Bush and Cheney are gone, so now we have One Term Obama and Emanuel (biden is immaterial) and the same troubles and more are still apparent and dragging us down
I want accountability from ALL of those who voted for the $12 trillion dollar fiasco that continues during this administration. I want Bush, Cheney and every Republican and Democrat who voted for the Bushite issues over 9 years, including his apparent dear friend Nancy Pelosi to pay the piper.
I want accountability for the $5.9 Trillion Clinton dollar surplus, which the Bushites blew with help from Key Democrats. I want accountability from the Republicans and Democrats who approved the massive No-Bid contracts to Bush/Cheney pals like Blackwater, and I want accountability for Obama's comment during the election that he would rehire Blackwater, which he has under their new name Xe.
I want accountability for the $2.5 Trillion stolen by Big Oil from us-the people, at $3.80-$4.50 a gallon for oil which cost them less than three cents a gallon. I want accountability why we are not out of Iraq and Afghanistan as was promised. I want accountability on why the president NEVER mentions the price of oil per gallon as he did before being elected. I want accountability for why in December 2008, oil was at $1.44 a gallon and twice this year Obama let it rise, never contested, to over $3.00 a gallon for oil that costs the oil firms less than three cents a gallon. I want accountability for why Obama, unlike Jimmy Carter, does not impose a WINDFALL PROFITS TAX on Big Oil and cap oil at $10-$20 a gallon.
I want accountability for how Bush and Obama misused my Money by giving it to Big Business instead of poor people who whould have used it by making needed purchases which would have truly stimulated the economy.
I want accountability for the Bushite Katrina fiasco. Moreover, and really, I read the new Medicare bill carefully and indeed, in the wrong hands, there would be the nagging glare of, yes, a Death Panel and the possibilities of unauthorized, "Mercy Murderers," with legal impunity. I don't trust the cowardly medical people, including my doctor, enough to give him any say in my health care needs. They are almost all drug dealers in disguise and none that I have met since the death of the Doctor who delivered me, any I would trust, any that have any courage, any that would not make Judas look like a hero.
And I want to know why he, Mr. Obama, who paraded himself as a Liberal, is acting like a pawn, scared that if he ends the war the Big Oil, Big War Goods, Military Medical Drug Industrial Complex, will go hunt him down. I want to know why a man so whipped by Big Industry, Big Insurance, Big Drug and Physicians cartels, and Big Corporate cash, ever wanted to be president, other than to gain dynastic wealth through a One Term Presidency played into Life Long Celebrity? Is this really the corporate cash in hand idea of Rahm Emanuel?
I want accountability for why after the Taliban destroyed the Opium industry in Afghanistan and Bush revived it for the pushers, restoring Afghanistan to number one drug growing company in the world with a $100,000,000 crop representing $3-$5 billion dollars retail on the street, Obama continues to do nothing about it?
I want accountability for why Obama is worried so much about MPH when people are in their autos an hour or two a day and in their homes 24 /7/365 and R-13 insulation in walls and R-20 in ceilings continues to be the standard when R-30 in walls and R-50 in ceilings is far better. I want accountability for why there are no grants and tax credits to homeowners for use of geothermal HVAC as the standard wherever possible, which when combined with Solar Shingles would produce a Positive Energy cash flow for homeowners and use of 80%-105% less energy than they are now using.
I want accountability for why Obama is tolerating the Legalized Addictive Drug Dealers/Pimps and Pushers of America to stay in business when almost twice as many Americans on Prescription Drugs are Addicted and are being committed to Detox than those who are on street drugs? I want accountability for why Obama is allowing drug companies and their Pimps and Pushers, The Physicians of America, to continue advertising and continue with each office visit to attempt to put healthy people on drugs? And I want accountability for, and want to know why, other than education, have doctors been allowed to take an average of $13,000 in perks/bribes/gifts, from the Legalized Addictive Drug Dealers/Pimps and Pushers of America?
More than that, God wants accountability from both Obama and Bush because right now they are both heading for the same place in the afterlife.
ADDED AT 1:30 PM CST
JFK would have nailed the insurance companies to the walls for their threats by now and so would have FDR.
GW Bush peppered America with Executive Orders to push his agenda, so did FDR. Obama has done little to nothing with that vehicle. Moreover, the Military Commission's Act of 2006 against which most Democrats railed, is still in place smashing the BILL OF RIGHTS and so is The PATRIOT ACT still untouched and it is still crushing the Constitution.
Where the Hell is the executive orders? What is the excuse for not firing off one or two a day? One does not need congress for them. I saw this same BS Play out in Viet Nam, the BS of how hard evacuation was until Democrat Senator Fulbright threatened an "investigation" against his friend and colleague President Johnson and stirred congress to no longer support President Johnson's war policies.
