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16 Monday May 2016

Posted by Michael Bersin in Uncategorized

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Barack Obama, commencement, Donald Trump, president

President Barack Obama [2013 file photo].

President Barack Obama [2013 file photo].

An excerpt from President Obama’s commencement address at Rutgers on Sunday.

For Immediate Release
May 15, 2016
Remarks by the President at Commencement Address at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
Brunswick, New Jersey
1:04 P.M. EDT

….Facts, evidence, reason, logic, an understanding of science — these are good things. (Applause.) These are qualities you want in people making policy. These are qualities you want to continue to cultivate in yourselves as citizens. (Applause.) That might seem obvious. (Laughter.)….

[….]

….We traditionally have valued those things. But if you were listening to today’s political debate, you might wonder where this strain of anti-intellectualism came from. (Applause.) So, Class of 2016, let me be as clear as I can be. In politics and in life, ignorance is not a virtue. (Applause.) It’s not cool to not know what you’re talking about. (Applause.) That’s not keeping it real, or telling it like it is. (Laughter.) That’s not challenging political correctness. That’s just not knowing what you’re talking about. (Applause.) And yet, we’ve become confused about this….

This.

A sign of our times

09 Saturday May 2015

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Black Lives Matter, commencement, Ferguson, Michael Brown, missouri, University of Central Missouri

In Warrensburg at this morning’s commencement ceremony at the University of Central Missouri:

Black Lives Matter.

President Obama in Joplin – May 21, 2012 – commencement speech

22 Tuesday May 2012

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commencement, Joplin, Joplin High school, missouri, Obama

Yesterday President Obama delivered an address to the 2012 graduates of Joplin High School at their commencement held on the campus of Missouri Southern State University in Joplin.

….[applause, cheers] President Obama (D): Thank you. [applause] Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you everybody, please have a seat. A few people I want to acknowledge, first of all, you have an outstanding governor in Jay Nixon [applause], and we are proud of all the work that he’s done.  I want to acknowledge Senator Claire McCaskill who is here. [applause] Representative Billy Long.  [applause] Your mayor, Melodee Colbert Kean. [applause, cheers] Somebody who doesn’t get a lot of attention but does amazing work all across the country, including here in Joplin, the head of FEMA, the administrator, Craig Fugate, who spent an awful lot of time here helping to rebuild. [applause] Superintendent Huff. [applause, cheers] Principal Sachetta. [applause] To the faculty, the parents, the family, friends, the people of Joplin, and most of all the class of two thousand and twelve. [applause, cheers] Congratulations on your graduation and thank you for allowing me the honor of playing a small part in this special day…

…Now, the job of a commencement speaker primarily is to keep it short. [laughter] Chloe, they’ve given me more than two minutes. [laughter] But the other job is to inspire. But as I look out at this class and across this city what’s clear is that you’re the source of inspiration today, to me, to this state, to this country, and to people all over the world.  Last year, the road that led you here took a turn that no one could’ve imagined. Just hours after the class of two thousand eleven walked across this stage the most powerful tornado in six decades tore a path of devastation through Joplin that was nearly a mile wide and thirteen long. In just thirty-two minutes it took thousands of homes and hundreds of businesses and a hundred and sixty-one of your neighbors, friends and family. It took a classmate Will Norton who had just left this auditorium with a diploma in his hand. It took Lantz Hare who should’ve received his diploma next year.

By now I expect that most of you have probably relived those thirty-two minutes again and again. Where you were, what you saw, when you knew for sure that it was over. The first contact, the first phone call you had with somebody you loved, the first day that you woke up in a world that would never be the same.  And yet, the story of Joplin isn’t just what happened that day. It’s the story of what happened the next day, and the day after that, and all the days and weeks and months that followed. As your city manager, Mark Rohr, has said, the people here chose to define the tragedy not by what happened to us, but by how we responded.

Class of two thousand twelve that story is yours. It’s part of you now. As others have mentioned you’ve had to grow up quickly over the last year. You’ve learned at a younger age than most of us that we can’t always predict what life has in store. No matter how we might try to avoid it life surely can bring some heartache, and life involves struggles. And at some point life will bring loss.

But here in Joplin you’ve also learned that we have the power to grow from these experiences. We can define our lives not by what happens to us, but by how we respond. We can choose to carry on. We can choose to make a difference in the world. And in doing so, we can make true what’s written in scripture that tribulation produces perseverance, and perseverance and character, and character, hope. Of all that’s come from this tragedy let this be the central lesson that guides us, let it be the lesson that sustains you through whatever challenges lie ahead.  As you begin the next stage in your journey, wherever you’re going, whatever you’re doing, it’s safe to say you will encounter greed and selfishness, and ignorance and cruelty, and sometimes just bad luck. You’ll meet people who try to build themselves up by tearing others down. You’ll meet people who believe that looking after others is only for suckers. But you’re from Joplin so you will remember, you will know just how many people there are who see life differently, those who are guided by kindness and generosity and quiet service. You’ll remember that in a town of fifty thousand people, nearly fifty thousand more came in to help the weeks after the tornado, perfect strangers who’ve never met you and didn’t ask for anything in return.

One of them was Mark Carr, who drove six hundred miles from Rocky Ford, Colorado with a couple of chainsaws and his three little children. One man traveled all the way from Japan and he, because he remembered that Americans were there for his country after last year’s tsunami and he wanted the chance, he said, t, to pay it forward. There were AmeriCorps volunteers who have chosen to leave their homes and stay here in Joplin till the work is done. And then there was the day Mizzou’s football team rolled into town with an eighteen wheeler full of donated supplies, and of all the places, they were assigned to help out on Kansas Avenue. [laughter, applause] I don’t, I, I don’t know who set that up. [laughter] And while they hauled away washing machines and refrigerators from the debris they met a woman named Carol Mann who had just lost the house she lived in for eighteen years. And Carol didn’t have a lot. She works part time at McDonald’s, she struggles with seizures, and she told the players that she had even lost the change purse that held her lunch money. So one of them, one of the players, went back to the house, dug through the rubble, and returned with the purse with five dollars inside. And Carol’s sister said, so much of the news that you hear is so negative, but these boys renewed my faith that there are so many good people in the world.

