Above all, please remember it's nothing personal, just the future of our country on the line.

It's not Kenyan, it's "Kenyawaiian". Because Obama's papa was Kenyan, and he (the son) was born in Hawaii. Allegedly.

No one has the time or energy to read--much less list--all the failures of the corrupt regime presently in power, so settle for a single buzz word or two that summarizes the opposition.

I cannot care about the fine tuning between definitions of socialism, marxism and communism, they're all dung from different animals.

Suspend thinking of me (or Blanky) as your idealogical frenemies for a moment and try to see us instead as peeps concerned about fidelity to the Constitution and positive results. I don't give a sh1t about what the Obama regime or liberals in general say they want to do, or claim will happen, my concern is what are the REAL results of following liberal policies such as raising taxes on the wealthy (which then trickle down to us in the form of higher prices and less employment), non-stop government spending of money we don't have and onerous, business-killing regulations.

If this socialist claptrap worked, Europe would have less than permanent double-digit unemployment and less than 4 countries on the verge of economic collapse.

I really don't think you want to go to the tale of the tape (facts-n-sh1t) because from Roosevelt onward, federal tyranny has increased exponentially with the size of the welfare state.

If you want me to stop 'accusing' Obama of being a screw-up, tell him to stop jumping off the same cliff of tried-n-failed socialist baloney with styrofoam wings, then blaming Republicans instead of gravity when he plummets.

I don't say it enough: I wish the left could prove me wrong with examples of success instead of promises that never arrive.





>> ^volumptuous:

What's your point GSF?
Should we learn from people like Cafferty (a know-nothing millionaire pundit with absolutely zero focus on monetary policy or economics) and Ron Paul (a devout racist and sexist dominionist who hates our democracy and would like nothing more than to transfer our dwindling wealth all the way upward) and Blankfist (who's a film maker who identifies strictly to Ayn Randian/Paulian methods of extreme wealth inequality) and Quantum (who can't even get his soshulism/marxism right?) ?
OR
Should we listen to pretty much every single economist on the planet who tells us exactly the opposite of these people?
That's really up to you. But personally, arguing with the likes of these people is the same as arguing against a witch doctor in Africa who performs ritual genital mutilations for religious purposes. There's absolutely no way that person will ever think "oh, ya know you're right. maybe women should keep their clitorises and all this religious stuff is nonsense".
No, it's never going to happen, ever. But it doesn't matter. These videos get at most 2-5 upvotes, and Blanky has to keep promoting his own videos because the rest of the planet doesn't buy into this type of garbage.
So, open your mouth and eat my vomit

You're right. It must have. Check etymology.com:

1922, originally used in English 1920 in its Italian form (see fascist). Applied to similar groups in Germany from 1923; applied to everyone since the rise of the Internet.

A form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion. [Robert O. Paxton, "The Anatomy of Fascism," 2004]

AND

1921, from It. partito nazionale fascista, the anti-communist political movement organized 1919 under Benito Mussolini (1883-1945)


Oh wait, no. No, you're not right actually. That's still the definition we have today.

Man, the red on FDR's face when he, himself a fascist, declared war on his fellow fascist, Benito Mussolini! Oh, how embarrassing!

Unless, of course, your definition is simply a pejorative to put down another person through the use of redefining words as if the English language is your idle playthings like so many of your other comments times before.

Get your facts straight before you press your fingers on that thing you call a keyboard.

>> ^quantumushroom:

"Fascist" had a different meaning pre-1945.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticis
m_of_Franklin_D._Roosevelt#Criticism_of_Roosevelt_as_a_.22Fascist.22
I'm glad you on the left revere Saint Roosevelt, as your children's children's children's children will still be paying off his and the Kenyawaiian's massive, failed welfare state.
>> ^brycewi19:
>> ^quantumushroom:
Ah FDR, that delightful 'benevolent' fascist whose policies prolonged the Depression and whose ass was saved by WW2.

I would downvote this comment 5 times if I could.
Fascist? My ass. Have some respect for the position.

"Fascist" had a different meaning pre-1945.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Franklin_D._Roosevelt#Criticism_of_Roosevelt_as_a_.22Fascist.22

I'm glad you on the left revere Saint Roosevelt, as your children's children's children's children will still be paying off his and the Kenyawaiian's massive, failed welfare state.

>> ^brycewi19:

>> ^quantumushroom:
Ah FDR, that delightful 'benevolent' fascist whose policies prolonged the Depression and whose ass was saved by WW2.

