenneth E. Collier, Associate Professor of Political Science, Stephen F. Austin State University and Geoffrey Kabaservice, Visiting Research Scholar, Roosevelt House and followed by discussants Andrew J. Polsky, Professor of Political Science, Hunter College, CUNY and Jean Edward Smith, Senior Scholar, Columbia University and author of Eisenhower in War and Peace.

President Eisenhower & Civil Rights will air on Sunday, May 19th and features moderator Jim Newton, author of Eisenhower: The White House Years with panelists David A. Nichols, author of A Matter of Justice: Eisenhower and the Beginning of the Civil Rights Revolution and Kenneth Mack, Professor of Law, Harvard University, followed by discussants Timothy N. Thurber, Associate Professor of History, Virginia Commonwealth University and Jim Newton, Journalist and author of Eisenhower: The White House Years.

More media from the conference, including video from all of the academic panels and the public program is available on the conference website.

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Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College invites you to tune in to “Designing Healthy Communities,” the new series by Dr. Richard Jackson.  Dr. Jackson is the Fall 2013 Joan H. Tisch Distinguished Fellow in Public Health and Professor and Chair of the Department of the Environmental Health Sciences at the UCLA School of Public Health.  “Designing Healthy Communities” is a provocative and insightful 4-hour public television series on the relationships between public health and urban design and planning.  Series host Richard Jackson, MD, MPH, looks at the impact our built environment has on key public health indices – obesity, diabetes, heart disease, asthma, cancer and depression – and connects bad community design with burgeoning health costs, then analyzes and illustrates what citizens are doing about this urgent crisis by looking upstream for innovative solutions.

Broadcast Dates by Station and Date

THIRTEEN

Saturday May 4 at 1:00 PM
Saturday May 11 at 1:00 PM
Saturday May 18 at 1:00 and 2:00 PM
Saturday May 25 at 1:00 with the 2 hour Town Hall

NJTV

Sunday May 5 at 9:00 PM
Sunday May 12 at 9:00 PM
Sunday May 19 at 9:00 and 10:00 PM
Sunday May 26 at 9:00 with the 2 hour Town Hall

WLIW 21

Sunday May 5 at 5:00 PM
Sunday May 12 at 5:00 PM
Sunday May 19 at 5:00 and 6:00 PM
Sunday May 26 at 5:00 PM with the 2 hour Town Hall

About the Series:

Richard Jackson, MD MPH, is host and narrator of the series, and co-author with Stacy Sinclair of the companion book of the same name, published by Jossey-Bass/Wiley, co- published by the American Public Health Association. For the first time on national television, the rapidly deteriorating public health of our citizens is linked to nearly half a century of bad design decisions, now frozen in concrete. Each hour looks at the different impacts our built environment has on our key public health indices-obesity, diabetes, heart, asthma, cancer and depression. These relationships were never observed or talked about until Dr. Richard Jackson, a pediatrician-turned-public–health officer, began to demonstrate, more than a decade ago, that we are what we build.

Dr. Jackson first connects the dots of bad community design with burgeoning health costs, then analyzes and illustrates what ordinary citizens, including many young people, are trying to do about this urgent crisis, now on the front pages of many newspapers, by looking upstream for innovative solutions. Designing Healthy Communities looks at many places where we live, work, study and play and suggests they look the way they do because we have not assessed in advance the public health consequences of policy decisions. Dr. Jackson’s conclusion: For the first time in our nation’s history, we are subtracting years of life from our children because of the chronic diseases of obesity, asthma, and diabetes.

Dr. Jackson presents best practice design alternatives that can sharpen policy makers thinking in how they look at their communities today. Designing Healthy Communities identifies several common characteristics of unhealthy communities that can be changed, including: reliance on fossil fuel to navigate; limited walking space if no sidewalks at all; lack of access to green parks, trails, and gardens; production of pollution and particulate matter; expanding environmental injustice for millions of residents who cannot afford to move; increase of life-threatening interconnected chronic diseases like asthma, obesity, diabetes, and heart disease, particularly among our youngest members of society; lack of socialization; place making and adopting a sense of community. Essential elements of our wellbeing are out of balance. While public health expenditures skyrocket, our physical, psychological, and spiritual health deteriorates, and we as a nation wonder why healthcare reform is so essential. Designing Healthy Communities shows us a way out in four one-hour programs, each addressing different subjects: Retrofitting Suburbia, Rebuilding Places of the Heart, Social Policy in Concrete, and Searching for Shangri-­La. (Episode descriptions and locations are available on request.) Funding was provided for the project by the following foundations: Kresge, Cal Endowment, AIA, W.K.Kellogg, Marisla, Kaiser Permanente, the Gifford and other Syracuse foundations, and Robert Wood Johnson.  For more information, visit the program web page, here: http://designinghealthycommunities.org.