That’s what you’ll remember because you’re from Joplin. You will remember the half million dollar donation that came from Angelina Jolie and some up and coming, uh, actor named Brad Pitt. [laughter] But you’ll also remember the three hundred and sixty dollars that was delivered by a nine year old boy who organized his own car wash. You’ll remember the school supplies donated by your neighboring towns, but maybe you’ll also remember the brand new laptops that were sent from the United Arab Emirates, a tiny country on the other side of the world. When it came time for your prom makeup artist Melissa Blayton organized an effort that collected over a thouand donated prom dresses, FedEx kicked in for the corsages, and Joplin’s own Liz Easton, who had lost her home and her bakery in the tornado, made a hundred, uh, fifteen hundred cupcakes for the occasion. That, they were good cupcakes. [laughter]

There are so many good people in the world there’s such a decency, a bigness of spirit, in this country of ours. And so, class of two thousand twelve, you’ve got to remember that. Remember what people did here. And like that man who came all the way from Japan to Joplin make sure in your own life that you pay it forward. Now, just as you’ve learned the goodness of people, you’ve also learned the power of community. And you’ve heard from some of the other speakers how powerful that is. And as you take on the roles of coworker and business owner, neighbor, citizen, you’ll encounter all kinds of divisions between groups, divisions of race and religion, ideology. You’ll meet people who like to disagree just for the sake of being disagreeable. [laughter, scattered applause] You’ll meet people who prefer to play up their differences instead of focusing on what they have in common, where they can cooperate. But you’re from Joplin. So you’ll always know that it’s always possible for a community to come together when it matters most. After all a lot of you could’ve spent your senior year scattered throughout different schools, far from home. But Dr. Huff asked everybody to pitch in so that school started on time right here in Joplin. He understood the power
of this community, and he understood the power of place. So these teachers worked extra hours, coaches put in extra time, that mall was turned into a classroom, the food court became a cafeteria, which maybe some of you thought was an improvement. [laughter] And yeah, the arrangements might have been a little noisy and a little improvised, but you hunkered down and you made it work together. You made it work together.

That’s the power of community. Together, you decided that this city wasn’t about to spend the next year arguing over every detail of the recovery effort. At the very first meeting, the first town meeting, every citizen was handed a post it note and asked to write down their goals and their hopes for Joplin’s future. And more than a thousand notes covered an entire wall and became the blueprint that architects are following to this day. I’m thinking about trying this with Congress [laughter], give them some post it notes. [laughter, applause, cheers] Together the businesses that were destroyed in the tornado decided that they weren’t about to walk away from the community that made their success possible, even if it would’ve been easier, even if it would’ve been more profitable to go someplace else. And so today more than half the stores that were damaged on the Range Line are up and running again. Eleven more are planning to join them. And every time a company reopens its doors people cheer the cutting of a ribbon that bears the town’s new slogan, remember, rejoice, and rebuild. That’s community.

I’ve been told, class of two thousand twelve, that before the tornado many of you couldn’t wait to leave here once high school was finally over. So Student Council President, uh, Julia Lewis, where’s Julia? She’s out here somewhere. [laughter] She, she’s too embarrassed to raise her hand. [applause] I’m quoting you, Julia. She said, we never thought Joplin was anything special. Now that’s typical with teenagers, they don’t think their parents are all that special either [laughter], but seeing how we responded to something that tore our community apart has brought us together. Everyone has a lot more pride in our town. So it’s no surprise then that many of you have decided to stick around and go to Missouri Southern or go to colleges, community colleges that aren’t too far away from home. That’s the power of community, that’s the power of shared effort and shared memory. Some of life’s strongest bonds are the ones we forge when everything around us seems broken. And even though I expect that some of you will ultimately end up leaving Joplin I’m pretty confident that Joplin will never leave you. The people who went through this with you, the people who you once thought of as simply neighbors or acquaintances, classmates, the people in this auditorium tonight, you’re family now. They’re your family.

And so my deepest hope for all of you is that as you begin this new chapter in your life you’ll bring that spirit of Joplin to every place you travel, to everything you do. You can serve as a reminder that we’re not meant to walk this road alone, we’re not expected to face down adversity by ourselves. We need God, we need each other, we are important to each other and we’re stronger together than we are on our own. And that’s the spirit that has allowed all of you to rebuild this city, and that’s the same spirit we need right now to help rebuild America. And you, class of two thousand twelve, you’re gonna help lead this effort. You’re the ones who will help build an economy where every child can count on a good education. [applause, cheers] You’re the one that’s going to make sure this country is a place where everybody who is willing to put in the effort can find a job that supports a family. [cheer, applause] You’re the ones that will make sure we’re a country that controls our own energy future [applause], where we lead the world in science and technology and innovation. [scattered applause] America only succeeds when we all pitch in and pull together [voice: inaudible], and I’m counting on you to be leaders in that effort because you’re from Joplin and you’ve already defied the odds.

There are a lot of stories here in Joplin of unthinkable courage and resilience over the last year, but still there are some that stand out, especially on this day. And by now most of you know Joplin High’s senior, uh, Quinton Anderson, I, you know, he, look, he’s already looking embarrassed. [laughter] Somebody’s talking about him again. But Quinton, I’m gonna talk about you anyway, because in a lot of ways Quinton’s journey has been Joplin’s journey. When the tornado struck Quinton was thrown across the street from his house. The young man who found Quinton couldn’t imagine that Quinton would survive his injuries. Quinton woke up in a hospital bed three days later and it was then that his sister Grace told him that both their parents had been lost in the storm. So Quinton went on to face over five weeks of treatment including emergency surgery. But he left that hospital determined to carry on, to live his life, and to be there for his sister. Over the past year he’s been a football captain who cheered from the sidelines when he couldn’t play. He worked that much harder so he could be ready for baseball in the spring. He won a national scholarship as a finalist for the High School Football Rudy Awards. [applause] He plans to study molecular biology at Harding University this fall. [applause, cheers] Quinton has said that his motto in life is always take that extra step. And today after a long and improbable journey for Quinton, and for Joplin and for the entire class of two thousand twelve, that extra step is about to take you towards whatever future you hope for and whatever dreams you hold in your hearts.

