This has always been my philosophy—the philosophy of most thinkers. Like Socrates, I am the gadfly of a deeper truth. I was born with an innate sense of curiosity. You telling me something doesn’t necessarily make it true. I accept no authority of information as THE authority. I am compelled to investigate. And vice-versa my researching something you’ve told me doesn’t mean I believe it to be untrue—it is simply the manner in which I operate intellectually. I have always and will always think for myself.

Moreover, I believe others should do so as well. A little thinking could go a long way to getting us out of the current economic situation we are finding ourselves. Why are we allowing the so-called experts tell us we are in an economic depression that we cannot escape? Was it not other so-called experts who watched idly as we got into this mess through artificial financial prosperity, the hay day for bankers, Wall Street and middle America alike? Why should we accept their predictions, their explanation of reality? Why should we not think for ourselves and improve our situation?

This is exactly what I have been doing. Thinking about what we can do. Here are some of the things I believe will help us get back on track as a nation:

1. Tax according to our current laws — you will pay more than the next guy, if they you make more as you should.
2. Place a tariff on all imports from other countries to encourage new industry within our own country and discourage cheap, disposable crap flooding in from other countries while displacing local workers and exploiting foreign children in unsafe work conditions. This will also create extra revenue which we could put back into the economy.
3. Upgrade the power grids to be more efficient. This will save a gob of money and energy sources while preparing us for the needs of the technology of tomorrow.
4. Invest heavily in science, technology and alternative energy. We should be able to compete in all these areas. The Chinese said they want to be the leader in electric cars within a year—why should we not give them a run for their money? We already have excellent technology and the capability to do this.
5. Raise the standard of living in our own country. We as a society are only as good as the lowest rungs within. If the poor feel as if their well-being matters as much as the wealthiest than they will be willing and anxious to help improve our society.
6. Each of us take what we need and put the rest back into our economy. This means reasonable wages, solid benefits for employees—healthy  less profits for corporations, less waste and mindful consumption all around. No more keeping up with the Jones, no more million dollar wages.
7. Implement as severe punishments for white collar crimes as for other crimes. When someone robs a mini-mart and takes $250—they go to prison for multiple years. Yet, someone who embezzles 100′s of thousands often escape jail time or get reduced sentences. They should pay according to the crime.
8. No more bonuses for failing companies. Period. No more bailouts. No more excuses. And the government should put regulations harshly punishing such policies. And if a company is deemed ‘too big to fail’ — it should be split up into smaller companies with new management.
9. Reduce the number of HB-1 Visas. I know this will be controversial but we can train locally. There are thousands of displaced out-of-work technologically savvy people—why not put them to work?
10. Accept responsibility but refuse to be the donkey to which all blame is pinned. Insist the rest of the world do their part as well. For example, countries like India and China can work on effective birth control to reduce their excessive population. You cannot expect to properly provide for your citizens if you lack the resources and yet you continue to overpopulate and expect the world to help you. Countries must be willing to help themselves as well. And if two countries are perpetually at war and do not wish to stop being at war, as long as they are not harming other countries, we should not interfere.

These are just some of the things I think about. I think if we did these ten things we could go a long ways towards ending this economic recession and improving quality of life globally. Mostly, I wish to encourage everyone worldwide to think for themselves—to find answers nullius in verba.

It has been all of 8 weeks and 1 day since Obama was sworn in. It is unrealistic at best to think he can fix everything in such a short period of time. He has done more in this eight weeks than the last yahoo ten fold. He is keeping his campaign promises. He is restoring our country to pre-Rovian/Bush days to the best of his ability.

Let’s look at what Obama has done so far:

18 Executive Orders

January 21, 2009 Executive Order 13489 – Presidential Records

January 21, 2009 Executive Order 13490 – Ethics Commitments by Executive Branch Personnel

January 22, 2009 Executive Order 13491 – Ensuring Lawful Interrogations

January 22, 2009 Executive Order 13492 – Review and Disposition of Individuals Detained at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base and Closure of Detention Facilities

January 22, 2009 Executive Order 13493 – Review of Detention Policy Options

January 30, 2009 Executive Order 13494 – Economy in Government Contracting

January 30, 2009 Executive Order 13495 – Nondisplacement of Qualified Workers Under Service Contracts

January 30, 2009 Executive Order 13496 – Notification of Employee Rights Under Federal Labor Laws

January 30, 2009 Executive Order 13497 – Revocation of Certain Executive Orders Concerning Regulatory Planning and Review

February 5, 2009 Executive Order 13498 – Amendments to Executive Order 13199 and Establishment of the President’s Advisory Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships

February 5, 2009 Executive Order 13499 – Further Amendments to Executive Order 12835, Establishment of the National Economic Council

February 5, 2009 Executive Order 13500 – Further Amendments to Executive Order 12859, Establishment of the Domestic Policy Council

February 6, 2009 Executive Order 13501 – Establishing the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board

