Presidential inaugural speech

Excerpts from the presidential inaugural speech you will never hear

My dear fellow Americans:

First of all I want to thank you for electing me and making my dream I have had since I was a teenager to come true. I also want to thank President Bush without whose screw-ups this would probably never happen. I know that many people voted not that much for me as against president Bush’s party. It is a good feeling to be your president, and I promise you that I will serve you to the best of my abilities and strive for this country to become, again, the most prosperous country in the world. When I look back I realize that even though I won with a great majority it was a close call at times during the campaign, especially when my wife almost ruined it for me when she could not keep her big mouth shut and spelled out loud what we previously agreed to keep private. Now when the original euphoria slowly starts wearing off I reminisce and wonder how could it happen that, against all odds, I was elected. Could it be because people thought I was the smartest of the candidates? Probably not, because they must have known that I am not half as smart as I think I am. Or was it perhaps because, as the media try to tell us, the race no longer matters in America? Definitely not, because, contrary to what the brain-washing, public opinion manipulating media tell us, and despite all the civil rights movement achievements, ours is still perhaps the most racist society in this world. If race did not matter, why would every American call me the first black president of the USA, when I feel, and I am, as white as black? Not only that. In this country, if Americans find that you have one drop of black blood, you’re perceived black with all the consequences, regardless of your phenotype. This makes Americans more racist than Nuremberg laws, which required going only three generations back in order to classify someone as a Jew or an Aryan. Or was it because people think, in spite of all the bad news, that this country is still strong enough militarily and economically that they can afford to experiment? Probably. But be it as it may be, my dear fellow Americans, I don’t really care why, as long as it happened.
In order to serve you well and do what this country needs, my dear fellow Americans, I have to tell you now a few things you will not be pleased to hear. I could not tell you these things before November 4th because, as every politician, I wanted to be elected, and to tell you the truth during the election campaign would decrease my chances.
You wanted change so I will try to deliver change, although it will not be easy to change this country with all the problems we have. The most pressing are the economy, health care, immigration, education and, still, and despite all the progress we have made, race.
Economy: We are in a serious trouble, and no amount of money within multiple stimulus packages will protect future generations of Americans from the mess we are in now to repeat itself if we do not combine money with some unorthodox but necessary measures, and that is the approach I am going to take. In addition to money, more fundamental changes will be needed if we want the economy to eventually get back to normalcy and stay there. That will only happen when we adopt some healthy rules our grandmothers tried to teach us, and which we refused to adopt for too many years. If you know your Bible, regardless of the denomination, you must know that the fat years are normally followed by a few lean years. We are no longer going to listen to all those Nobel Prize winners in economy who came up with fancy theories, theories which defied common sense and, consequently could not protect us from the situation we are in now.
In order to get ourselves out of this mess, our media tell us that the Government needs to print more money and give it to banks, so that they can continue lending it, so that the masses can start spending it again and bring the engine of economy back on track. Who wants the Government that banks lend money? To the same people who have already spent more than they can afford and who are in debt up to their ears? This would be nothing but another one of those quick fixes Americans are so good at. This is not the strategy I am going to advocate we take. We need more than a quick fix, but I could not tell you that before the elections, because I did not want to be listening now to someone else giving the inaugural speech. The media are right, this time, that we are now in a credit crisis. In order for you to understand how this credit crisis originated, I have to tell you first how the credit system itself came about, and what led to the crisis we are in. What we call credit is nothing else than the result of greed. It is an incentive for the population to spend money it does not have. But, as Mr. Gordon Gekko tells us, greed can be good, although I had to add a caveat: Greed can be good when it serves as an incentive for innovation, productivity and industry, and when it is kept within reasonable limits. The idea of consumer credit as we know it now started after Mr. Ford built his first few hundred cars and sold them to the few hundred very wealthy people. When the market became