Yes, you will encounter obstacles along the way. I guarantee you will face setbacks and you will face disappointments. But you’re from Joplin and you’re from America. And no matter how tough times get you’ll always be tougher. And no matter what life throws at you, you will be ready. You will not be defined by the difficulties you face, but by how you respond, with grace and strength and a commitment to others.

Langston Hughes, poet, civil rights activist who knew some tough times, he was born here in Joplin. In a poem called Youth, he wrote: We have tomorrow, bright before us, like a flame. Yesterday, a night gone thing, a sun down name. And dawn ’til day, broad arc above the road we came, we march.

To the people of Joplin and the class of two thousand twelve the road has been hard and the day has been long. But we have tomorrow, so we march. We march together and you’re leading the way because you’re from Joplin. Congratulations. May God bless you. [applause, cheers] May God bless the class of two thousand twelve. May God bless the United States of America. [applause, cheers]

Former President Bill Clinton (D) at the University of Central Missouri – May 6, 2011

08 Sunday May 2011

Posted by Michael Bersin in Uncategorized

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Bill Clintom, commencement, missouri, sustainability, University of Central Missouri, Warrensburg

“….So, again, none of you have to agree with my view of the world. But if you don’t, you darn sure need your own and it needs to be based on facts. Evidence and the aspirations of ordinary people work way more than anybody’s ideology here….”

Former President Bill Clinton spoke at graduate commencement on Friday evening, May 6, 2011 on the campus of the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg. The university had worked with the Clinton Climate Initiative in its $32 million sustainable energy and building retrofit project. Former President Clinton was awarded an honorary doctorate at the commencement ceremony.

Former President Bill Clinton (D) spoke at graduate commencement on Friday, May 6, 2011 on the campus of the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg. Photo courtesy of the University of Central Missouri.

The transcript:

Former President Bill Clinton (D): ….[applause] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.  Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, President Ambrose, faculty, staff, Board of Governors, students, families, friends, thank you very much for the wonderful welcome. Thank you [student] Manny Abarca for the introduction. I was thinking maybe someday I’d get to vote for you. [laughter] You did a terrific job. I thank you very much for that. I, uh, [applause] I want to thank Dr. Ambrose and Dr. Betty Roberts and Chris Wellman and a number, uh, another of your students, Amber Flores for giving me a tour of the administration building and the work you’ve been doing in energy efficiency which I’ll say more about in a minute. And I want to thank you for mentioning that I am the first president or former president to visit here since Harry Truman. And arguably [applause] , arguably he shouldn’t get a lot of credit, after all, he was from Missouri, right? [laughter] But then you can deny me a lot of credit since I’m from Arkansas. But, anyway, I’m honored to be here…

…And, I want to say, uh, I, I must have told twenty people in New York this week, I got to work in the city on some of the things I was in, I must have told twenty people I was coming here. And they said, well how do you get to the University of Central Missouri? I said, well, I have to, I’m flying to St. Louis to have lunch with some friends and then I’m going to Sedalia, and then I’m going to drive from there. There weren’t many people in New York that knew where that was. [laughter] And then I said, if I were you I wouldn’t be laughing because this campus is the place that is creating the possibilities of the future with the training programs, with the advances in energy efficiency, with all the things that they are thinking about and doing.

And so, I know this is a happy time for the graduates and I know the families just want to cheer, but I want you to take just a few minutes to try to think about what this degree ceremony means, what your futures mean in terms of what’s going on in America and the world today. I mean, we’ve had a busy week after nearly a decade of effort, uh, United States military found Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan and I know [applause, cheers] we all are proud of that. But, and it happened at a time when more and more there’s a movement toward Democracy in the Muslim world, more and more people are renouncing terror and embracing a constructive future. But still, people looking for opportunities we had in New York City just a few months ago, a young man who came to the United States, got two university degrees, married a young woman from the Middle East, or from Pakistan, with a university degree and then, like a lot of people in this terrible economy he lost his home, he lost his job, he went back to Pakistan, learned how to make a bomb, and came back and tried to set one off in Times Square in New York City.

What are we to make of a world where there is so much good, where you can be out here in the middle of the heartland of America, and because of the Internet and other technologies, know just as much about how most efficiently to produce and consume energy as anybody on Earth, how you can imagine how to organize other things and create a modern economy for America, take advantage of all these things, how you can be alive at a time when ten year olds can get on the Internet and learn in thirty seconds stuff I had to go to university to learn, in my, back in the dark ages? All these great things are going on. The Human Genome Project has already told us how to guard against the prospect of women who have a genetic predisposition to it ever getting breast cancer and having to serve, suffer a mastectomy. We’re getting very close on seeing people who have a predisposition to Parkinson’s and how to head that off. By the time that the graduates here are old enough to have children in elementary school, except for the older graduates, you’ll probably be able to go in and take an annual physical exam just by standing in a tube and having it scan you up and down. And because of nano technology you may able to find tumors that are presently undetectable so that almost a hundred percent of malignancies will be manageable. And you can recover from it.

It’s an amazing time. But, even though we felt pride in what happened this week, and for those of us live in and around New York and remember that awful day of nine eleven two thousand one, a certain grim understanding that what happened had to come to pass, it still is frustrating to see so many apparently contradictory things going on. We can learn all this stuff about the economy but, why are we having such a terrible time getting out of this mess we’re in? Even before the financial meltdown in two thousand eight the economy only produced two and a half million jobs in this decade. There were real problems there.

How are you supposed to make sense of all this stuff that’s going on and what does your degree have to do with it no matter what it comes, in what area it comes? That’s what I want you to take just a few minutes to think about. You live in the most interdependent age in history. If you never left the borders of the State of Missouri you would still be affected by things that are happening half a world away.