I would downvote this comment 5 times if I could.
Fascist? My ass. Have some respect for the position.

Factually incorrect? Tell this guy:

"We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong … somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. … I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started...And an enormous debt to boot!"

--Henry Morgenthau, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury during the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt

If the revisionist history of the left was accurate, the Golfer-in-Chief could reproduce the results of FDR's "success".


FDR's policies prolonged Depression by 7 years, UCLA economists calculate


"High wages and high prices in an economic slump run contrary to everything we know about market forces in economic downturns," Ohanian said. "As we've seen in the past several years, salaries and prices fall when unemployment is high. By artificially inflating both, the New Deal policies short-circuited the market's self-correcting forces."



>> ^JiggaJonson:



>> ^quantumushroom:
Ah FDR, that delightful 'benevolent' fascist whose policies prolonged the Depression and whose ass was saved by WW2.

That was as retarded as it was factually incorrect.

Are you ever going to address the fact that the Great Depression was ended by massive record deficits, followed by taxing the richest by over 90%?

Your entire argument is deficits never work, and raising taxes on the rich hurts the economy. I just gave you an irrefutable example of that being dead wrong, and you go into FDR's New Deal. Dude, I'm not debating the New Deal with you.

Prove that the US economy got out of the Great Depression without massive deficits (regardless if it was New Deal spending or WWII spending, it's irrelevant), followed by massively taxing the rich over 90% in the 1950s, during which the US economy was extremely prosperous.

That's the thing, dude. You can try to dodge this all you want. I'm not letting you try to move to discussing the New Deal, or Social Security, or how apparently communist George W. Bush (SERIOUSLY?!?!? WTFBBQ?!?!?!?) is.

This example in US history proves your rigid, ideological economic philosophy is dead wrong. You can't argue honestly that deficits are always bad, and massive gov't spending is always bad, and the US gov't can't help aid in turning around the economy. It most certainly can. It indisputably did. There's no "some fact" to this. It absolutely is historical fact.

That's the thing. Once you admit that yes, deficits can and do help end recessions, and taxing the rich more heavily can be good for the economy, we might be able to actually have an honest, adult conversation about how to help the economy. Until that, you're just spewing idiotic and/or intentional misinformation.

And then you just completely glossed over the entire reason why the gov't is almost always the one who HAS to spark the economic turnaround. We NEED the gov't to stimulate the economy, just as we need the gov't to put the brakes on when the economy grows too quickly, which is when those deficits can get paid for incidentally.

Are you just gonna sit there and call everyone other than the Tea Party communists, or are you actually going to address any of this?

>> ^quantumushroom:

The rich pay a higher percentage, and more taxes overall than the poor. Why do you think anyone is saying otherwise?

And that's absolutely how it should be, for the good of everyone, rich included.
But why doth "the poor," who siphon the "free" money, have no civic responsibility at all? Shouldn't they be paying something into the system? Or maybe "dependency voters" are needed by a certain political party?

It's perfectly sensible to talk about why some people don't pay any taxes at all. I'm not even debating that. But the rich should still pay more, regardless. The US has been one of the strongest economies for most of the 20th and 21st centuries with a progressive income tax, and it's been a heck of a lot more progressive than it is now, and we were still very prosperous.
The rich already DO pay more. It will do NO GOOD to shakedown the rich for ever more $$$. The problem with tax addicts is they can never get enough. It's too easy to spend money. Destroy the incentive to invest and/or create (or deny there is incentive at all) and you get stagnation. GOVERNMENT CREATES NOTHING.
Showing fraud in some programs doesn't mean the program should be abolished. It can be reformed as well. There are plenty of ways to do that. We didn't abolish welfare in the 1990s. We reformed it. And no, it's not true that private businesses will always create the jobs when the economy is down. History has proven quite the opposite. Why would a business invest to make more goods and services if there's no market for it. A downturn in the economy breeds more economic decline. It's called a business cycle, and it's a natural occurrence. If you were a business owner, generally speaking, if you know less people out there have the money to buy your goods and services, would you increase production and hire more workers? Of course not. Does the average person put more money into the stock market or take money out when the market tanks? Takes money out, which drains money for investing. This is basic micro and macroeconomics.
But what about now, when our cherished federal mafia creates INstability? No sane businessperson will hire now with the Hawaiian Dunce in office. I've heard this claptrap about government spending as savior before.
"We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong … somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. … I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started. … And an enormous debt to boot."