saturated he had to come up with something new, to be able to continue manufacturing and selling cars. He was as greedy as any other capitalist – I am using here the term capitalist in the most positive way – and he came up with the idea of the Model T. He started manufacturing these cars and lending money to his employees so that they could buy the cars. He was not risking much because the collateral of those loans were the jobs he was giving his employees, so he could keep making these loans to his low-risk employees at a reasonable interest rate. Other manufacturers soon adopted his idea to sell their products, and this is an example of good greed. It made everybody happy: the capitalists got their profit and people could enjoy products they otherwise could not afford. Banks followed suit and started lending money on big scale, but only to people who satisfied banks’ requirements for being reasonable credit risks. Again, reasonably greedy bankers got their profit, and those who could prove their ability to repay their debts could enjoy having refrigerators, radios, washing machines, etc. which they otherwise could not afford. This is how this country lived through two world wars, and became the country with the highest standard of living. Some years after WWII, however, the buying frenzy of those who came back from the war subsided, and the market became again saturated. Most households already owned a car, a washing machine, and a TV that they could afford. There was a big threat of recession, unless people were given a new buying power. That’s when the first credit cards were born. During the first ten, twenty years or so, only people who were the best credit risks could get a credit card. At these conditions everything was honky dory but that was not enough to keep the economy going at the rate required to keep manufacturing up and, in turn, unemployment figures down. The credit requirements had gradually softened, and more and more people who did not care to watch their paying ability were getting credit cards with much-too-high-interest and much-too-high credit limits attached to them, and variable rate mortgages and other loans they did not deserve. This situation resulted from uncontrolled greed on the part of both bankers, who approved loans to too many greedy and irresponsible people, and borrowers who were buying goods and had built for themselves mansions as if there were no tomorrow. When it finally got out of hands, people became unable to fulfill their obligation to banks, and banks, consequently, were unable to fulfill obligations to their creditors. Foreclosures and bankruptcies followed. As it stands now, banks that are still solvent have stopped giving loans lest they would not get their moneys back, and that is where we are now. The 700 billion dollars “economy stimulus package” is supposed to provide moneys to banks so that they can start lending it and give back consumers the buying power. The geniuses that came up with this idea have forgotten that those who live within their means do not need loans. Thus, even though the credit requirements have been tightened, the loans will go to people who would be spending money they do not have, which will sow the seed for the similar, future credit crises coming back some years down the road. The morally worst in this stimulus package is the attempt to prevent foreclosures on houses - whose greedy owners should not have bought them in the first place - and the bailout of just-about-to-go-bankrupt banks and the car industry. This is sending the wrongest possible message. Why should the irresponsible person who asked for a mortgage he/she had no ability to pay, or the greedy banker who closed one eye when looking at the financial situation of a borrower, or a car manufacturer that can not built sellable cars, not be held responsible for his/her poor judgment? Have you heard of Pan American? It was an American icon nobody believed ever could go belly up, and it did, and the earth keeps turning the same way as before. The same should happen to American automakers. These companies became anachronistic and ceased to be competitive. They should be sold to the best, no matter how low bidder, and start afresh. The leaders of auto workers unions, which brought the industry to its knees, should ask their members: “Do you want half the wages and benefits what you used to have, as the workers for Honda and Toyota in the USA have, or you want no jobs and benefits?”, and the problem would be solved. Best what could happen to American car manufacturers and their employees would be if the Japanese bought them. Before this financial crisis neither Honda nor Toyota had any problem selling their cars, and their employees, even without Unions, seem to be happy. Japanese car manufacturers with plants in the U.S.A. present best evidence that it is not the American worker who can not assemble good cars but the American management that can not run business in a competitive way. The only department Big Three’s CEOs seem to be good at is pocketing fat bonuses every year, and somebody should put stop to this. Nevertheless, the stimulus package has already been voted on so there is little I can do about it, except not support a similar stupidity in the future.