You got how much land flooded out now in the southern part of this state? And I don’t know, those of you who are a certain age remember in nineteen ninety-four we had a huge flood on the Mississippi River and we were told, I was, that it was a five hundred year flood. We wouldn’t have another one like it for five hundred years. And all I had to do to protect people was to move people and we moved whole communities in nineteen ninety-four beyond the hundred year flood plain and we’d all be fine. Guess what? We turned out not to all be fine in Missouri, didn’t we. All these unbelievable things are happening in the climate as it changes. What does all this mean? It means that even if you never leave the borders of Missouri what you do here will affect people half a world away and what they do will affect you.

It means that the walls that we used to call borders look a lot more like nets than walls today. We live in an interdependent age where we cannot escape each other. Interdependence can be good or bad or both. Human nature being what it is, interdependence is both. It’s good and it’s bad. For example, the fact that we live in a borderless world enables you to find out things on the Internet in a hurry. To move around the world at lightning speed and get information. And also facilitates terrorists and the transfer of technology and money. The fact that we can travel means that people how never’s, parents or grandparents never could have dreamed going half a world away can go. It also means people you wouldn’t dream of letting you get very close to you can come. It’s a part of the world we live in. So, no matter what your training is, if you want to make the most of your life you h
ave to face this interdependent world with its positives and its negatives. And you have to ask yourself some simple questions.

Question number one. What would I like the world to look like when my children are my age? Or, in my case, when my grandchildren are my daughter’s age. I know what the answer is for me. I would like to live, I would like them to live in a world where opportunity is equally shared. And where we share the responsibilities as well as the blessings of the earth. Where we celebrate our differences, our religious, racial, ethnic and all other differences, but we think our common humanity matters more. That’s the world I’d like to live in. That’s the world I’d like for my children and the grandchildren I hope to have to live in. That’s what I want. You got to be able to answer that question. Then once you answer it you have to say, well, how would you build that kind of world? My answer is, to build a world of shared opportunities and responsibilities you have to build up the positive and reduce the negative forces of our interdependence. That’s what I spend my life trying to do. It’s what I tried to do when I was president, what I try to do now.

That brings me to the next question. What are the most important negative forces of interdependence? You know what the positive ones are. You wouldn’t be in these chairs if you didn’t. The world’s a wonderful place, but it has three huge problems. Number one, it’s highly unstable. That means we worry about terrorism, attacks from people who don’t live here, but can come here. It means that a financial crisis which started in America could spread instantaneously to the United Kingdom, to Ireland, to Iceland, then, then all over the world. Now, not all instability is bad. If there’s no play in the system, if there’s no uncertainty then we all kind of deadened and creativity is driven out. But if there’s too much people just can’t live with it. There’s just too much worry, too much anxiety. So we have to reduce the instability in the modern world.

There’s too much inequality in the modern world. Within and among countries. I spend most of my time working in really poor places. Before the earthquake in Haiti two thirds of the people lived on less than two dollars a day. Before the earthquake eighty-five percent of the people had no electricity in their home. There was no sanitation system. That’s what really caused the cholera outbreak. There was no sanitation system.

All over the world I see people who are just as smart as I am and work harder, but who don’t have opportunities, where their kids can’t go to school or there’s no health care, and there’s no structure of jobs, and they may not even have houses. So there’s inequality there. Then within countries we have it. Except for my second term of all the wealthy countries on earth the United States has the biggest increase in income inequality since nineteen eighty-one of any country on earth, of any wealthy country. I think it’s because we’ve embraced some bad ideas, we’ve gone from being a country that believes that companies should be run for all the stakeholders, the customers, the employees, the communities, and the shareholders to believing that only the shareholders matter. That doesn’t give you a very good result. And pretty soon you wind up with a financial meltdown we had on Wall Street.

We also have spent too much time arguing that the government is always the problem and would mess up a two car parade. Uh, when the only successful country’s in this interdependent world, the really successful ones, have both a strong private economy and an effective government. And increasingly, a good non, not for profit sector, a nongovernmental sector. But, from World War Two to nineteen eighty-one the bottom ninety percent of Americans earned sixty-five percent of the income. Top ten percent earned thirty-five percent. That’s quite a lot of inequality, enough to keep us working harder to be rewarded. Top one percent had nine percent of the income. The average CEO of a corporation earned forty percent, forty times what the average worker did. From nineteen forty-six to nineteen eighty-one.

Since nineteen eighty-one here’s what’s happened. The bottom ninety percent’s share of income has dropped from sixty-five to fifty-two, the bot, the top ten percent’s gone from thirty-five to forty-eight, the top one percent’s gone from nine to twenty-two, and the average CEO now earns more than two hundred times the average employee in accompany. No one can say that this is because of productivity or economic success, it is a deliberate increasing of inequality as we have come to emphasize money more than ideas, production, and people [applause] to become more of a shareholder than a stakeholder society. And I say this, this is not a Republican or a Democratic argument, it’s the new radicalism that I never saw before. In nineteen eighty-seven Sam Walton, then the richest man in America, and an Arkansan, and a Republican who I don’t think ever voted for me [laughter], although I don’t think his wife ever voted against me, so they cancelled each other out [laughter], but anyway, Sam and I were working on an education thing and he was in my office in nineteen eighty-seven when the stock market collapsed. So, he went out and called New York. I said, how much money did you lose today? He said, just me, my family and I? I said, yeah. He said a billion dollars. Now, in nineteen eighty-seven a billion dollars was real money. [laughter] Why do I tell you this? I said, how do you feel? He said, let me tell you something. He said, tomorrow morning I’m gonna get up and get in my airplane. Now, Sam Walton’s airplane was a Cesna single engine or a Piper Cub, I can’t remember which, that he flew. He said, I’m gonna fly over to west Tennessee to the newest store and I’m gonna buzz the parking lot. And if there are pickups in the parking lot I don’t give a rip what the stock price is, I’m in this for the long haul for my company. Now, you don’t hear people say that today.