Henry Morganthau, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury during the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Some force has to run counter to the natural tendencies of the market to force demand to increase, and of course this virtually always requires running a deficit. This is why slogans like "the gov't should be run like a business" are simplistic and wrong. The gov't should in those situations create jobs through various programs, thereby increasing income for the lower classes, which creates spending and demand, which then causes businesses to increase production, hire more workers, and that gets the economy back on track. You can site case study after case study in our history we've done this, and it worked.
But it's not working now, is it. OOPS! I agree that govt should not be run like a business. It should instead by treated like the dangerous raw force it is, because that's ALL it is.

We ended the Great Depression via defense spending in the form of WWII in record levels as the most obvious exaggerated example. That historically was qm's worst nightmare - record deficits in raw amount at the time, and still to this day historic
record deficits as a percentage of GDP during WWII, followed by a tax raise on the richest Americans to over 90%. And what calamity befell the US because of those policies? We ended the Great Depression, became an economic Superpower, and Americans enjoyed record prosperity it and the world had never seen before.
This is historical fact that simply can't be denied.
There's some fact in there, but the cause and effect seems a little skewered.
FDR was a fascist, perhaps benevolent in his own mind, but a fascist in practice nonetheless, the sacred cow and Creator of the modern, unsustainable welfare state. He had no idea what he was doing and there is a growing body of work
suggesting his policies prolonged the Depression.

Here's what happened - Democrats deficit spent as they were supposed to (which is exactly what the GOP would have done had they been in power, because it was started by George W. Bush), which stopped the economic free fall.
This is all quite arguable. Yes, Bush the-liberal-with-a-few-conservative-tendencies ruined his legacy with scamulus spending, but nothing--NOTHING--close to 3 trillion in 3 years! Spending-wise, it's comparing a dragster to a regular hemi.

Moody's didn't downgrade the US debt. It was S&P. They sited math about the alarming deficits which contained a $2 trillion mistake on their part. They also sited political instability as the GOP was risking default to get their policies in place, which btw still include massive deficits.
Do you wonder why you can so neatly explain things while the Democrats in DC, with their arses on the line, cannot? The failed scamulus has forced the DC dunces to change boasts like "jobs saved" to "lives touched". Apparently there's a lot more to this tale than the Donkey Version.

The GOP couldn't stop the Democrats from spending all that money?! Laughable.
They didn't have the votes.

The GOP started the freakin' bailouts and stimulus! What did the GOP do the last time there was a recession after 9/11? Deficit spent, then continued to deficit spend when the economy was strong. Dude, seriously, you have no factual basis for
that kind of claim whatsoever.
Compare taxocrats' dragster-speed spending of the last three years versus Repub spending during the 8 years before it. The argument of "But they do it too!" has some merit, but as the rise of the Tea Party has shown, business-as-usual is no longer acceptable.
Oh, and taxocrats, remember this: the Hawaiian Dunce considers anyone making over 250K to be millionaires and billionaires.

The rich pay a higher percentage, and more taxes overall than the poor. Why do you think anyone is saying otherwise?

And that's absolutely how it should be, for the good of everyone, rich included.

But why doth "the poor," who siphon the "free" money, have no civic responsibility at all? Shouldn't they be paying something into the system? Or maybe "dependency voters" are needed by a certain political party?

It's perfectly sensible to talk about why some people don't pay any taxes at all. I'm not even debating that. But the rich should still pay more, regardless. The US has been one of the strongest economies for most of the 20th and 21st centuries with a progressive income tax, and it's been a heck of a lot more progressive than it is now, and we were still very prosperous.

The rich already DO pay more. It will do NO GOOD to shakedown the rich for ever more $$$. The problem with tax addicts is they can never get enough. It's too easy to spend money. Destroy the incentive to invest and/or create (or deny there is incentive at all) and you get stagnation. GOVERNMENT CREATES NOTHING.

Showing fraud in some programs doesn't mean the program should be abolished. It can be reformed as well. There are plenty of ways to do that. We didn't abolish welfare in the 1990s. We reformed it. And no, it's not true that private businesses will always create the jobs when the economy is down. History has proven quite the opposite. Why would a business invest to make more goods and services if there's no market for it. A downturn in the economy breeds more economic decline. It's called a business cycle, and it's a natural occurrence. If you were a business owner, generally speaking, if you know less people out there have the money to buy your goods and services, would you increase production and hire more workers? Of course not. Does the average person put more money into the stock market or take money out when the market tanks? Takes money out, which drains money for investing. This is basic micro and macroeconomics.

