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1
SENATE RESOLUTION

 
2     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
 
5     WHEREAS, Dr. Galbraith spent more than 25 years on the
6 Harvard University faculty and advised Democratic presidents
7 and candidates from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Bill Clinton; and
 
8     WHEREAS, As an author, Dr. Galbraith wrote many books; one
9 of the most influential was "The Affluent Society" in 1958,
10 which argued that overproduction of consumer goods was harming
11 the public sector and depriving Americans of such benefits as
12 clean air, clean streets, good schools, and support for the
13 arts; and
 
14     WHEREAS, Dr. Galbraith was generally considered to have
15 been an apostle of the theories advanced by British economist
16 John Maynard Keynes: that government could promote full
17 employment and a stable economy by stimulating spending and
18 investment with adjustments in interest and tax rates, and
19 deficit financing; He lamented what he believed was an excess
20 accumulation of private wealth at the expense of public needs,
21 and he warned that an unfettered free market system and
22 capitalism without regulation would fail to meet basic social
23 demands; This was echoed in "The Affluent Society."; and
 
24     WHEREAS, In the early 1960s, while serving as President
25 John F. Kennedy's ambassador to India, Dr. Galbraith expressed
26 grave doubts about increasing U.S. involvement in the cankerous
27 conflict brewing in Southeast Asia that would erupt into the
28 Vietnam War; later that decade, he was chairman of the
29 leftleaning Americans for Democratic Action, and he backed the
30 unsuccessful antiwar presidential candidacy of Sen. Eugene J.
31 McCarthy in 1968; and
 

 

 

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1     WHEREAS, Regarded by admirers such as Sen. Edward M.
2 Kennedy (D-Mass.) as a "true Renaissance man," Dr. Galbraith
3 also wrote about the art of India and penned several novels
4 including one work of fiction, "The Triumph" (1968), about the
5 final days of a Central American dictatorship and its
6 relationship to what the author called "an uncontrollably funny
7 institution" -- the U.S. State Department; and
 
8     WHEREAS, In 2000 Dr. Galbraith received the Presidential
9 Medal of Freedom, the U.S. government's highest civilian honor
10 from President Bill Clinton; and
 
11     WHEREAS, John Kenneth Galbraith was born Oct. 15, 1908, on
12 a small farm near Iona Station in Ontario, Canada; from his
13 father, a leading figure in the local branch of the Canadian
14 Liberal Party, he inherited his politics, his wit and his
15 height; As a child he accompanied his father to political
16 rallies; and
 
17     WHEREAS, He studied animal husbandry at Ontario
18 Agricultural College at Guelph and later received a doctorate
19 in agricultural economics at the University of California at
20 Berkeley; In 1934, Dr. Galbraith joined the Harvard faculty,
21 where he would serve with several interruptions until he
22 retired in 1975; He became a U.S. citizen in 1937, then left
23 the country on a year-long sabbatical as a research fellow at
24 Cambridge University in England, where he became a disciple of
25 Keynesian economics; and
 
26     WHEREAS, Dr. Galbraith served a year on the economics
27 faculty at Princeton University in 1939, then came to
28 Washington to work with the National Defense Advisory
29 Committee, established to prepare the U.S. economy for war; His
30 mentor in the federal bureaucracy was Leon Henderson, a leading
31 New Dealer; Henderson put Dr. Galbraith in charge of the price

 

 

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1 division in the Office of Price Administration, which was
2 arguably the most powerful civilian post in the management of
3 the wartime economy; and
 
4     WHEREAS, Starting in 1943, he spent five years writing and
5 editing at Fortune magazine and took leaves of absence for
6 special assignments; After Germany surrendered in 1945, he went
7 to Europe to direct the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey; and
 
8     WHEREAS, After rejoining the Harvard faculty in 1949 as
9 professor of economics, he wrote the books that brought him
10 renown as an economic thinker; besides "The Affluent Society,"
11 there was "American Capitalism" (1952), "The New Industrial
12 State" (1967) and "Economics and the Public Purpose" (1973);
13 and
 
14     WHEREAS, On the political front, Dr. Galbraith campaigned
15 for John F. Kennedy in the 1960 presidential election; in 1961
16 he took a two-year leave from Harvard to serve as ambassador to
17 India; aside from the India-China border war of 1962, there was
18 rarely a full day's work to be done, so the ambassador used the
19 extra time to write more books; among them were "Indian
20 Painting" (1968), an art book he wrote with Mohinder Singh
21 Randhawa, and his first novel, "The McLandress Dimension"
22 (1963), a satire written under the pseudonym Mark Epernay;
23 After leaving New Delhi, Dr. Galbraith wrote "Ambassador's
24 Journal" (1969), a day-to-day account of his service in India;
25 and
 
26     WHEREAS, After his retirement from Harvard, Dr. Galbraith
27 continued to write, travel and speak to packed auditoriums; he
28 wrote an autobiography, "A Life in Our Times" (1981); he was
29 host of the British-made television series "The Age of
30 Uncertainty" and author of a best-selling book by the same
31 name; with Soviet economist Stanislav Menshikov, he wrote
32 "Capitalism, Communism and Coexistence: From a Bitter Past to a

 

 

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1 Better Prospect; and
 
2     WHEREAS, In 1999, Dr. Galbraith wrote "Name-Dropping," a
3 collection of remembrances of famous figures he'd encountered,
4 including Harry S. Truman and Jawaharlal Nehru; He divided his
5 time between his home in Cambridge, summers at his "unfarmed
6 farm" in Newfane, Vt., and a chalet in Gstaad, Switzerland,
7 where he spent winters skiing; he is survived by his wife,
8 Catherine Atwater Galbraith, whom he married in 1937; and three
9 sons, Alan, Peter, and James; One son, Douglas, preceded him in
10 death; therefore, be it
 
11     RESOLVED, BY THE SENATE OF THE NINETY-FOURTH GENERAL
12 ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that we extend our sincere
13 condolences to the family and friends of Dr. John Kenneth
14 Galbraith, truly a great part of American economic history; and
15 be it further
 
16     RESOLVED, That a suitable copy of this resolution be
17 presented to the family of John Kenneth Galbraith.