Give you another example. We have, in northeast Arkansas, near Missouri, we had a company that I recruited called Nucor, founded by another Republican from North Carolina named Ken Iverson. Nucor paid a weekly bonus, their average wage was about half what the steelworkers made, they made steel from recycled materials. But they paid a weekly bonus and they gave every employee in the mid eighties fifteen hundred dollars a child for every child they had in college. This is, that’d be like four thousand today. Okay? Every one. There was a guy in South Carolina that sent eight kids to college working for Nucor. So, in one year in the eighties Nucor lost money ’cause all manufacturing lost money in America. I still have a copy in my personal files of a letter that Ken Iverson, who is now passed away, but I don’t believe he voted for me when I ran for president, he was a good Republican, but he wrote this to his employees, including all of my friends in Arkansas that worked in that plant. He said, well, we lost twenty percent of our revenues this year. And you know we have a strict lay off policy, so everybody’s gonna take a twenty percent pay cut ’cause nobody’s losing their job. What I want you to know is this is not your fault. You did everything I asked you to do. He said I do consider it my fault. I should have been smart enough to figure out how we could be the only company in the world not caught up in this. Therefore, while your pay is going down twenty percent I decided to cut mine sixty percent. And he didn’t have any stock options on the sly, they had corporate headquarters, no corporate jet, no nothing. Straight sixty percent cut in his compensation. Those guys would have jumped into the molten steel  for this man. Why? Because we were all in it together.

Look, folks, on health care, on energy, on economic policy, on trade, on balancing the budget, on a lot of things there is a legitimate, basically a little more conservative or basically a little more liberal argument you can make here, but if you don’t think we’re all in this together we are toast. That is
the fundamental decision you all have to make. [applause]

So, if you ask me a question about anything, and I want all of you to think about it, what’s your position on x, y, or z? I will immediately ask myself, will this make the world less unequal and less unstable? If it will, I’m for it.

But there is one last problem which you have answered about as well as anyone in America, here at this university. The model that has taken us this far is also not sustainable because of the way we produce and consume energy. Global warming is real. Above the Arctic Circle this year all the plants bloomed fifteen days early. Soon you’ll be able to take a ship across the North Pole in the summertime. That’s the good news. The bad news is when that happens the ice on top of Greenland will start to melt like crazy and if it all flows into the North Sea, that’s eight percent of all the fresh water on earth, it could block the Gulf Stream and make northern Europe, northern Canada so cold they won’t be inhabitable in the wintertime and those are some of the most powerful economies on earth.

And there are lots of other things that are happening. You go down to Australia. There’s a huge liberal conservative debate in Australia on climate change, but it’s not about whether it’s real or not. It’s about what to do about it. ‘Cause they know it’s real. They’re getting killed by it.

So, the final thing I say is, most people for most of the last twenty years in America have said, okay, this is either not real or it is real but, alas, we can’t do anything about it because the only way for a country to be rich and get richer is to burn more stuff and put more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. And, if you get a university degree one of the things you’re supposed to do with it is to be able to think about new things and take information and process it and then share it with your family and friends and communities. I believe that changing the way we produce and consume energy is the single most significant thing we can do to put America back to work again, to create new jobs, to create new businesses, to create new technologies, to bring manufacturing back to America, to get us going again. [applause] That’s what I believe.

And, I believe that based on work that I have been doing all over the world. We’re trying to close landfills in Mexico City, in Lagos, Nigeria, in New Delhi, India. We’re trying to convert public transportation units to clean natural gas buses in Lima and Sao Paulo. We’re trying to retrofit hundreds of schools in South America and Europe. We’re trying to reforest massive acreage in Africa and South America. I’m trying to take the Caribbean from having the most expensive electric rates in the world to being completely economically self sufficient. I do this for a living now. That’s one of the things my foundation does. And I am telling you America could go great guns. And I have just this for evidence. I don’t know if you remember this, ’cause I was president so long ago. But, in nineteen ninety-seven Al Gore and I made a deal with a bunch of other countries in Kyoto in Japan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And forty-four countries signed that agreement and ratified it and they were weal, a hundred  and seventy countries signed it, but forty-four of ’em were wealthy enough so that they had to actually reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by a fixed amount. United States did not sign it because the U.S. Senate voted against the Kyoto agreement ninety-five to zero before I sent it to ’em. The only time I ever lost a bill in Congress before I sent it to ’em. ‘Cause they thought it was a terrible plot to bring America to an end.

But these other countries did. Now here’s the interesting thing. They had ’til twenty-twelve to meet these targets, forty-four countries. Only four countries, here we are in twenty eleven, are for sure gonna meet these targets. Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and the U.K., the United Kingdom. In the last decade they have all been lead by both center right and center left political parties, that is, their equivalent to Republicans and Democrats. And they have full, chosen different ways to reduce their emissions. But here’s what you need to know. Before the financial meltdown in two thousand eight all four of these countries had lower unemployment rates than the United States, faster job growth rate, faster business growth rate, and less income inequality than we did because they changed the way they produced and consumed energy.

So, you tell people, come to the University of Central Missouri and look what they did to retrofit their buildings. Ask them how many people got jobs out of it. Ask them about the new training programs that came out of it. Ask them what they have learned about using energy more efficiently that will help America to come back. That’s a big part of building a future of shared opportunities and it’s right here [emphasized] on your campus. You should feel [applause] very, very proud of it.

The American college and universities, uh, have a committee on, it’s called their climate commitment, and I was asked to work with them, my foundation was. So we worked on this. Dr. [Betty] Roberts was calling the names of the young people who work in the Clinton Climate Initiative who were working with you on this. And it’s been a real honor. But when the, when the economic crisis hit in two thousand eight the only two colleges in the whole country that were working on this that decided to stay the course and not delay were a little college called Lee College in Houston, Texas and the University of Central Missouri. You said, I don’t think I will wait. [applause] I think we still should be [applause, cheers] creating the future. You should be really proud of that.

And I want to thank the Bank of America for working out the financing on this. Because the real problem when you go around, ask the people here about it, ask them how they use geothermal energy, ask them how they changed the duct system and the heating and air conditioning and the windows and the lighting and how many people came to work here. The real problem with doing this is financing. If you decided you wanted to build a coal fired power plant on this campus and you got permission to do it, twenty year financing, no problem. If you wanted to build a nuclear power plant, poof, thirty year financing, no problem. Do you want fifteen year financing to build a new future that employs far more people for the money you spend and anything else you can do in the energy area? They say. I’m sorry, it’s not available. Bank of America and the university administrators, they found a way to do it. and so I want to thank them, too.