Concerning the future, however, I am afraid I have some bad news for many of you. We will have to tighten our belts, and live within our means. I shall try to make credit cards temporarily cease to exist. There will only be convenient cards. Every credit card holder will pay fees to the card issuer, to cover its card maintenance expenses, the spending limit would be minimal, based on the household income, and the balance will have to be paid at the end of each month. Banks will offer loans for mortgages, cars, education and health care expenses. In this way the American Dream will be possible to continue dreaming, people will be able to go to work, and afford higher education. I’ll touch upon health care later. To get luxuries, you will have to save first, and spend later. This unrestrained spending frenzy has to stop, and we will again live by our grandmothers’ rules. More important than going for shopping sprees to keep the economy going, is to save for rainy days and old age. The fact that U.S.A. has the lowest saving rate among industrialized nations is unacceptable. The times of every teenager without a job having a credit card with almost unlimited spending allowance are over. People will have to realize the simple fact of life that everything this country offers is not meant for everybody. We neither are nor want to build a classless society. That has been tried in the eastern half of the world and it never worked because it took all the incentives for betterment away from people. It is as much quite normal that not everybody can afford everything as it is normal that everybody would like to have more money and be able to afford more stuff. This is the positive driving force for getting better education, more skills, to be more competitive and more affluent. There is no shame to be rich when one becomes such through legal avenues.
My opponents who do not like this proposition might suggest that the restrained spending would hurt the economy and cause unemployment. I have an answer to that. We should get back all the jobs we have lost because of outsourcing, for which we can blame, again, greed. Today, America, the country that used to have the highest standard of living before the word outsourcing was invented, manufactures almost nothing, except airplanes, arms and cars, which nobody seems to be buying. We used to be self sufficient virtually in everything and when we wanted something extra we could easily import anything we wanted from abroad because American dollar meant something. That was before the globalization was invented. We invaded Iraq because we were hoping to get oil from there and ended up having to supply Iraq with oil. We will pull our troops back home, invest in researching technologies which will provide us with alternative, renewable energy sources, and create in this way thousands of new job opportunities. If leaving Iraq should result in chaos in the Middle East, and start wars between Sunnis and Shiites and who knows whom else, so be it. These wars, no matter how they end, will result in something positive for us. They will end, on all fighting sides, with fewer America-haters alive. We will curb outsourcing and, in addition to manufacturing, we shall start providing services from close to home. There is no reason for somebody calling customer service of a major American company having his or her call answered in India, when the same service can be provided by an average high school graduate, after proper training. To get even more job opportunities at home, and manufacture again socks, toys and consumer electronics, we will be nice to the 12 million illegal emigrants, help them reunite with their families, and send them home. We will stop propagating the nonsense that we need illegals because they do work Americans refuse to do. There is no such job Americans refuse to take. There are only jobs Americans would prefer not take. Unfortunately going back to basics will require some tough measures and abolishing some useless, actually dangerous freedoms. The first such freedom will be the freedom of able-bodied adults to stay on welfare in one location when there are plenty of jobs elsewhere. We will stop throwing moneys out by supporting lazy, able-bodied bums and panhandlers who crowd busy intersections in cities, who claim to be, or are, homeless, and will relocate them. With all those families reunited in South America, there will be plenty of opportunities for the low-skilled and indolent Americans to pick oranges, potatoes and tomatoes around the country, to work in poultry processing plants, or doing other menial jobs. In this way, we will fix both the economy and the illegal immigration problem.
Health care: The media are telling us that we have a health-care crisis, arguing that 40% of Americans have no health insurance. Well, I have news for you. We have no health care crisis; we only have crises of making good choices. It is unfair for those citizens who are responsible and buy health care insurance for themselves and their families to have to pay, through our tax system, also for the healthcare of those who do not show the same responsibility but, at the same time as I am giving this speech, are yapping on cell-phones or watching football on a large screen TV. Therefore, the second freedom I will take away from Americans who are gainfully employed is the freedom not to buy health care insurance. Once you have a job, any job, a fairly established minimum will be withheld from your paycheck and used for health insurance. If you do not earn enough, and the money withheld will not suffice, the government will help those who pass the litmus test. The litmus test will include the ownership of a cell phone, 100.00 dollar sneakers, and other obviously luxury items. A cell phone is not a necessity. If a family without medical insurance cancels the cell phone subsciption for its several members, there will be plenty of moneys left to buy medical insurance. The same as I already mentioned will apply: Not everything what this country offers is meant for everybody, and those who were not brought up properly to know that health insurance is more important than a cell phone, a fancy music player or a big screen TV, will have to understand it. This is not dictatorship, just common sense.