But what about now, when our cherished federal mafia creates INstability? No sane businessperson will hire now with the Hawaiian Dunce in office. I've heard this claptrap about government spending as savior before.

"We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong … somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. … I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started. … And an enormous debt to boot."

Henry Morganthau, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury during the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Some force has to run counter to the natural tendencies of the market to force demand to increase, and of course this virtually always requires running a deficit. This is why slogans like "the gov't should be run like a business" are simplistic and wrong. The gov't should in those situations create jobs through various programs, thereby increasing income for the lower classes, which creates spending and demand, which then causes businesses to increase production, hire more workers, and that gets the economy back on track. You can site case study after case study in our history we've done this, and it worked.
But it's not working now, is it. OOPS! I agree that govt should not be run like a business. It should instead by treated like the dangerous raw force it is, because that's ALL it is.

We ended the Great Depression via defense spending in the form of WWII in record levels as the most obvious exaggerated example. That historically was qm's worst nightmare - record deficits in raw amount at the time, and still to this day historic
record deficits as a percentage of GDP during WWII, followed by a tax raise on the richest Americans to over 90%. And what calamity befell the US because of those policies? We ended the Great Depression, became an economic Superpower, and Americans enjoyed record prosperity it and the world had never seen before.

This is historical fact that simply can't be denied.

There's some fact in there, but the cause and effect seems a little skewered.

FDR was a fascist, perhaps benevolent in his own mind, but a fascist in practice nonetheless, the sacred cow and Creator of the modern, unsustainable welfare state. He had no idea what he was doing and there is a growing body of work
suggesting his policies prolonged the Depression.


Here's what happened - Democrats deficit spent as they were supposed to (which is exactly what the GOP would have done had they been in power, because it was started by George W. Bush), which stopped the economic free fall.

This is all quite arguable. Yes, Bush the-liberal-with-a-few-conservative-tendencies ruined his legacy with scamulus spending, but nothing--NOTHING--close to 3 trillion in 3 years! Spending-wise, it's comparing a dragster to a regular hemi.

Moody's didn't downgrade the US debt. It was S&P. They sited math about the alarming deficits which contained a $2 trillion mistake on their part. They also sited political instability as the GOP was risking default to get their policies in place, which btw still include massive deficits.

Do you wonder why you can so neatly explain things while the Democrats in DC, with their arses on the line, cannot? The failed scamulus has forced the DC dunces to change boasts like "jobs saved" to "lives touched". Apparently there's a lot more to this tale than the Donkey Version.

The GOP couldn't stop the Democrats from spending all that money?! Laughable.

They didn't have the votes.

The GOP started the freakin' bailouts and stimulus! What did the GOP do the last time there was a recession after 9/11? Deficit spent, then continued to deficit spend when the economy was strong. Dude, seriously, you have no factual basis for
that kind of claim whatsoever.

Compare taxocrats' dragster-speed spending of the last three years versus Repub spending during the 8 years before it. The argument of "But they do it too!" has some merit, but as the rise of the Tea Party has shown, business-as-usual is no longer acceptable.

Oh, and taxocrats, remember this: the Hawaiian Dunce considers anyone making over 250K to be millionaires and billionaires.

It is really easy to fall into the trap of believe the philosophy of trickle down economics, but as Warren says the facts have never born this out.

Every time taxes are cut, it results in an increase in tax revenues because it increases personal wealth, which creates more tax payers, and establishes an environment that gives the private sector confidence. Carter’s 70% top marginal tax rates and leftist liberal policies brought the nation to fiscal collapse. Buffett has it 100% backwards. Taxes cut. Tax revenues up. It works every time. That’s why even OBAMA didn’t want to end the Bush tax cuts – because he himself admitted it would hurt the economy in December 2010. Neolibs like to ignore that particular bit of Obama rhetoric - but I do not forget such things...

Buffet believes that there should be two or three more levels to the tax code and that capital gains taxes should be graduated to appropriately tax the super rich who make money with money.

The problem is not that there isn’t a bigger tax category at the top. We’ve had a rate as high as 94% back in 1944. It was 70% under Carter. The problem is a labyrinthine tax code that people can game by moving money & assets around. We just need to simplify the code to eliminate the exemptions for businesses and the ‘money’ rich. There’s no need for a new, higher top marginal tax rate. The ‘rich’ already pay the bulk of our taxes.