And I want you to just think about this as a metaphor even if you’re not interested in this topic. Here you had a university, some traditional students and some nontraditional students, some visionary administrators and some people who didn’t mind having to think about more than one thing at a time. Who, in the, where I grew up, in the vernacular, who could walk and chew gum at the same time. [laughter] And they decided it be a really good thing to put a lot of people to work and put this university on the forefront of energy efficiency in a way that would take a building that goes back way over a century and put it way into the twenty-first century and make this university a model. And, in the process, learn some things about training programs and software and other things that would really make you more powerful. This is about sharing the future in terms of its opportunities.

So, again, none of you have to agree with my view of the world. But if you don’t, you darn sure need your own and it needs to be based on facts. Evidence and the aspirations of ordinary people work way more than anybody’s ideology here. And I just think that [applause] this is a, I just think that this is a wonderful , wonderful thing that has been done. So, when you leave here, somebody says, what’d you get your degree in? What are you gonna do? What do you think the world’s gonna be like in ten years? What’s the meaning of th
e Osama Bin Laden thing? What’s the meaning of the retrofit that you did? Anything.  The way I think about it is, does this event reduce the negative or increase the positive forces of our interdependence? If this event does, if it makes us less unequal, less unstable, less unsustainable, more equal , more stable, more sustainable. If it builds hope and reduces fear I am for that. Because we have to create a future we can all share. Believe it or not, we been through, you know, some very bleak years these last three or four years economically. And when people look around America for a place that refused to just retreat into a shell and kept looking for a way to move into the future they’re gonna stumble right on to you. Because of what you did on this energy issue. And you will always look like, to those of us who care about this energy thing, the little engine that could. So, I ask you [applause], I ask you when you go out of here and you think about the rest of the world to carry this in your heart. Look, most of my life’s been lived. I’ve had a great run. I just want everybody else to have the same life chances I did. And I don’t believe you can have ’em if we don’t have a world of shared opportunities and shared responsibilities where we know we have differences, where we know are differences matter, but where we know our common humanity matters more than our interesting differences. [applause]

And we can never afford to live in a world where we stop thinking and where we can’t stand to be around somebody that disagrees with us. I just read a fascinating book, ’bout a year ago, called The Big Sort, s o r t, by a guy named Bill Bishop who lived in Austin and he was a Democrat and one of his most important neighbors was a Republican and they lived in a Democrat neighborhood and the Republican moved out because the neigh, the other neighbors were mean to the guy. And he moved from a neighborhood that was overwhelmingly Democratic to one that was overwhelmingly Republican and he said, Bishop’s book said, both our neighborhoods were poorer, both our neighborhood were poorer.

We have gotten to where we are, over our racial, our religious, our gender discrimination, we just don’t want to be around anybody that disagrees with us. We’re all a little like that, aren’t we? We’ve got to share the future. A metaphor of that is this campus and this energy project. Thank you for doing that. Thank you for giving my foundation a chance to work on it. Don’t forget it when you leave here. And look for other ways to do your version of what your alma mater did with energy in a very, very tough time.

Good luck and God bless you all. [applause]

University of Central Missouri (UCM) Board of Governors President Walt Hicklin (left) presents the honorary doctorate to Bill Clinton while UCM President Chuck Ambrose (right) reads the citation. Photo courtesy of the University of Central Missouri.

We usually cover these kind of events from the media area, but due to the requirements of my day job I had one of the best seats in the house. Unfortunately I couldn’t bring a camera with me on the platform (decorum, as if that’s ever stopped me before). If I had a camera I would have had some fantastic photos from my vantage point. From what I observed throughout his speech former President Clinton had a few notes, but spoke extemporaneously. His speech was approximately thirty-two minutes long.

It is our practice here at Show Me Progress to include all of the “ums” and “uhs” in our transcriptions. Even when it’s us. We continue that practice in this transcript. You’ll note that there are very few “ums” or “uhs” in Bill Clinton’s speech. This is as it occurred.

Yes, I shook his hand. Twice. Photo by Joan Ferguson.

The Big Dog will be speaking at the University of Central Missouri

25 Monday Apr 2011

Posted by Michael Bersin in Uncategorized

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Bill Clinton, commencement, missouri, University of Central Missouri

Former President Bill Clinton (D) will be speaking at graduate commencement at the University of Central Missouri on May 6th. The university’s press release from earlier this month:

UCM Names President Bill Clinton Recipient of Honorary Doctorate

Photo – Ralph Alswang

WARRENSBURG, MO (April 4, 2011) –  Recognized not only for his service to the nation as 42nd President of the United States but also for his commitment to education and philanthropy, William J. Clinton has been named recipient of the honorary degree, Doctor of Humane Letters. Although more specific details about the award ceremony will be released at a later date, the honorary degree will be presented by the University of Central Missouri during 2011 Graduate Commencement exercises Friday, May 6.

The honorary doctorate is bestowed by the authority of the university’s Board of Governors upon individuals who have distinguished themselves through outstanding service and exemplary achievements within their fields of endeavor. By their actions they have been an inspiration to others.

William Jefferson Clinton was the first Democratic president in six decades to be elected twice – first in 1992 and then in 1996. Under his leadership, the country enjoyed the strongest economy in a generation and the longest economic expansion in U.S. history, including the creation of more than 22 million jobs.

