On Jan. 9, 1967, Julian Bond was finally sworn in as a member of the Georgia House of Representatives. This was after a two year battle to claim his elected seat.
Following his election in 1965, the Georgia House refused to seat him because of his statements (on behalf of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) in opposition to the Vietnam War. He was re-elected to his “vacant seat” and the House refused again.
But if you really want to worry about where the limits might lie when a president decides to go after individual companies—and even individual executives—there’s a cautionary tale from half a century ago that seems right on point. And the president stretching the boundaries of his power was John F. Kennedy.
In the spring of 1962, President Kennedy was celebrating a key labor agreement between the United States Steel Company—the nation’s biggest—and the United Steelworkers’ Union. Steel was a major component of the nation’s manufacturing sector. So the modest 2.5 per cent wage increase promised to act as a brake on rising prices, and by extension a victory against a boost in inflation that was on the top of the White House’s concern.
A few days later, on April 10, US Steel chairman Roger Blough came into the Oval Office and handed Kennedy a statement announcing that the company was raising prices for steel 3.5 per cent—a hike other steel companies would immediately follow.
Constitution Day September 17th (or Citizenship Day, formerly observed the third Sunday in May) is an American federal observance that recognizes the adoption of the United States Constitution and those who have become U.S. citizens. It is normally observed on September 17, the day in 1787 that delegates to the Constitutional Convention signed the document in Philadelphia.
"On March 4, 1933, at the height of the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt is inaugurated as the 32nd president of the United States. In his famous inaugural address, delivered outside the east wing of the U.S. Capitol, Roosevelt outlined his “New Deal”–an expansion of the federal government as an instrument of employment opportunity and welfare–and told Americans that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Although it was a rainy day in Washington, and gusts of rain blew over Roosevelt as he spoke, he delivered a speech that radiated optimism and competence, and a broad majority of Americans united behind their new president and his radical economic proposals to lead the nation out of the Great Depression."