Like him or not, Clinton's economic policies navigated our country to tremendous economic prosperity.

No. Clinton was nothing a serviceable – but barnacle-covered – rudder. He didn’t screw up what was already going well. That isn’t great praise, but it still makes him a better CiC than Bush2 or Obama. Bush1 was the guy that raised the taxes. Clinton merely coasted along on the dot-com bubble. Oh, and also the Republican “Contact with America” was forced down Clinton’s throat. And he had a few impeachable offenses that prevented him from pushing more spending. The GOP cut spending, which created an environment friendly for the business community to create prosperity. You can thank fiscal conservatives for the 90s and early 00s – not Clinton.

Sometimes doing the right thing means doing something unpleasant.

Yes – cutting big-government social spending in favor of small-government freedom-oriented systems is seen as unpleasant, but it is the right thing to do.

Dude, nobody in this thread is advocating a tax rate of 80% … Why is a moderate increase on tax rates paramount to pure socialism and gov't control on the economy?

I wryly notice that the actual QUESTION I posed remains stubbornly ignored. What would happen IF (!IF!) the tax rate at the top went to 70% ala Carter? Or 94% ala Roosevelt? Would the problems be solved? I think even the most dyed-in-the-wool neolib knows deep down in their reluctant-to-admit souls that high top marginal tax rates do not solve anything. Even a 100% tax rate does not come within 16.9 trillion (heh) miles of the real problem. Every thin dime of the new taxes would just vanish into a black hole, and the debt/deficit would not be touched except in name. We have precedence for this conclusion.

Tax hikes take place immediately, but the spending cuts are always pushed 10 years into the future where they disappear. Our tax rates are already high enough. Our corporate tax rate is one of the highest in the world. The issue is the huge amount of SPENDING taking place.

I hope this simple explanation helps all the neolibs out… Our current debt is 16.9 trillion dollars.

1. A simple federal budget freeze on spending to current 2011 levels would cut our debt by 10 trillion in 10 years.
2. Increasing the top marginal tax rate to 100% would cut the debt by 2 trillion in 10 years

Simple freeze? 10 trillion. A ridiculous 100% tax rate? Only 2 trillion. Where does that tell you the real problem lies? Fussing with tax rates at the top is nothing but rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. The iceberg is spending.

Ten Ways Progressive Policies Harm Society's Moral Character
By Dennis Prager
7/19/2011

While liberals are certain about the moral superiority of liberal policies, the truth is that those policies actually diminish a society's moral character. Many individual liberals are fine people, but the policies they advocate tend to make a people worse. Here are 10 reasons:

1. The bigger the government, the less the citizens do for one another. If the state will take care of me and my neighbors, why should I? This is why Western Europeans, people who have lived in welfare states far longer than Americans have, give less to charity and volunteer less time to others than do Americans of the same socioeconomic status.

The greatest description of American civilization was written in the early 19th century by the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville. One of the differences distinguishing Americans from Europeans that he most marveled at was how much Americans -- through myriad associations -- took care of one another. Until President Franklin Roosevelt began the seemingly inexorable movement of America toward the European welfare state -- vastly expanded later by other Democratic presidents -- Americans took responsibility for one another and for themselves far more than they do today. Churches, Rotary Clubs, free-loan societies and other voluntary associations were ubiquitous. As the state grew, however, all these associations declined. In Western Europe, they have virtually all disappeared.

2. The welfare state, though often well intended, is nevertheless a Ponzi scheme. Conservatives have known this for generations. But now, any honest person must acknowledge it. The welfare state is predicated on collecting money from today's workers in order to pay for those who paid in before them. But today's workers don't have enough money to sustain the scheme, and there are too few of them to do so. As a result, virtually every welfare state in Europe, and many American states, like California, are going broke.

3. Citizens of liberal welfare states become increasingly narcissistic. The great preoccupations of vast numbers of Brits, Frenchmen, Germans and other Western Europeans are how much vacation time they will have and how early they can retire and be supported by the state.

4. The liberal welfare state makes people disdain work. Americans work considerably harder than Western Europeans, and contrary to liberal thought since Karl Marx, work builds character.

5. Nothing more guarantees the erosion of character than getting something for nothing. In the liberal welfare state, one develops an entitlement mentality -- another expression of narcissism. And the rhetoric of liberalism -- labeling each new entitlement a "right" -- reinforces this sense of entitlement.

