David Stewart’s car was rear ended on the way to the Rotary meeting, so Dave Fitzwilliam talked about Stewart’s first 3 books. David Stewart is a retired lawyer that argued two cases before the US Supreme Court in his former life. His first three books were all related to the US Constitution. His 1st was “The Summer of 1787″and was about the Constitutional Convention. His 2nd was about Pres. Andrew Johnson’s impeachment trial. The 3rd was about Arron Burr’s attempt to form a brake away empire along the Mississippi River from Ohio to New Orleans in 1805.

Brian (Dan Moore’s son) talked about the U.S. Coast Guard, post 9/11/’01. On 9/12 he boarded a Turkish oiler 25 miles from NYC in sea state 5 (rough water) from a CG cutter (ship over 65 ft ) with rifles at the ready and found the crew friendly and sympathetic to the US and 9/11. The 11 missions of the CG are ports and waterways security; drug interdiction; maintaining aids to navigation; search and rescue; protecting marine resources (inspection of fishing boats); safety inspections; part of DOD; illegal migrant interdiction; environmental protection (10 pollution events per day); ice operations; and law enforcement (95% of the US economy is on the water).

Dave’s talk was drawn from thee resent books. Though FDR was not much of a thinker, he mastered the new media, radio, with his “fire side chats” and was a great politician. In spite of isolationist head wins in both parties, FDR won the 3rd term 1940 election against Willkie, partly because Willkie was poor on radio and depended on old media ( TIME, LIFE, FORTUNE, and the NY TIMES). With the advice of his Harvard Progressive “Brain Trust” FDR replaced free market capitalism with government monopolies such as Smoot-Hawley Tariff, NRA, AAA, TVA etc. The unemployment in March, 1933 was 25% and after 7 years of the “New Deal” it was still 15% in 1940. The NRA and AAA were declared unconstitutional in 1935, and the Tennessee Valley Authority was for the benefit of 2% US people (mostly small farmers) with the tax support 98% of the people and was not completed until the 1950’s.