About Dr. Jackson

Richard J. Jackson has done extensive work in the impact of the environment on health, particularly relating to children. Dr. Jackson chaired the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Environmental Health. He did extensive work on pesticides in California, and has also focused on epidemiology, infectious diseases and toxicology. Over the past decade much of his work has focused on how the ‘built environment’ including how architecture and urban planning affect health. He recently served on the Board of Directors of the American Institute of Architects and has written and spoken extensively in the above areas. Currently, Dr. Jackson has been working on policy analyses of environmental impacts on health ranging from toxicology, chemical body burdens, terrorism, sustainability, climate change, urban design and architecture. In addition, he is developing policy analyses in related areas, such as how farm, education, housing, and transportation policies affect health.

While in California he helped establish the California Birth Defects Monitoring Program and state and national laws to reduce risks from pesticides, especially to farm workers and to children. While at CDC he established the national asthma epidemiology and control program, oversaw the childhood lead poisoning prevention program, and instituted the federal effort to “biomonitor” chemical levels in the US population. In the late 1990s he was the CDC leader in establishing the US National Pharmaceutical Stockpile to prepare for terrorism and other disasters—which was activated on September 11, 2001. He has received the Breast Cancer Fund’s Hero Award, as well as Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Public Health Law Association, and the New Partners for Smart Growth. Dick Jackson lectures and speaks on many issues, particularly those related to built environment and health. He co-authored two Island Press Books: Urban Sprawl and Public Health in 2004 and Making Healthy Places published in August, 2011. He has served on many environmental and health boards, as well as the Board of Directors of the American Institute of Architects. He was the 2005 UCLA SPH commencement speaker

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More information about the book New York and Los Angeles is available via the Oxford University Press website.

Chin also recently published “Changing Expectations: Economic Downturns and Immigrant
Chinese Women in New York City” as a chapter in Immigrant Women Workers in the Neoliberal Age edited by Guevarra, Florez-Gonzalez, Chang, and Toro-Morn and published by the University of Illinois Press (2013).

More information about Immigrant Women Workers is available on Amazon.com.

To read more on the topic, see also Dr. Chin’s 2005 Sewing Women: Immigrants and the New York City Garment Industry (Columbia Comparative Studies on Ethnicity and Race).

The post Margaret Chin publishes “The Transformation of Chinese America: New York vs. Los Angeles” and “Changing Expectations: Economic Downturns and Immigrant Chinese Women in New York City” appeared first on Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College.

Abstract:

Using data about tax stamps obtained from random samples of littered packs of cigarettes, collected once before and three times after a June 2008 NYS tax increase, we find that baseline NYC tax avoidance is high relative to national estimates, that rates of avoidance are particularly high in neighborhoods with high levels of poverty, and in closer proximity to a nearby Native American reservation. The share of littered packs with no tax stamp increased from 15 to 24 percent after the tax increase. We find that in addition to the large increase in avoidance, consumption declined.

I. Introduction:

In recent years, state and local governments have enacted large increases in cigarette taxes, with the dual aims of increasing tax revenue and discouraging smoking.  The effect of tax increases depends on the behavioral response of smokers. There is considerable evidence that many smokers are able to avoid state and local cigarette taxes, by purchasing cigarettes from lower tax jurisdictions, or from untaxed sources such as the Internet or Native American reservations.  Avoidance opportunities may be enhanced by organized smuggling of cigarettes from low tax states.

In June 2008 New York State (NYS) raised its cigarette tax rate from $1.50 to $2.75, bringing the combined New York City (NYC) and NYS rate to $4.25 per pack, the highest in the United States.  The increase raised the minimum retail price of a typical pack of cigarettes in NYC from $6.82 to more than $8.00 per pack[1].  In 2009, per pack cigarette taxes in the adjoining states of New Jersey, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania were respectively $2.70, $3.00, and $1.35, while the average rate for all U.S. states was $1.34.