6. The bigger the government, the more the corruption. As the famous truism goes, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Of course, big businesses are also often corrupt. But they are eventually caught or go out of business. The government cannot go out of business. And unlike corrupt governments, corrupt businesses cannot print money and thereby devalue a nation's currency, and they cannot arrest you.

7. The welfare state corrupts family life. Even many Democrats have acknowledged the destructive consequences of the welfare state on the underclass. It has rendered vast numbers of males unnecessary to females, who have looked to the state to support them and their children (and the more children, the more state support) rather than to husbands. In effect, these women took the state as their husband.

8. The welfare state inhibits the maturation of its young citizens into responsible adults. As regards men specifically, I was raised, as were all generations of American men before me, to aspire to work hard in order to marry and support a wife and children. No more. One of the reasons many single women lament the prevalence of boy-men -- men who have not grown up -- is that the liberal state has told men they don't have to support anybody. They are free to remain boys for as long as they want.

And here is an example regarding both sexes. The loudest and most sustained applause I ever heard was that of college students responding to a speech by President Barack Obama informing them that they would now be covered by their parents' health insurance policies until age 26.

9. As a result of the left's sympathetic views of pacifism and because almost no welfare state can afford a strong military, European countries rely on America to fight the world's evils and even to defend them.

10. The leftist (SET ITAL) weltanschauung (END ITAL) sees society's and the world's great battle as between rich and poor rather than between good and evil. Equality therefore trumps morality. This is what produces the morally confused liberal elites that can venerate a Cuban tyranny with its egalitarian society over a free and decent America that has greater inequality.

None of this matters to progressives. Against all this destructiveness, they will respond not with arguments to refute these consequences of the liberal welfare state, but by citing the terms "social justice" and "compassion," and by labeling their opponents "selfish" and worse.

If you want to feel good, liberalism is awesome. If you want to do good, it is largely awful.

Oh, Bill, No.
We "know" that Eleanor Roosevelt was gay. Ummm--no that is pure supposition.
The case of J. Edgar Hoover is quite telling. I believe he was gay--but I would never state it as a known fact.

The Big Lie About The Great Depression

Ben Shapiro

In her vital and fascinating new book, "The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression," Amity Shlaes tells a story about national icon President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Shortly after FDR took office, Shlaes explains, he began arbitrarily tinkering with the price of gold. "One day he would move the price up several cents; another, a few more," writes Shlaes.

One particular morning, Shlaes relates, FDR informed his "brain trust" that he was considering raising the price of gold by 21 cents. His advisers asked why 21 cents was the appropriate figure. "It's a lucky number," stated Roosevelt, "because it's three times seven." Henry Morgenthau, a member of the "brain trust," later wrote: "If anybody knew how we really set the gold price through a combination of lucky numbers, etc., I think they would be frightened."

Ignorance of basic economics — and the concurrent attempt to obfuscate that ignorance by employing class-conscious demagoguery — remains the staple of the Democratic Party. For over 60 years, Democrats and their allies in the media and public school system have taught that the Great Depression was an inevitable result of laissez-faire economic policies, and that only the Keynesian policies of the FDR government allowed America to emerge from the ashes. The Great Depression, for the left, provides conclusive proof that when it comes to economics, government works better than business.

This point of view has a sterling reputation. That reputation, unsurprisingly, was created by FDR himself. FDR turned the Great Depression into a morality play — a morality play in which those in favor of individual initiative were the sinners, while those who relied on government were the saints. "We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals," Roosevelt intoned in 1937. "We know now that it is bad economics."

This, as Shlaes convincingly shows, is hogwash. The Depression lasted nearly a decade longer than it should have, due almost entirely to governmental meddling under both Herbert Hoover and FDR. High tariffs and government-sponsored deflation followed by enormous taxation and unthinkable government expenditures turned a stock market stumble into a decade-long nightmare. Only the devastation of World War II lifted America out of the mire, solving the drastic unemployment problem and providing a legitimate medium for FDR's pre-war wartime policies.

Nonetheless, the myth of a grinning FDR leading America forth from the soup kitchens remains potent.
And today's Democrats rely desperately on that fading falsehood, hoping to bolster their bad economics with worse history. Hillary Clinton routinely hijacks Rooseveltian language, most recently disparaging the "on your own society" in favor of a "we're all in it together society." John Edwards' "two Americas" nonsense drips of FDR's class warfare. Never mind that Keynesian economics does not work. Never mind that it promotes unemployment, discourages investment and quashes entrepreneurship. For Democrats, the image of government-as-friend is more important than a government that actually protects the rights that breed prosperity.

