 "Photo: Caitlin Bush")
From seasoned legislators to a seasoned stand-up comedian, the Lou Frey Institute Symposium hosted a variety of experts to discuss President Barack Obama’s first 100 days in office on Wednesday in the Pegasus Ballroom.
The symposium featured topics such as national security, the stimulus package and racial issues as addressed by The Daily Show’s “Senior Black Correspondent,” Larry Wilmore.
The keynote speaker and the only of the day to use expletives and racial epithets, Wilmore kept an audience filled with college and high school students laughing throughout his time on stage.
Wilmore discussed how he got into the political and social commentary realm of comedy using impressions of political figures like Richard Nixon and Jesse Jackson.
Wilmore also took questions from UCF students about working on The Daily Show, the effect Obama has had on race relations and why Wilmore thinks the term “African-American” should be replaced by “Chocolate,” a position he defends in a series of satirical letters addressed to the NAACP printed in his book, I’d Rather We Got Casinos (and Other Black Thoughts.)
Pertaining to issues of national security, one panel’s experts spoke about what the administration is doing about cyber-terrorism.
Mackenzie Eaglen from the Heritage Institute and James M. Ludes from the American Security Project said the U.S. is lacking in defense for cyber-warfare.
Since state-sponsored Russian hackers hijacked Georgian servers in the recent conflict between the two nations, they said cyber-warfare has increasingly been on the defense community’s radar. There is also evidence that China is excelling in the development of cyber-warfare, they said.
Two panels made it clear to the audience of young people that much of the spending done by the current government will be paid for by their generation.
Jim Slattery, former Democratic senator from Kansas, named the practice by which governments borrow money at the expense of future generations “intergenerational robbery.”
Former Republican representative from New Hampshire, Bill Zeliff, agreed, saying that the decisions being made in response to this crisis will affect the standard of living for the next generation.
But what the former congressmen did not agree upon was how well the Obama administration is handling the economic crisis.
Zeliff said the stimulus package, “was written so quickly and passed so quickly [that] it’s open to more interpretation than the Bible.”
Zeliff warned that because the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act also involves tremendous spending, it will cause the federal government to expand as well as increase inflation.
Slattery said that it was too early to tell how effective the president’s decisions will be, but in his analysis, he said Obama already deserved, “strong marks for being decisive.”
Freshman English literature major Stephanie Worley said she isn’t sold on Obama.
“I voted for him, but I wasn’t crazy about him,” she said.
Worley wanted to learn more about the Obama administration, she said, out of concern about other nations’ opinions on the U.S.
Congresswoman Suzanne Kosmas, a freshman democrat representing Florida’s 24th district, which includes Orlando, also gave a positive assessment of Obama’s first 100 days in office.
Kosmas explained how the stimulus bill was designed to inject a short-term boost by creating jobs, saying that the plan has, “opportunities for everyone.”
After the panelists’ presentations, Pine Ridge High School senior Cass Weil asked them what was being done to improve education in the state, citing schools that do not have the test scores to receive additional funding under No Child Left Behind. The audience applauded when Weil finished his question.
Congressman Allen Boyd (D-Fla.) explained that most of the failure to use the law effectively occurred at the state level, because the law’s flexibility allowed states to make mistakes in its implementation.
After the panel discussion, Weil said he was not satisfied with the response.
He said he was looking for a response that included a specific plan to correct the issues, but he said the congressman passed the blame to the state instead.
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