Cigarettes are among the most heavily taxed of all commodities in the U.S.  Despite the fact that states tend to cluster in their cigarette tax rates—due to tax mimicking (Chernic, 2008) –very large differentials occur in places where local governments levy additional cigarette taxes.  It is useful to focus on behavioral responses in high tax jurisdictions, because they provide information about maximum potential rates.  If the principal behavioral effect of a tax change is to increase avoidance then the health benefits from reduced smoking may be attenuated, and there will be little gain in tax revenues, as some critics charge.[2]

A methodological difficulty with studying the behavioral impact of tax changes is that we do not usually have direct high quality measures of tax avoidance and evasion.  Previous literature on cigarette tax avoidance has generally relied either on econometrically inferred measures of avoidance or self-reports of avoidance rather than direct observation of behavior.  Measures of tax avoidance, like other measures of economic phenomena, are most useful for predicting behavioral responses to policy change when they are based on direct observations of behavior.  In this paper, we draw on an innovative method of data collection to obtain direct estimates of avoidance behavior.  The method, first used to study cigarette taxation in Chicago (Merriman 2010), involves the collection of a random sample of littered cigarette packs from a representative sample of sub-areas.  By examining the tax stamps on collected packs, we can determine whether NYC and/or NYS cigarette taxes have been paid.  Packs without a city or state stamp are considered to have avoided the tax, and the results can be used to estimate tax avoidance in the population.

The behavioral effects of a particular policy change may be difficult to identify, because other factors, such as economic conditions, may change at the same time as the policy.  A particular strength of our experimental design, a significant improvement over Merriman’s (2010) method is that, because we had notice of the tax increase before it took effect we were able to collect data immediately before and just after the tax increase.  This sequence limits the potential influence of unrelated factors.   Using data collected 15 months after the tax increase, we also estimate longer run effects.

We believe that our work makes three distinct contributions to the literature on tax avoidance.  First, we extend the methodology of Merriman (2010) to a different city and therefore gain insight about the generalizability of those findings[3]. Secondly, we improve upon the methodology of Merriman 2010 by employing a before and after structure that both helps us learn about the impact of a tax increase and mitigates potential bias if litterers are in some way unrepresentative of the general population of smokers. Merriman (2010) measured the relationship between proximity to a low tax source of cigarettes and tax avoidance.  In addition to proximity we measure the change in avoidance after a tax increase.  Finally, we display data from several rounds (after the tax increase) and therefore provide information about the stability of this measure of tax avoidance over time.

We find that the share of littered packs that had an appropriate NYC tax stamp fell from 55 percent prior to the tax increase to 49 percent immediately after the tax increase.  In subsequent rounds of data collection three months and one year and three months after the tax increase the share with an appropriate stamp was essentially unchanged.  In addition to the tax we find some empirical evidence that the level of avoidance is influenced by the share of residents in poverty in a Census tract and the distance to low tax sources of cigarettes.  We find a relatively small elasticity of taxable sales so that tax revenue increased substantially after the tax increase.  Our point estimate suggests that the tax increase caused cigarette consumption to fall from about 22.1 million to between 20.5 and 19.8 million packs per month and we reject the null hypothesis of no change in cigarette consumption at a 70 percent or greater level of confidence.

The paper has five additional sections.  The first is a brief literature review. The empirical analysis in Section III is divided into four sections: general methodology, data collection, results, and comparison to survey findings.  Section IV decomposes the response to the tax increases into changes in consumption versus changes in avoidance.  Section V gives estimated revenues losses from cigarette tax avoidance in NYC.  Section VI concludes.

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Member states such as Norway can help to improve implementation by (1) partnering with non-permanent Security Council members committed to advancing the WPS agenda; (2) using membership on UN specialised agencies’ executive boards (and in World Bank executive directorates) to obtain and publicise information on fulfilling Action Plan commitments; (3) mobilising embassy staff to support implementation in “pilot” countries identified by the UN; and (4) earmarking contributions to country-specific multidonor trust funds for projects focused on enhancing women’s capacities to participate in peacebuilding.

via: NOREF (Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Center)

Click here to download the full text.

About the Author:

Rob Jenkins is a Roosevelt House Faculty Associate, Professor of Political Science at Hunter College and the Graduate Center at The City University of New York. Formerly Professor of Politics at the University of London, he has published widely on Indian politics, movements for democratic accountability, and the politics of international economic and security assistance.

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The team’s Head Delegates, junior Audrey Stienon and senior Josephine Djonovic, who were on the Commission on Sustainable Development and the Security Council, each also earned a Distinguished Delegate Award, which is granted by the students of each committee to the delegate they feel best promoted their country’s position. In addition, senior Matthew Ehrlich and senior Katherine Salinas as well as sophomore Margo Cruz – whose family is from Quito – led the team to the top prize.  The Hunter Delegation represented the Republic of Azerbaijan at the conference, which focused on global environmental issues.

