Truth-Challenged
By David Glenn Cox
It seems that we live in a truth-challenged society where the truth is relative. I read in a Thomas Sowell editorial that said, Barack Obama should not make the same mistake that FDR made. Sowell reasoned that FDR had spent billions of dollars on economic recovery and at the end of the decade unemployment was still in double digits. Sowell’s every word was the truth when FDR was sworn in to office in 1933 unemployment stood at 29 percent and after all those billions were spent unemployment was still in double digits at 10 percent.
Sowell could have just as easily have said the FDR spent those billions to reduce unemployment by two thirds. Or he could have said that FDR’s programs only created twenty million jobs and only built twenty-six major hydroelectric dam projects through the TVA. That it only paved tens of thousands of miles of roads and only built thousands of miles of sewers and only built or remodeled ten thousand public buildings.
Strange that Sowell would hang on that one small point that unemployment was still in double digits. He is actually arguing that Herbert Hoover was correct with his, "don’t just do something, stand there!" approach. If we were talking about tomato plants or a litter of kittens maybe that point would be acceptable but we’re not, we’re talking about human beings. Men, women and children who are struggling and suffering and in need. We are talking about the lives that they lead and the way that they will lead them.
What sort of newspaper could argue that to do nothing is the wiser course A newspaper that is part of a large conglomerate that is more interested in the needs of shareholders than those of its readers. The Internet did not kill newspapers, newspapers killed themselves by telling us what is good for them is really good for us. It has gone on for generations but now with the Internet there are other options. FDR advised, "Those newspapers of the nation which most loudly cried dictatorship against me would have been the first to justify the beginnings of dictatorship by somebody else."
If FDR were with us today he would beat on Fox News like a drum, "There is nothing I love as much as a good fight."
"The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the government."
"I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made."
To me at least that is why FDR is a hero he had the ability to get so much done. He had the ability to implode the Republican noise machine and never lose his smile.
"Can the Old Guard pass itself off as the New Deal? I think not. We have all seen many marvelous stunts in the circus but no performing elephant could turn a hand-spring without falling flat on his back."
"Now, there is an old and somewhat lugubrious adage which says: "Never speak of rope in the house of a man who has been hanged." In the same way, if I were a Republican leader speaking to a mixed audience, the last word in the whole dictionary that I think I would use is that word "depression."
Today liberals such as myself are told that we better vote for Democrats this November or else. We are called whiners and cry babies, the professional left and lets not forget f*cking retards. Our problem or at least my problem with Barack Obama is that he’s way too far to the right and most of the Democrats in Congress are no more than lobbyists sold to the highest bidder. The message the party is sending is that we must do what is best for them because it is really good for us.
The Republicans offer up the insane idea that we must go back to the same policies that created this mess. I’m left in the quandary that the Republicans don’t have my interests at heart but neither do the Democrats. Both parties want my vote to do what’s best for themselves and not what’s best for us. Heads I lose tails I lose a Punch and Judy show where we vote to see which puppet holds the stick to hit us with.
Because this time it is Barack Obama’s administration that is telling me to wait. Just wait and maybe things will get better. Tax cuts for small business, tax cuts for all business, tax cuts for everybody except the really, really rich but we’ll give them one hundred percent instant depreciation and the thundering herd won’t know the difference.
"To us there has come a time, in the midst of swift happenings, to pause for a moment and take stock—to recall what our place in history has been, and to rediscover what we are and what we may be. If we do not, we risk the real peril of inaction."
That is what makes it truly ironic the Democratic Party blaming its members for the enthusiasm gap. It would be like the Pittsburgh Pirates blaming their losing record on poor attendance. Never mind better players just applaud more! Sure, we gave up a grand slam in the ninth inning but if you don’t cheer we can’t win and it will be all your fault!
Obama sold us out in the healthcare debate; Obama gave GM and Chrysler a sweet heart deal. Cash for Clunkers? A corporate give away, Homebuyers tax credit? A corporate give away.
Tax cuts are Republican politics, Democrats want to grow the economy and Republicans want to starve government. FDR’s TVA project created water resources and cheap electricity and whole cities bloomed. Truman pushed the GI bill for veterans and a whole generation bloomed. JFK’s space program cost $12 billion dollars and at it’s height created over 400,000 jobs. It created the new technologies and industries that we quickly take for granted from thin air. LBJ signed Medicare and retirees where freed to enjoy their golden years with travel and RV’s and these things grew the economy.
Republicans counter that tax cuts are the way to go Reagan offered tax cuts and the economy collapsed. What great things do we remember coming from the Reagan years except for bank failures, job losses and a huge budget deficit? George W. Bush used tax cuts to turn a surplus into a massive deficit. Bushes tax cuts cost the treasury more than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. The tax cuts led to our economic collapse along with corporate inspired trade policies that the politicians all swore were going to create millions of jobs.
History shows again and again that investment in infrastructure and new technologies creates jobs and prosperity. The WPA built airports across America in the thirties and airlines came into existence. The twelve billion spent on the space program has been returned to us a hundred fold. The combination of tax cuts and government inaction makes an economic recovery impossible because it deprives the government of the power to make those investments.
So when I hear Democrats talking up tax cuts I wonder if they aren’t Republicans in Democratic clothing. The truth challenged who want us to do what’s best for them by telling us it really good for us too. Who tell us to be patient that good times are just around the corner if we just trust the system and spur it on with tax cuts.
"Our covenant with ourselves did not stop there. Instinctively we recognized a deeper need—the need to find through government the instrument of our united purpose to solve for the individual the ever-rising problems of a complex civilization. Repeated attempts at their solution without the aid of government had left us baffled and bewildered. For, without that aid, we had been unable to create those moral controls over the services of science which are necessary to make science a useful servant instead of a ruthless master of mankind. To do this we knew that we must find practical controls over blind economic forces and blindly selfish men."
If the Democrats practiced progressive policies instead of Republican lite there would be no enthusiasm gap on our side. Just as in 1932 the Republicans would be despondent and fold their tents and quietly sneak out of town.
"These unhappy times call for the building of plans that rest upon the forgotten, the unorganized but the indispensable units of economic power, for plans like those of 1917 that build from the bottom up and not from the top down, that put their faith once more in the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid."
"The hopes of the Republic cannot forever tolerate either undeserved poverty or self-serving wealth."