Full Text of SR0931 94th General Assembly
SR0931 94TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY
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| SENATE RESOLUTION
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| WHEREAS, The members of the Illinois Senate are saddened to | 3 |
| learn of the death of John Kenneth Galbraith, who passed away | 4 |
| on April 29, 2006; and
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| WHEREAS, Professor Galbraith spent more than 25 years on | 6 |
| the Harvard
University faculty and advised Democratic | 7 |
| presidents and candidates from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Bill | 8 |
| Clinton; and
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| WHEREAS, As an author, Professor Galbraith wrote many | 10 |
| books; one of the most influential was "The Affluent Society" | 11 |
| in 1958, which argued that overproduction of consumer goods was | 12 |
| harming the public sector and depriving Americans of such | 13 |
| benefits as clean air, clean streets, good schools, and support | 14 |
| for the arts; and
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| WHEREAS, Professor Galbraith was generally considered to | 16 |
| have been an apostle of the theories advanced by British | 17 |
| economist John Maynard Keynes: that government could promote | 18 |
| full employment and a stable economy by stimulating spending | 19 |
| and investment with adjustments in interest and tax rates, and | 20 |
| deficit financing;
He lamented what he believed was an excess | 21 |
| accumulation of private wealth at the expense of public
needs, | 22 |
| and he warned that an unfettered free market system and | 23 |
| capitalism without regulation would fail to meet basic social | 24 |
| demands; This was echoed in "The Affluent Society."; and
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| WHEREAS, In the early 1960s, while serving as President | 26 |
| John F. Kennedy's ambassador to India, Professor Galbraith | 27 |
| expressed grave doubts about increasing U.S. involvement in the | 28 |
| cankerous conflict brewing in Southeast Asia that would erupt | 29 |
| into the Vietnam War; later that decade, he was chairman of the | 30 |
| leftleaning Americans for Democratic Action, and he backed the | 31 |
| unsuccessful antiwar presidential candidacy of Sen. Eugene J. |
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| McCarthy in 1968; and | 2 |
| WHEREAS,
Regarded by admirers such as Sen. Edward M. | 3 |
| Kennedy (D-Mass.) as a "true Renaissance man," Professor | 4 |
| Galbraith also wrote about the art of India and penned several | 5 |
| novels including one work of fiction, "The Triumph" (1968), | 6 |
| about the final days of a Central American dictatorship and its | 7 |
| relationship to what the author called "an uncontrollably funny | 8 |
| institution" -- the U.S. State Department; and
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| WHEREAS, In 2000 Professor Galbraith received the | 10 |
| Presidential Medal of Freedom, the U.S. government's highest | 11 |
| civilian honor from President Bill Clinton; and
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| WHEREAS, John Kenneth Galbraith was born Oct. 15, 1908, on | 13 |
| a small farm near Iona Station in Ontario, Canada; from his | 14 |
| father, a leading figure in the local branch of the Canadian | 15 |
| Liberal Party, he inherited his politics, his wit and his | 16 |
| height; As a child he accompanied his father to political | 17 |
| rallies; and
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| WHEREAS, He studied animal husbandry at Ontario | 19 |
| Agricultural College at Guelph and later received a doctorate | 20 |
| in agricultural economics at the University of California at | 21 |
| Berkeley;
In 1934, Professor Galbraith joined the Harvard | 22 |
| faculty, where he would serve with several interruptions until | 23 |
| he retired in 1975; He became a U.S. citizen in 1937, then left | 24 |
| the country on a year-long sabbatical as a research fellow at | 25 |
| Cambridge University in England, where he became a disciple of | 26 |
| Keynesian economics; and | 27 |
| WHEREAS, Professor Galbraith served a year on the economics | 28 |
| faculty at Princeton University in 1939, then came to | 29 |
| Washington to work with the National Defense Advisory | 30 |
| Committee, established to prepare the U.S. economy for war;
His | 31 |
| mentor in the federal bureaucracy was Leon Henderson, a leading |
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| New Dealer; Henderson put Professor Galbraith in charge of the | 2 |
| price division in the Office of Price Administration, which was | 3 |
| arguably the most powerful civilian post in the management of | 4 |
| the wartime economy; and
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| WHEREAS, Starting in 1943, he spent five years writing and | 6 |
| editing at Fortune magazine and took leaves of absence for | 7 |
| special assignments;
After Germany surrendered in 1945, he went | 8 |
| to Europe to direct the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey; and
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| WHEREAS, After rejoining the Harvard faculty in 1949 as | 10 |
| professor of economics, he wrote the books that brought him | 11 |
| renown as an economic thinker; besides "The Affluent Society," | 12 |
| there was "American
Capitalism" (1952), "The New Industrial | 13 |
| State" (1967) and "Economics and the Public Purpose" (1973); | 14 |
| and
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| WHEREAS, On the political front, Professor Galbraith | 16 |
| campaigned for John F. Kennedy in the 1960 presidential | 17 |
| election; in 1961 he took a two-year leave from Harvard to | 18 |
| serve as ambassador to India; aside from the India-China border | 19 |
| war of 1962, there was rarely a full day's work to be done, so | 20 |
| the ambassador used the extra time to write more books;
among | 21 |
| them were "Indian Painting" (1968), an art book he wrote with | 22 |
| Mohinder Singh Randhawa, and his first novel, "The McLandress | 23 |
| Dimension" (1963), a satire written under the pseudonym Mark | 24 |
| Epernay;
After leaving New Delhi, Professor Galbraith wrote | 25 |
| "Ambassador's Journal" (1969), a day-to-day account of his | 26 |
| service in India; and
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| WHEREAS, After his retirement from Harvard, Professor | 28 |
| Galbraith continued to write, travel and speak to packed | 29 |
| auditoriums; he wrote an autobiography, "A Life in Our Times" | 30 |
| (1981); he was host of the British-made television series "The | 31 |
| Age of Uncertainty" and author of a best-selling book by the | 32 |
| same name; with Soviet economist Stanislav Menshikov, he wrote |
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| "Capitalism, Communism and Coexistence: From a Bitter Past to a | 2 |
| Better Prospect; and | 3 |
| WHEREAS, In 1999, Professor Galbraith wrote | 4 |
| "Name-Dropping," a collection of remembrances of famous | 5 |
| figures he'd encountered, including Harry S. Truman and | 6 |
| Jawaharlal Nehru; He divided his time between his home in | 7 |
| Cambridge, summers at his "unfarmed farm" in Newfane, Vt., and | 8 |
| a chalet in Gstaad, Switzerland, where he spent winters skiing; | 9 |
| and | 10 |
| WHEREAS, From 2000 to 2003 Professor Galbraith, his lovely | 11 |
| wife Catherine and devoted housekeeper Sheela, shared their | 12 |
| beautiful home at 30 Francis with State Senator Jacqueline | 13 |
| Collins while she was studying at Harvard; and
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| WHEREAS, Professor Galbraith is survived by his wife, | 15 |
| Catherine Atwater Galbraith, whom he married in 1937; and three | 16 |
| sons,
Alan, Peter, and James; One son, Douglas, preceded him in | 17 |
| death; therefore, be it
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| RESOLVED, BY THE SENATE OF THE NINETY-FOURTH GENERAL | 19 |
| ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that we extend our sincere | 20 |
| condolences to the family and friends of Professor John Kenneth | 21 |
| Galbraith, truly a great part of American economic history; and | 22 |
| be it further
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| RESOLVED, That a suitable copy of this resolution be | 24 |
| presented to the family of John Kenneth Galbraith.
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