"The impression of recovery — the impression that a President was bending the old rules and, drawing upon his own courage and flamboyance in adversity and illness, stirring things up on behalf of the down-and-out — mattered more than any miscalculations in the moot mathematics of economics," novelist-cum-economist John Updike recently wrote, defending FDR from Shlaes' critique. "Business, of which Shlaes is so solicitous, is basically merciless, geared to maximize profit. Government is ultimately a human transaction, and Roosevelt put a cheerful, defiant, caring face on government at a time when faith in democracy was ebbing throughout the Western world. For this inspirational feat he is the twentieth century's greatest President, to rank with Lincoln and Washington as symbolic figures for a nation to live by."

For Updike and his allies, image trumps reality. The supposed harshness of the business world matters more for Updike than the fact that profit incentives promote economic growth, efficiency and creativity. The "caring face" of government is more important for Updike than creating a framework that produces jobs and affordable commodities. Updike's sporadically employed father liked FDR because FDR made him feel "less alone." No doubt Updike's father would have felt less alone if he had been steadily employed by a private enterprise — the kind of enterprise stifled by Roosevelt.

"We are beginning to wipe out the line that divides the practical from the ideal," FDR announced in 1937, as unemployment stood at 15 percent, "and in so doing we are fashioning an instrument of unimagined power for the establishment of a morally better world." Today's Democrats continue to embrace the vision, even at the cost of a prosperous reality.

You know even those numbers are lies, NR. For chrissakes, the liars switched from "jobs created" to "lives touched" late last year.

Sorry Dudes, I know you mean well, but you are defending the indefensible. Obama has failed, just like those of us who know socialism (or semi-socialism) fails knew he would. Couldn't care less that the moonbats hate him for not being Marx enough, His Earness has failed.

Government jobs are not real jobs as they do not reflect market needs. With government, when 30 desk jockeys can replace 300, the other 270 stay on board for the ride (and pensions). No wonder we're headed for Greece.

Here's a RADICAL idea: let people keep more of their own money, across the board. Recognize it's not the government's money, even if it prints the sh1t.

Another wonderful side effect of letting people keep the lion's share of what they earn: you get a properly-restrained government too small to rape and plunder in the name of "social justice" or any other bullsh1t of the day.

And lay off Herb Hoover, moonbats, he was an unwilling or ignorant ally of yours.

wiki:

Franklin D. Roosevelt blasted (Hoover) for spending and taxing too much, increasing national debt, raising tariffs and blocking trade, as well as placing millions on the dole of the government. Roosevelt attacked Hoover for "reckless and extravagant" spending, of thinking "that we ought to center control of everything in Washington as rapidly as possible."[54] Roosevelt's running mate, John Nance Garner, accused the Republican of "leading the country down the path of socialism".[55]

Ironically, these policies pale beside the more drastic steps taken under Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration later as part of the New Deal. Hoover's opponents charge that his policies came too little, and too late, and did not work. Even as he asked Congress for legislation, he reiterated his view that while people must not suffer from hunger and cold, caring for them must be primarily a local and voluntary responsibility.

Even so, New Dealer Rexford Tugwell[56] later remarked that although no one would say so at the time, "practically the whole New Deal was extrapolated from programs that Hoover started."




>> ^NetRunner:

>> ^quantumushroom:
And yet here we are with our current SCAMULUS not helping at all.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-s-eco
nomists-stimulus-has-cost-278000-job_576014.html
I'm calling FOUL, Keynes! You hear me? KEEEEYYYYNNNEEEEEESSSS!

That article says it created 2.4 million jobs. Its main point was that if you take the number of jobs it's estimated to have created, and divide it by the total sum of the bill, it was expensive per job. But it wasn't buying jobs, it was buying goods and services.
Of course you can get more jobs per dollar if the government just directly hires people, and puts them to work doing what needs to be done (like build cars, sweep floors, grow corn, etc.). But that's socialism, so instead we just buy stuff from the market, and let the market decide how many (and which) jobs get created.

So Teddy Roosevelt was a communist?!

It doesn't mean there's no problem government can't fix. It means that gov't can fix shortcomings in a free market system with reforms. You know things like the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act, those terrible gov't programs that spend other people's money to do things like ensuring what you buy at the grocery store won't kill you. How wasteful!