After leaving the White House, President Clinton established the William J. Clinton Foundation with the mission to strengthen the capacity of people in the United States and throughout the world to meet the challenges of global interdependence.  Today the Foundation has staff and volunteers around the world working to improve lives through several initiatives, including the Clinton Health Access Initiative (formerly the Clinton HIV/AIDS Initiative) which is helping 4 million people living with HIV/AIDS access lifesaving drugs. Other initiatives — including the Clinton Climate Initiative, the Clinton Development Initiative, and the Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative — are applying a business-oriented approach worldwide to fight climate change and develop sustainable economic growth in Africa and Latin America. As a project of the Foundation, the Clinton Global Initiative brings together global leaders to devise and implement innovative solutions to some of the world’s most pressing issues. In the U.S., the Foundation is working to combat the alarming rise in childhood obesity through the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, and is helping individuals and families succeed and small businesses grow. In addition to his Foundation work, President Clinton has joined with former President George H.W. Bush three times – after the 2004 tsunami in South Asia, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and Hurricane Ike in 2008 – to help raise money for recovery efforts and served as the U.N. Envoy for Tsunami Recovery.

Building on his longstanding commitment to Haiti as President and through his Foundation, President Clinton was named U.N. Special Envoy for Haiti in 2009 to assist the government and the people of Haiti as they “build back better” after a series of hurricanes battered the country in 2008. Following this year’s devastating earthquake, President Clinton dedicated Clinton Foundation resources to help with immediate and long-term relief and assistance, and at the request of President Obama, joined with President George W. Bush to establish the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund, which supports highly effective organizations on the ground in long-term rebuilding efforts. Additionally, President Clinton serves as co-chair of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission with Prime Minister Bellerive.

In 2008, UCM first became aligned with the Clinton Climate Initiative through the American College and University President’s Climate Commitment (ACUPCC) which worked with CCI to develop and implement large-scale energy efficiency retrofit projects. CCI assisted UCM in designing the university’s $36.1 million energy management project with a goal to save the institution at least 31 percent of its annually energy costs while significantly reducing carbon dioxide emissions. As a result of such assistance, UCM undertook the largest energy retrofit project on a college or university campus.

# # #

This, of course, has set off folks suffering from Clinton Derangement Syndrome.

Bill Clinton is coming to town. Let’s see, we can expect event tickets, instructions about what cannot be

carried into the venue, and a self righteous pearl clutching letter to the editor. Check, check, and check.

A letter to the editor criticizing the selection of Bill Clinton as a commencement speaker was published in the April 21st edition of the Muleskinner, the student newspaper:  

Clinton doesn’t deserve honorary doctorate

….President Clinton’s service was no doubt tarnished by his actions as president – namely having sexual relations with an intern….

….Surely, as the nation’s highest executive leader, obligated under the Constitution to uphold the nation’s laws, his actions in the Oval Office would prevent him from receiving such an honor.

I am disappointed that the University has chosen to bestow this honor on a man who, for more than a year brought such disgrace to his office and our nation….

Well, yes, George W. Bush (r) has some answering to do. Oh, wait. Sorry. The letter writer isn’t concerned about crimes against humanity. He’s concerned about personal behavior between consenting adults. Well, yes, Newt Gingrich (r) has some answering to do. Oh, wait. Sorry. *IOKIYAR.

Oh, my, what will the children think?

Meanwhile, the campus community lines up for tickets.

Faculty and staff wait in line to pick up tickets for graduate commencement.

*it’s okay if you’re a republican.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates at Blue Valley Northwest High School Commencement – speech

25 Tuesday May 2010

Posted by Michael Bersin in Uncategorized

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Blue Valley Northwest Hogh School, commencement, Kansas, Kemper Arena, missouri, Race to the Top, Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense

On Sunday night Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was the guest speaker at Blue Valley Northwest High School’s commencement ceremony at Kemper Arena in Kansas City. His presence was a result of the school’s finalist status in the White House’s “Race to the Top High School Comencement Challenge” program.

Previously: Secretary of Defense Robert Gates at Blue Valley Northwest High School Commencement – photos

The transcript of Secretary Gates’ commencement speech:

[applause] Secretary of Defense Robert Gates:  Thank you, Ambika. That was certainly a nicer introduction than  recent CNN correspondent’s description [laughter] as an elderly white-haired ruthless gentleman. I really objected to the elderly part. [laughter]

When I was president of Texas A and M I always used my authority to make sure I never spoke after the student speaker. [laughter] They’re always really hard acts to follow. Derek was in that same vein.

So thank you for the opportunity to be here tonight. Believe it or not, nearly half a century ago, yes, I am that old, I was in similar position to where you are now at another Kansas high school, waiting, indeed begging, for the graduation speech to be over. [laughter] So I’ll keep my remarks brief, keenly aware that I am probably the main obstacle between you and a great party. [laughter]…

…First, to the class of two thousand ten, congratulations. Congratulations on being one of the six finalists out of more than a thousand applicants [to] the President’s Race to the Top Commencement Challenge. This is indeed [applause], this is indeed a truly impressive group, with roughly ninety-five percent of you going on to college. Your academic performance is truly outstanding. But from what I’ve been told, what makes Blue Valley Northwest such a special place are the intangibles, the values and the spirit, that bond this class and this school and to the wider community. Collectively you’ve given up thousands of your hours in community service, not as a graduation requirement, but because it was the right thing to do. You’re the proud host to a Special Olympics event with more than six hundred participants. And many of you devote time to tutoring other students with special needs. Your annual diversity assembly and urban exchange program broaden your cultural horizons and foster a greater understanding of those around you. From your production of The Outrage to programs such as the football teams’s first downs for Down’s Syndrome, you take the initiative and the opportunity to educate and assist where it is needed most. You learned what true friendship and courage are through the late Alex Glaros and his battle with cancer.

Over the next ten minutes, and that’s a promise, I’d like to impart some of what I learned growing up and being educated here in Kansas, and then through the personal and professional experiences that followed. I would start here because in my life’s journey, my high school experience, in my case, Wichita High School East, played a major role. Indeed, much of what I have done I trace back in many ways to a half dozen of my high school teachers who I have never forgotten. They opened my eyes to the world and to the life of the mind, and they were role models of decency and character. And I only hope that half a century from now you will look back on your time here, at Blue valley Northwest  with such fond memories, and above all remember the amazing teachers who you will come to realize played a similarly major role in shaping your lives.