The conference was held in Cooperation with Universidad San Francisco de Quito in Ecuador, where students were given a warm welcome. From the first day of the week-long event, students were introduced to the culture and history of Ecuador and attended lectures on the historical landmarks. The Team then traveled to the Galapagos Islands, where they would officially begin their work for the conference.  The NMUN Latin America Conference was held at the Galapagos Academic Institute for the Arts and Science (GAIAS) on San Cristóbal Island, located directly adjacent to the Galapagos National Park.  Staying true to its iconic location, the conference focused on finding solutions to international problems such as climate change, the exploitation of natural resources, population growth, and biodiversity loss.

Delegations had to quickly adapt to their surroundings. Senior Advisor Katherine Salinas said, “Rarely are MUN students taken out of their comfort zone and confronted directly with the issues which they are discussing. This conference was brilliant because it did just that.”  Student who had grown accustomed to working in business conference rooms were now working with no hot water and no Internet.

As Ms. Djonovic noted, “We were fully immersed in this setting, which allowed us to get a clear perspective of environmental issues.“ Ms. Stienon said, “After you get chased by an angry sea lion who thinks he has more right to a spot on the beach than you do, you definitely gain some perspective as to what our place as humans is in this world.” Ms. Cruz, a sophomore who was on the Commission on Science and Technology for Development, said: “It was fun – and challenging – to be an oil producing member state at a sustainable development conference, and I gained new perspective on how we can deal with environmental issues and promote sustainability.”

After the formal conference was completed, the Hunter Team was armed with machetes and gardening gloves to do community service work in the crater of an extinct volcano and learned how to locate and remove invasive plant species. Ms. Salinas, who is the team’s senior advisor and who has been to six competitions, concluded that the “NMUN Latin American Conference was a truly unique conference. We were able to see the issues take a real and physical form. I personally will always speak on issues of environmental sustainability with a deeper understanding and from the heart.”

Back in New York, the team hit the ground running, attending the annual Baruch Model United Nations Conference, winning another two awards.  Next the team is gearing up for the next NMUN conference that will take place this March in New York City hosting 6,000 students from around the world. The Hunter Delegation will be representing the United States and has a briefing with the U.S. Mission to the United States in order to prepare.

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The Eastern Sociological Society sponsors a professional journal (Sociological Forum), a four-day Annual Meeting in the spring, a newsletter, numerous award competitions, an employment service, and a mailing list.

Nancy Foner is the author or editor of sixteen books, including From Ellis Island to JFK: New York’s Two Great Waves of Immigration (Yale University Press, 2000, winner of the 2000 Theodore Saloutos Award of the Immigration and Ethnic History Society); In a New Land: A Comparative View of Immigration (New York University Press, 2005, Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2006); Not Just Black and White: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Immigration, Race, and Ethnicity in the United States  (edited with George Fredrickson, Russell Sage Foundation, 2004, Honorable Mention, Thomas and Znaniecki Distinguished Book Award of the International Migration Section of the American Sociological Association);  Across Generations: Immigrant Families in America (New York University Press, 2009); Islands in the City: West Indian Migration to New York (University of California Press, 2001);  and Immigration Research for a New Century: Multidisciplinary Perspectives (edited with Ruben Rumbaut and Steven Gold, Russell Sage Foundation, 2000).

She is editor of the forthcoming book, One Out of Three: Immigrant New York in the Twenty-First Century(Columbia University Press, 2013), a collection of original essays that provides an in-depth and up-to-date look at immigrant New York after nearly half a century of massive inflows, and co-editor of New York and Amsterdam: Immigration and the New Urban Landscape (New York University Press), a comparison of the impact of immigration in these two global cities. Foner is also the author of more than 90 articles and book chapters.

Among her other activities, Foner is a member of the Russell Sage Foundation Immigration Research Advisory Committee, the Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island History Advisory Committee, and the Advisory Group of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity. She has testified on immigration issues before several Congressional committees and serves on the editorial board of numerous journals, including International Migration Review, Global Networks, and the Journal of American Ethnic History.  She has been chair of the International Migration Section of the American Sociological Association, and is past president of the Society for the Anthropology of Work as well as the Society for Urban, National, and Transnational/Global Anthropology. In 2010, she received the Distinguished Career Award from the International Migration Section of the American Sociological Association, and in 2011 she was elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

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We are in the midst of a great Dwight Eisenhower revival. Our 34th president, whose tenure once appeared to be little more than a sleepy interlude between the New Deal era and the tumultuous 1960s, is very much in vogue again. The past year has seen the publication of three major new biographies. On 7-8 March, Ike’s presidential legacy and its implications for our own time will be the focus of [the upcoming conference, Ike Revisited] at Hunter College.