February 6, 2009 Executive Order 13502 – Use of Project Labor Agreements for Federal Construction Projects

February 19, 2009 Executive Order 13503 – Establishment of the White House Office of Urban Affairs

February 20, 2009 Executive Order 13504 – Amending Executive Order 13390

March 9, 2009 Executive Order 13505 – Removing Barriers to Responsible Scientific Research Involving Human Stem Cells

March 11, 2009 Executive Order 13506 – Establishing a White House Council on Women and Girls

17 PRESIDENTIAL MEMORANDUMS

3/11/2009 Unexpected Urgent Refugee and Migration Needs Related to the Continuing Conflict
in Pakistan

3/9/2009 Memorandum on Presidential Signing Statements

3/9/2009 Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies 3-9-09

3/4/2009 Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies – Subject:
Government Contracting

3/3/2000 Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies

2/27/2009 Transfer of Detainee to Control of the Attorney General

2/5/2009 Appliance Efficiency Standards

2/4/2009 Presidential Memorandum — State Children’s Health Insurance Program

1/30/2009 Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies

1/27/2009 Unexpected Urgent Refugee and Migration Needs Related to Gaza

1/26/2009 The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007

1/26/2009 State of California Request for Waiver Under 42 U.S.C. 7543(b), the Clean Air
Act

1/23/2009 Mexico City Policy and Assistance for Voluntary Population Planning

1/22/2009 Review of the Detention of Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri

1/21/2009 Freedom of Information Act

1/21/2009 Pay Freeze

1/21/2009 Transparency and Open Government

PROCLAMATIONS

3/13/2009 National Poison Prevention Week, 2009

3/3/2009 Women’s History Month, 2009

3/2/2009 Irish-American Heritiage Month, 2009

2/27/2009 National Consumer Protection Week, 2009

2/27/2009 Read Across America Day, 2009

2/27/2009 American Red Cross Month, 2009

2/27/2009 Save Your Vision Week, 2009

2/2/2009 American Heart Month, 2009

2/2/2009 National African American History Month, 2009

1/20/2009 National Day of Renewal and Reconciliation, 2009

In these Executive Orders and Memorandums a plethora of change has been initiated:

• He froze salaries for the top staff in the White House almost immediately.
• Gave us a definitive date to close Gitmo.
• He signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 making it easier for people to get the pay they deserve — regardless of their gender, race, or age
• He sped up the process for new fuel standards application.
• He also is working towards allowing California to set its own auto emissions standards as long as they are stricter than those in place currently by the Federal Government.
• Signed a detailed executive order to ban torture and inhumane treatment of prisoners.
• He signed the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2009, better known as the State Children’s Health Insurance Program or SCHIP. Once signed into law, this legislation will continue coverage for six to seven million children and increase that coverage to four million more.
• He signed an executive order restoring the 30-day timeframe for former presidents to review records before they are released. It also eliminated the right for the vice president or family members of former presidents to do the reviews.
• He implemented the Employment Qualification Commitment, a fail-safe measure in the governmental hiring process ensuring no one is hired or not hired for their political beliefs or ideological stance — age, sex, race etc. He did this by making those hiring sign a declaration that they will not choose upon arbitrary, unfair criteria. This is a small step but it will be beneficial for accountability later on.
• He banned lobbyists from gifting politicians and restricted government employees from accepting a position with a lobbyist for a period of 2 years after leaving office to help reduce government corruption.
• He lifted the ban on giving money to international groups that provide abortion services.
• He signed the DTV Delay Act to allow ample time for millions of Americans to be prepared for the digital transition.
• He signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act which will jump start our economy in ways we really need such as creating alternative energy jobs and production, modernization of homes and federal buildings to improve energy efficiency, bringing our schools and hospitals up to date with
  technology, investing in science, research and technology — this is vital! We must be able to compete in these areas.
• He restored public access to the Presidential records in Executive Order 13489 — revoking the order Bush put into place severely limiting access to Presidential actions by the public.
• He signed the Freedom of Information Act — in which he set the guidelines for the government to adopt a “presumption in favor of disclosure” and take “affirmative steps” to make information
  publicly available.
• He took the necessary steps to restore a transparent, participatory and collaborative Government in the United States.
• He restored our commitment to treating prisoners according to Geneva Convention Standards.
• He ordered a stop to all torture and most rendition.
• He created a task force on detainee disposition to develop realistic, humane policies for the lawful detention, transfer, trial and eventual release of detainees from the war on terror. This task force must report to him within 180 days with its findings.

These are some of the fundamental steps Obama has taken towards restoring our national pride, our political legitimacy and bringing us into the 21st century while getting us out of this economic depression.

In the first 56 days of his Presidency, Obama has done more positive things for this country than George W. Bush did the entire eight years in office. Obama has been working diligently to undo, revoke, overturn, reverse the crooked policy of the last eight years. I say he is doing an excellent job.

Here, let me share it with you…

[begin]

I am certain that my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our people impel. This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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