Education is probably the most important problem this country has. One could also say that this is the only serious problem we have because if we, as a nation, were more educated all the problems we have would automatically disappear. Exceptions aside, if American schools did not produce millions of semi educated airheads each year, we would have no poverty, and the country would not have so many racists, religious and other bigots, greedy bankers, homeless, gamblers, prostitutes, crooks, criminals, perverts, etc. Equally importantly, if we had properly educated population there would be no interest in violence and smut on television and, consequently, our TV producers would have to produce valuable programs in order to have their products watched. Similarly, market forces would make Hollywood produce movies which would be worth watching because there would be no interest in the tons of crap Hollywood produces now. We need educated people to be able to compete in this very competitive world. In order to give our kids the opportunity to get good education in public schools we will have to change our attitude towards education. We have to stop propagating the nonsense that knowledge is not very important in these modern times because there is Google. If you are not educated, you do not even know what to look for in Google. America used to give its children great education, and America used to do it with much less money per student than it spends now because there was discipline in schools and kids were kept busy after school doing home work and reading. Instead, now kids spends free time in Arcades playing useless games and warming chairs and gaining weight in front of TV sets. More importantly, many tasks that parents used to quite voluntarily take upon themselves, for example to teach them how to tell the right from the wrong and how to behave themselves, today parents expect schools to do that for them. There are things schools cannot do without parents’ involvement and those I mentioned are just two of them. What schools can do themselves, however, is to trash the one single most relevant factor responsible for destruction of the ability of schools, at all levels, to provide good education: the multiple choice tests. This kind of tests became very popular because they make life easier for both students and teachers. Unlike during the old days when students had to write long assays and talk coherently about a subject, today a student has a good chance to pass without even opening the books, when he/she only has to pass a multiple choice test. Teachers are also happy with such tests because they do not have to read lengthy assays: a computer does the work involved in evaluating multiple choice tests for them, and it does it without any emotion. Also, it is sad when schools are better known for the achievement of their football or basketball team than for the accomplishment of their alumni. Therefore, the obsession with competitive sport at schools at any level has to stop. Schools have to become again shrines of learning; all the sports, except PE, can be practiced through community centers and churches. We will have to pay teachers better and expect more from them, and from their students. We will not punish qualified, dedicated, arguably good teachers for too many dropouts who do not show motivation. If irresponsible, incorrigible kids do not care to graduate from high school, that’s their and not the teachers’ problem. The unqualified dropouts will have no other chance to survive but to take jobs which used to be done by illegal emigrants, who will have been already enjoying themselves in their home countries. We will cease sending wrong messages to students by bribing them and let them earn money for good behavior, attendance and good grades. The stupidity of the person who came up with this idea is mind boggling, and resorting to these measures only show impotence of those who are unable to maintain discipline in the class room, and motivate student to value education.
