A Truman Stump for Decent Health Care - 1952
By Gordonskene Wednesday Oct 21, 2009 6:00pm
(Harry Truman - laying it out in plain, understandable English)
Harry Truman never gave up on the idea of Universal Health Care. He brought up the subject in 1945 and he was present when the Medicare Bill was signed into law in 1965.
In 1952 he addressed a convention of the American Hospital Association and, even though his term of office would be up in a few months, he still campaigned for a decent system of health care for all Americans.
Pres. Truman: “This great free enterprise system of ours has made it possible for more Americans to have more things, more of the good things of life, than any people anywhere on earth or anywhere in the history of the world. Can it now also make it possible for every American to protect his health? I would not call such a goal socialism. I would call it a goal of enterprise. American free enterprise. Meeting the health needs of our people is one of the most important ways we can make our American promises come true. It’s also one of the mainstays of national defense. Only the strong can survive and only the healthy can be strong.”
After almost 60 years, it's still sounding like a good idea.
(Technical note: The original recording of this speech is completely trashed, with a thick coat of static going through the entire speech that goes from bad to worse. I have spent several hours with ProTools trying to pull some usable portions of this one hour speech out to make it as legible as possible, but some things were just impossible to do. Therefore, it might require some close listening in order to make out what's being said. Sadly, it's the only known recording of the speech, which was never broadcast - but it's an important document of great historic importance. And for that reason I'm including it in this post. Apologies in advance - G.S.)
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Your library continues to amaze. People who voted for Truman couldn't hear this but we can with just a click. Thanks.
Gordon
have you tried the Truman Library in Independence, Mo? They might have a text of the speech.
We haven't talked about it enough. The Dems are sneaking it through, pushing it through too fast.
(/snark)
For cleaning up noisy Audio, you want the forensics audio program called 'Diamond Cut'. It's a Windoze-only app, so I use Parallels to run it on my Mac. But it is amazing at how much data it can pull out of the noise.
Thanks for this clip.
I have some other tools. but it would help to have a copy that doesn't have all the gating that you've put it through, to get a good sample of the background noise.
any chance you can post the 'unclean' version as well?
thanks for your notes regarding the technical problems on the tape. Yes, the recording came from the Truman Library, so that's pretty much all she wrote on that.
As for the noise programs. I will give the Forensics software a try. Basically, it's RF all the way through with arcing coming from a faulty ground in the original recording. Give me your e-mail address and I can send the untreated copy to you if you want.
Thanks again,
Gordon
you might have more fun trying it yourself, http://www.adobe.com/products/soundbooth/ noise cleanup is spectacularly easy.
if not, my username at mac.com.
Kiss my grits, my grandfather was the kingmaker for 4 northwestern Arkansas counties. He thought that it was excruciatingly funny that Truman, a tool of the Perdergast gang was known for the fact that the he held a senate commission to investigate the World War II contracts when all he was doing was blackmailing the big munitions makers to relocate part of their money into the control of the Pendergast gang. See the movement of Piper Aircraft to Wichita Ks.
Nowadays, how many representative districts have a thumb in F22 pie?
That Teddy Roosevelt, one of the few great republican presidents ran with a platform of universal healthcare as the Bull Moose party candidate. Information like that seems to go down the memory hole with the modern day right wing cretins.
How can anyone say "slow down". We've been at this since the 1940's.
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