The Progressive Movement was about eliminating corruption in government. It was about improving society through various means, including gov't involvement when needed, but not always. For example, Henry Ford paid his workers well, very much against what most factory owners did, as Ford was heavily influenced by the Progressive Movement. Settlement Houses were charity based, not government run, and helped to educate adults to become more effective workers by teaching various skills. Yes, it overstepped its bounds with Prohibition, but it also brought the following communist, socialist, un-American things:

Women's Suffrage
Meritocracy to gov't agencies and officials
Modernized public schools
Food and Drug Administration
Busted up monopolies to protect consumers
Regulated unfair business practices designed to eliminate competition at the detriment to consumers
Safer working conditions
End of child labor
Fairer pay for workers with things like the minimum wage
Unemployment insurance

I'm sure qm will have a problem with some of the above, but how can you argue with the vast majority of them? Most historians rank T. Roosevelt and FDR as two of America's best presidents. They're probably the two most well known Progressives in US History.

This is of course all part of the communist conspiracy!!!

>> ^quantumushroom:

Progressivism = socialism = statism = communism lite and regular brand.
Nutshell:

There's no problem government can't solve! Just keep throwing other peoples' money at it!

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
Someone care to explain what "progressive" means? I can't find a suitable definition on the internets, or in commonality of liberal progressives. The only meaningful definition was from progressive tax codes, but I don't think that idea encapsulates the entirety of this vague concept.

From yt:

A stalemate between owners and players that threatens the upcoming NFL season and the widening scandal that forced beloved Ohio State University coach Jim Tressel to resign in disgrace are only the most recent reminders that football has always provoked a huge amount of controversy.

In the early 20th century, football was a literal bloodsport, writes John J. Miller in his new book The Big Scrum. After a series of game-related deaths, President Teddy Roosevelt called together the presidents of the three biggest football colleges (Harvard, Yale, and Princeton - yes, a very different America) and jawboned them into cleaning up the game to stave off legislative attempts to ban it outright.

The result, says Miller, was the creation of the distinctively American game football featuring forward passes, quarterbacks, spread offenses, and more.

The author of several books including the historical novel The First Assassin, Miller writes for National Review and is the new director of the journalism program at Hillsdale College. For more information about Miller, including links to his popular podcast series, go here (http://www.heymiller.com/).

Miller sat down with Reason's Nick Gillespie to talk about The Big Scrum, the scandal-ridden history of college football, and exactly what budding journalists need to learn in college (hint: it's not journalism).

About 6.31 minutes.

Shot by Jim Epstein, Meredith Bragg, and Josh Swain, who edited the piece.

lol was that the Queensboro bridge? I see the Roosevelt Island Tram! LOL

For the record, here is FDR's letter discussing collective bargaining for federal employees:

President Roosevelt's letter to Mr. Luther C. Steward, President, National Federation of Federal Employees. In the letter, FDR takes a position that public employees should not be able to collectively bargain.

My dear Mr. Steward:

As I am unable to accept your kind invitation to be present on the occasion of the Twentieth Jubilee Convention of the National Federation of Federal Employees, I am taking this method of sending greetings and a message.

Reading your letter of July 14, 1937, I was especially interested in the timeliness of your remark that the manner in which the activities of your organization have been carried on during the past two decades "has been in complete consonance with the best traditions of public employee relationships." Organizations of Government employees have a logical place in Government affairs.

The desire of Government employees for fair and adequate pay, reasonable hours of work, safe and suitable working conditions, development of opportunities for advancement, facilities for fair and impartial consideration and review of grievances, and other objectives of a proper employee relations policy, is basically no different from that of employees in private industry. Organization on their part to present their views on such matters is both natural and logical, but meticulous attention should be paid to the special relationships and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the Government.

All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. Accordingly, administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in many instances restricted, by laws which establish policies, procedures, or rules in personnel matters.

Particularly, I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of Government employees. Upon employees in the Federal service rests the obligation to serve the whole people, whose interests and welfare require orderliness and continuity in the conduct of Government activities. This obligation is paramount. Since their own services have to do with the functioning of the Government, a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government until their demands are satisfied. Such action, looking toward the paralysis of Government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable and intolerable. It is, therefore, with a feeling of gratification that I have noted in the constitution of the National Federation of Federal Employees the provision that "under no circumstances shall this Federation engage in or support strikes against the United States Government."



I congratulate the National Federation of Federal Employees the twentieth anniversary of its founding and trust that the convention will, in every way, be successful.