Race: This is still a problem in America, and I cannot promise you we will be able to solve it during my administration. But I am going to give it a try as no president before me. I think I have a better chance to succeed because I am bi-racial, and can afford the luxury many of my compatriots do not have, namely I can call a spade a spade without being accused of racism. The starting point in my crusade against racism will begin with trying to throw away the meaningless, artificially conceived term “African American”. Jesse Jackson invented the term in the 1980s with good intentions. He wanted to give blacks identity he felt they did not have. He accomplished just the opposite. Blacks who have never been to Africa, who had no idea which part of Africa their ancestors come from, many of whom could not even find Africa on the map if you hit them with an atlas, started calling themselves African American, thereby alienating themselves from the rest of Americans, and they did not get any closer to anybody in Africa. We who were born in America are all Americans, regardless what country our ancestors may have come from. USA is the country we were born and which unites us. We don’t need terms that divide us and transform us slowly into a tribal nation, such as some other parts of the world where nationalism takes over and everybody hates everybody. Jesse and other political leaders of blacks probably don’t even realize how much damage they did by promoting the term African American, and by encouraging blacks in America to artificially adopt culture that had been strange to them. Black political leaders hurt the advancement of blacks also in many other ways, especially by emphasizing the past instead of promoting reconciliation. Blaming whites of today for what happened centuries ago is preaching the wrong catechism, it is destructive, and is not going to help. The collective shame whites of the last 50 years have felt resulted in blacks now having all doors open, all opportunities available to them, they can achieve anything they set their mind to, they only have to work hard for it. Look at me, my black compatriots. You think you made me into the president of the United States? Wrong. You only helped. You are, at best, only 20% of the U.S. population, and not all of you voted for me. You only helped, and I am thankful for your support, but it was the majority of those remaining 80% non-blacks who put me in this office, and don’t you forget that. So don’t cry on my shoulder and blame someone else, mainly white racism for your misfortune, when the number of high school drop-outs are mainly blacks, the teen-age pregnancies are mainly among blacks, when one-parent families are mainly families where the black woman is the head, when the prison population consists mainly of blacks and when blacks as an ethnic group is the least successful ethnic group among all ethnic groups in America. This is not racism, this is because you have not tried hard enough, and because instead of motivating you, your political leaders prompt you to blame everything on slavery and racism. Look at other ethnic minorities, Italians, Greeks, Jews, East Europeans, and Asians. They all came to this country with only what they could carry and most of them with one big handicap: they did not speak English. And over the years they all did better than you. And they all did it without all those government programs tailored exactly to your needs. So do not come to me asking for special privileges. I shall see to it that you will have all the equal rights and opportunities as everybody else, but do not expect privileges. I’ll let you keep one privilege you already have: I shall not push for abolishing the NAACP. No other minority in this country has an equivalent to NAACP, and just imagine how would you feel if your white compatriots wanted to establish a similar entity. Instead of trying to scrap it, I’ll let the black community to realize, hopefully soon, that in these modern times, when blacks have all rights, NAACP is an anachronism whose existence is no longer either justified or needed. When all blacks wise up and work as hard as everybody else, and realize that with rights there also come responsibilities there will be no more dislike of blacks because of ethnicity. If there still are whites who do not like some of you my black compatriots, it’s not because of the difference in color of your skin but because of cultural differences: unruly behavior, violent life style, disproportional number of high school dropouts, practices of many forms of irresponsible behavior, and culture of always blaming someone else for failure. And what does not help either is trying to make a statement with rap music, which is just another oxymoron, or low-hanging pants, which if compared to food looks to every civilized person like vomit. In this department I feel the same way as Chris Rock who expressed on TV his feelings very simply but still eloquently. He said, that he liked black people; it was the niggers he disliked. Then he said he was not apologizing for using the N word, he said he could use it because he was black. I feel the same way, and I am not surprised if whites, Asians, or anybody dislikes blacks who do not make any effort to fit in and, instead, want to demonstrate by all means that they are different by their uncivil, obnoxious behavior, with disregard of others.
There will be also a couple of little things that I’ll try to change. The first of those will be to deal with the death penalty. Many of you, my fellow Americans, are for it and many are against it, and it has been for long a topic of passionate debates. I believe the way I will deal with the problem will satisfy both these groups, since it will punish those on death row in a more humane way than the executioner would, it will protect law-abiding citizens from incorrigible criminals, and it will also save us a lot of money. The basic duty of a good government is to protect its law-abiding citizens and to punish the guilty. When, the verdict is death, it takes years and considerable outpouring of public funds before the sentence is finally carried out. Also, the human scum on the death row, as well as those who got “life without the possibility of parole” are having too good time in prisons. We as a society must stop the ridiculous pampering of incarcerated murderers.