The renewed interest in Eisenhower owes much to our dissatisfaction with our current politics, especially the partisan polarization that yields stalemate in national politics and prevents action on issues ranging from the long-term deficit and immigration reform to climate change and investments in education. In foreign policy, we recoil from a decade of costly and frustrating military interventions. We see political leaders seeking to break any policy impasse through public rhetoric that has little demonstrable impact on public opinion.

Against this backdrop of frustration, Eisenhower’s record in office looks impressive. Even as conservatives called on Ike to dismantle the New Deal, his administration backed the expansion of Social Security coverage. And while conservatives also demanded that the United States “roll back” communism in Eastern Europe, Eisenhower avoided reckless confrontations with Moscow and Beijing. He brought the Korean War, by then deeply unpopular at home, to a close within months of taking office. Also, despite his pending reelection contest in 1956, he insisted that Israel, Great Britain, and France withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula and the Suez Canal.

Of special note, Eisenhower recorded several important legislative achievements, notwithstanding the fact that the Republican Party controlled both houses of Congress only during his first two years in office.  He pushed successfully for the federal interstate highway program that remade America’s built landscape, the first civil rights bill to win congressional approval since Reconstruction, and enhanced science education. It isn’t surprising, then, that pundits and politicians alike get a bit wistful when they consider what Ike did under the umbrella of bipartisanship.

In contrast to the highly visible public leadership favored by presidents in our own time, Eisenhower preferred a low-key style. He realized that sometimes he could be most effective behind the scenes, what political scientist Fred Greenstein aptly terms the “hidden-hand presidency.” One result was that Eisenhower could appear to be reluctant to act, as during the Little Rock school desegregation crisis. But we have seen today that when a president associates himself very visibly with an issue, his support can be toxic, driving away some of those who otherwise share his position.

So there is much to like now about Dwight Eisenhower as a president. That said, we also need to recognize that his record owed a great deal to the circumstances in which he held office. Many of the things he accomplished simply are not possible today.

Let’s start with Ike’s ability to make deals across party lines. Mid-century American politics has been described as a four-party democracy: moderate and liberal Republican internationalists; Republican conservatives; conservative Southern Democrats; and liberal big-city Democrats. From these components, a president and legislative leaders such as Lyndon Johnson could mix and match. The parties overlapped ideologically at the margins, and some lawmakers stood closer to the center of opinion in the other party than in their own. Contrast this with the situation now, where the most conservative Democrat consistently casts more liberal votes than the most liberal Republican.

In fact, if a Dwight Eisenhower had tried to run for president as a Republican in 2012, he would not have secured the nomination.  The party has veered too far to the right, and a nominating system that gives so much weight to ideological activists would be especially inhospitable to someone with as many centrist positions as Ike held.

Eisenhower also held office at the peak of America’s relative advantage in the global economy. Europe and Asia had yet to recover from the war’s devastation and American industries enjoyed an enormous competitive edge. So dominant was the American economy in the postwar period that Eisenhower could expand Social Security, establish an interstate highway system that would be largely self-funded through new dedicated revenues, sustain a large peacetime military, and balance the budget. Certainly, he had to make some difficult choices, but they pale next to the trade-offs policy makers face today.

Yes, there is still a lot to like about Ike. His record commands respect. But perhaps the most important thing we can learn is that a president has to work with the material at hand, and some of the ingredients Eisenhower used won’t be found in the political cupboard any more.

Andrew Polsky is Professor of Political Science at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center. A former editor of the journal Polity, his most recent book is Elusive Victories: The American Presidency at War.

The post OpEd: “Why I Like Ike – Sometimes” appeared first on Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College.

I am certain that 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 impel. 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 vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. 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; 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.

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 know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.

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 moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days 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, on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live.

Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This Nation asks 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 natural resources.

Hand in hand with this 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. 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, State, and 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, and unequal. It can be helped by national planning for and supervision of all forms of transportation and of communications and other utilities which have a definitely public character. There are many ways in which it can be helped, but it can never be helped merely by talking about it. We must act and act quickly.

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.

There 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 several 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—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 the 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 is made, no leadership becomes effective. We are, I know, ready and willing to submit our lives and property to such discipline, because it makes possible a leadership which aims at a larger good. This I propose to offer, pledging that the larger purposes will bind upon us all as a sacred obligation with a unity of duty hitherto evoked only in time 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 and to this end is feasible under the form of government which we have inherited from our ancestors. Our Constitution is so simple and 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 produced. It has met every stress of vast expansion of territory, of foreign wars, of bitter internal strife, of world relations.

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, and 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 the 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 and 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.

Source: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933, as published in Samuel Rosenman, ed., The Public Papers of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Volume Two: The Year of Crisis, 1933 (New York: Random House, 1938), 11–16.

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