After graduating from high school and against the wishes of my parents I did not follow in the footsteps of my brother and go to K-State. Instead, I went to the College of William and Mary in Virginia. I had pretty good grades at in high school so I thought I was pretty smart.[laughter] Well, first semester my freshman year I got a D in calculus. [laughter] I got a long distance call from my father. He said, “Tell me about the D.” [laughter] I said, “Dad, the D was a gift.” [laughter] Years later, as president of Texas A and M, I would tell university freshmen that I learned two lessons from that D. First, even if you’re fairly smart, you will not succeed if you don’t work hard. Second, I am standing proof that you can survive a D as a freshman and still go on to make something of yourself. [laughter, applause]

So for those of you on your way to college, don’t be intimidated or frustrated if you find yourself not doing so well at first in your classes. Just work harder, learn better how to learn, and don’t let the challenges stop you from reaching outside your comfort zone to consider new subjects or try new things. Statistically, most of you who go to college will change your major at least once, so welcome to the club. All of you, whether you go on to college or take another path, should be prepared to take your life in a direction you hadn’t necessarily planned for.

When I went to graduate school at Indiana, I ran into a recruiter from the Central Intelligence Agency, an organization I had never considered working for. I thought I was going to be a history professor. Well, at first CIA tried to train me to be a spy. However, my efforts were less James Bond and more Austin Powers [laughter]. I don’t mean that in a good way.[laughter] One of my first training assignments was to practice secret surveillance with a team following a woman CIA officer around downtown Richmond, Virginia. Our team wasn’t very stealthy and someone reported to the Richmond police that three disreputable-looking gentlemen, that would be me and my fellow CIA trainees, were stalking this poor woman. [laughter] My two colleagues were picked up by the Richmond police. [laughter] The only reason I didn’t get arrested was because I had lost sight of her so quickly.[laughter] I and CIA decided that I really wasn’t cut out to be a spy, and so I became a CIA analyst, one of those who assess and interpret all the information that comes in. That led to a career that allowed me to witness amazing moments in American history. So it may take you a few missteps and even embarrassments before you find the thing you’re really good at, whether you go to college or not. But, keep at it.

In the years since joining the government, I’ve been privileged to work for eight presidents. As a result I’ve learned a few things about service and a few things about leadership. Many of you have probably already found opportunities, even at a young age, to exercise leadership in different ways – in athletics, extracurricular activities such as student government, your church, or what, wherever you may to work. These opportunities have placed you in a position to show responsibility or influence others. And since you are all potential future leaders, I thought I might share a few thoughts on what my experience tells me are the qualities needed by good leaders.

One of the things you must have, in fact, the foundation stone, is integrity. I’m talking about honesty, telling the truth, being straight with others and yourself. In a movie, John Wayne once said, “There’s right and there’s wrong. You’ve got to do one or the other. You do the one, and you’re living. You do the other and you may be walking around, but you’re as dead as a beaver hat.”

Second, courage – the courage to do what is right and not just what is popular. The time may come when you see something going on that you know is wrong. You may be called to stand alone, and to say, “This cannot be allowed.” Don’t kid yourself, that takes courage.

Third, real leaders treat other people with common decency and respect. Too often, those who are in charge demonstrate their power by making life miserable for their subordinates just to show that they can. Pre
sident Truman had it right when he said, “Always be nice to all the people who can’t talk back to you.” In America today, we badly need leaders with these three traits. Integrity, courage, and common decency. We need real leaders in all walks of life.

We also need people to step up and be of service to others, to the community and their country. No life is complete without such service, and in that respect this school has set a national example. There are many ways to serve, at school, in your community, through your church, or elsewhere. As Secretary of Defense I lead the United States military, where that kind of service, that kind of dedication, patriotism, and sacrifice are on display every day by people who in many cases are your age or not much older. People who have set aside their dreams in order to protect yours. Those of you on your way to military service academies will learn that soon enough, and for your commitment you have my thanks and my respect. It has been the sacrifice of those willing to step forward at  times of crises and conflict, in times of war, that has made it possible for Americans to live free and secure. To be able to make the choices about our own lives that I’ve just been talking about. Our democracy is not just about our rights, it’s also about our responsibilities and our obligations.

Which brings me to my final point. I’ve noticed that too often people in this country get so absorbed in their own needs and their own problems, that they lose sight of how blessed we all are, how blessed you are, to live in the United States of America. It is the goodness and the opportunity of this country that made all things possible for me, that made possible my journey from East High School in Wichita to the corridors of power in Washington and around the world. It has been my privilege and the honor of my life to give something back in service. And so for all of you, tonight, with this graduation, the door to opportunity opens for you to serve and for you to lead.

Good luck, and God bless. [applause]

Secretary Robert Gates’ speech as prepared.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates at Blue Valley Northwest High School Commencement – photos

24 Monday May 2010

Posted by Michael Bersin in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Blue Valley Northwest Hogh School, commencement, Kansas, Kemper Arena, missouri, Race to the Top, Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense

On Sunday night Blue Girl and I attended the Blue Valley Northwest High School commencement held at Kemper Arena in Kansas City. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was the guest commencement speaker as a result of the school’s finalist status in the White House’s “Race to the Top High School Comencement Challenge” program. The school is located in Johnson County, Kansas, in the Kansas City metropolitan area.

The commencement procession – Secretary of Defense Robert Gates (center), Dr. Amy Murphy, principal of Blue Valley Northwest High School (right).

Graduating senior Derek Sechi giving his commencement speech.

To everyone’s credit this was a typical high school commencement, presented for and by the graduating students for their families and friends in attendance. The program included a performance of Brahms Paganini Variations, Op. 35 by pianist Christina Yuan and an original composition written and performed by Hailey Lapin, voice and Andy Rao, piano. Interestingly, there wasn’t an overwhelming emphasis on the school’s athletic program.

Being in the arena for the festivities brought back a lot of memories and a bit of post traumatic stress, except, for the life of me, I can’t remember who our commencement speaker was.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.

Blue Valley Northwest High School faculty (in the foreground) and graduating seniors seated on the arena floor. The media riser is at the back. Directly behind the media riser was the school’s concert band which performed the prelude, processional, and recessional music.

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