I therefore propose that all prisoners who belong to the two categories I just mentioned should be relocated - men and women separately - to two uninhabited islands owned by our government. The islands, with a source of drinking water and natural resources, would be the convicts' new homes. There will be no guards on these islands, there will be no contact with the outside world whatsoever, and the inhabitants will be free start and keeping going a primitive society. But without telephone, television, exercise rooms, vending or cigarette machines, Sunday night movies, running warm water, libraries, clean underwear and food delivered, and no one to complain to if the roof over their heads, which they themselves had built, should leak. At the onset of the operation we would provide them with some initial, fundamental supplies and tools and enough grains to keep them alive until the first crops could be harvested. Perhaps even chess or checkers set, or a game of Monopoly. Occasionally, some primitive supplies from the army surplus will be parachuted in, at irregular intervals and at previously undisclosed locations on the islands. This would make it necessary for the inhabitants to continuously scout the islands, which will keep them busy and give them plenty of excercise. If they refused to cooperate among themselves, which they would show by killing each other or by refusing to organize themselves, or choosing to quickly consume the initial ration of supplies instead of thinking about the future, so be it. We would not even know about it. From the point of view of our society they would virtually cease to exist the minute they had been put there. The security will be taken care of by our Navy. It trains its cadets in the open sea, so why not have the well equipped training battle ships circle these islands making sure no unauthorized movement of people to or from the islands takes place, and fulfilling their training role at the same time, at no additional cost? This would give the trainees an extra satisfaction from doing something very useful for the society without having to go to war. Just think of the money and aggravation that would be saved. No need to operate numerous high security prisons with all the facilities and guards. No hassle catching those who might manage to escape from those facilities. No headache from the criticism by foreign nations who think they are so much better than us because they do not execute their incorrigible human scum. In addition, we could be sure that we never executed somebody who, perhaps, was innocent.
Second little things I intend to change will be that I’ll take off the American flag pin off the lapel of my jacket because I believe I have something more tangible to show for my patriotism than a pin. The media virtually put a gun to my head and forced me to wear it during the pre-election period. The media’s hypocrites evidently did not know that it was the fascists of Nazi Germany who introduced this mandatory form of display of their kind of patriotism, namely wearing the swastika pin on the lapel. Nazis’ diligent students, another dictatorship, the Soviet Union later adopted the custom and the communists made everybody wear either a red star or Lenin’s bust on their jacket to show allegiance to the only allowed ideology. I sure am not going to follow suit. Neither am I going to scream that “You are either with us or against us”, a slogan that used to be displayed on red banners on every corner in communist countries, because I know that life is more complicated than that.
Thirdly, I will make every effort to the effect that we as a society should follow the rest of the world and adopt, not only on paper but in real life, the internationally recognized system of units. The fact that we still use miles, inches, Farenheits and pounds, when even the conservative British got used to the metric system, is nothing else but manifestation of our arrogance and feelings of superiority for which there is no good reason.
I realize that I can not dictate how the states blow moneys within their tight budgets but I make sure that the Federal Government will set good example and not waste moneys in unproductive way. As one of the measures towards that goal we will stop printing every government pamphlet in Spanish or any other than English language. Every legal immigrant’s first duty is to learn the language of his/her new homeland. Language is the one thing that unites all citizens of the USA and it also helps the new residents to market their skills at all levels. The present practice of making it easier to survive without speaking English is counterproductive and unpatriotic because it promotes tribalization/balkanization of America with all well known negative consequences. I only hope that all state governments will follow suite and stop wasting moneys by printing their forms, guidelines and various test materials in foreign languages.
In closing, I’d like to expand on Martin Luther King’s dream, because I also have a dream. I dream of times when electing a black person to a high office will not be a sensation, nor will it be celebrated as a racial victory but by victory of the best-qualified candidate. I dream of times when selecting a member of any minority group for some highly visible position will not be commented by the media as: “H/she is the first Hispanic/black/Jewish/Asian/or so-and-so to become….”, because the belonging to a group, any group, will be unimportant. I dream of times when a black person will no longer refer to his fellow blacks as “My people” because everybody will feel about everybody else the same way. Only then we will be able to say that race does not matter. It will be when we choose a person for a distinguished post not because there are too few members of his/her minority group in such position or because the candidate happens to be a woman, but because h/she is best suitable for the job. I dream about times when reason prevails over politics and we accept the fact that diversity is good but excellence is even better.
Lets make together, my fellow Americans, this experiment of yours work, and god bless you.