JFK was killed because he refused to enter a war in Vietnam and because he laid the steel companies out cold after they tried to do what the insurance companies are doing now. It was the congress that dumped the war where we had 2 million at arms. That was certainly harder to do than this war. Obama does not want to rock the Military Medical Complex and that is recalcitrance, feeble, weakened, pussyfooting about.
Were I president I would force The Military Medical Industrial Complex, the Outsourcing companies, the Physicians of America and the Insurance Companies to toe the line, end the blackmail, hire Americans or I would have them wetting beds every night worrying about when they were going to be charged with obstructing Justice. I would nationalize Oil, water, Drug companies, hospitals and physicians, making them paid like faculty headed for the tenure track at professors pay schedules and I would fuse Medical Care for all, under a sister company to Medicare with no insurance companies at all, any where in the medical business. We do not need millionaire physicians.
The Hippocratic Oath is now useless, as physicians try to get rich as pawns of the drug dealer corporations. America has lost its way. In China, creaking and groaning as it slowly crashes through the iron walls of despotism, is the place where I believe a democracy will eventually evlove. China, Cathay, is where the hope of the future world for justice is beginning slowly to bud. America as the Home of the Avaricious, the land of the Greedy, is now a dying culture. Obama may have wrecked the last great hope of our people and I supported him, though I knew this would happen because I more feared what might happen were McCain and the Canada Dry Gal elected. But maybe, yet, he will get a beam of light from above and dump the money man, Emanuel and the other corporate suck-ups and help the people instead of the billionaires.
God Help us now.
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sradi
Mothership
Jocelyn Testes-Harder
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Melissa Miles McCarter
Glenn Gilchrist
Salon.com
Comments
But I still retain some hope here....
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/10/26/obama_report_card/index.html
You'd never know it from the MSM, but he deserves high grades for his work so far in Iran, Iraq and Pakistan
By Juan Cole
*
Salon composite/Reuters
President Barack Obama
Oct. 26, 2009 | Why can't the administration of President Barack Obama get the word out about its policy successes? President Obama campaigned on an ambitious platform of withdrawing from Iraq, engaging Iran on its nuclear program and persuading the Pakistani government to take on the Taliban and al-Qaida. Despite the charge by critics from both the right and the left in the wake of his winning the Nobel Peace Prize that he has accomplished little so far, in fact he has already set in motion significant change on several of these fronts -- despite the enormous domestic tasks that have inevitably preoccupied his administration. Yet you'd never hear about these successes from the mainstream media.
When Obama came into office in January, 142,000 U.S. troops were in Iraq, conducting regular patrols of the major cities. His Republican rivals were dead set against U.S. withdrawal on a strict timetable. He faced something close to an insurrection from some of his commanders in the field, such as Gen. Ray Odierno, who opposed a quick departure from Iraq. Moreover, Obama assumed the presidency at a time when Iran and the U.S. were virtually on a war footing and there had been no direct talks between the two countries on most of the major issues dividing them. In February, the government of Pakistan virtually ceded the Swat Valley and the Malakand Division to the Pakistani Taliban of Maulvi Fazlullah, allowing the imposition of the latter's fundamentalist version of Islamic law on residents, and Islamabad had no stomach for taking on the increasingly bold extremists.
Eight months later, it is a different world. While it is still early in his presidency, and there is too much work unfinished to give him an overall grade, it's already apparent he's outperforming his predecessor.
Iraq: B Obama has decisively won the argument over Iraq policy. Despite the massive bombings in Baghdad on Sunday -- the most deadly since 2007 -- the U.S. troop withdrawal is ahead of schedule and seems unlikely to be halted. One reason is that the security situation in Iraq, while shaky, did not deteriorate when U.S. troops ceased their urban patrols on June 30 (a date Iraqis celebrated as "Sovereignty Day"). Occasional big explosions obscure the reality of reduced guerrilla attacks. According to the Pentagon, civilian casualties have been steadily declining since late summer. Even John McCain said that Sunday's carnage should not delay the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq -- a 180-degree turn in policy for the former presidential candidate.
The process of U.S. disentanglement from Iraq has been gradual, generating no big headlines, no "Obama brings 22,000 troops out of Iraq, cuts war spending by $30 billion." But, in fact, troop levels are down to about 120,000 from 142,000 early this year, and spending on the war has fallen, from $180 billion in 2008 to $150 billion this year. Many things could still go wrong in Iraq, affecting the ability of the U.S. to meet the current timetable, but so far the Iraqi security forces are generally keeping order (there were horrific bombings when the U.S. was in control, too). He can be faulted for not working closely enough with the Nouri al-Maliki government to ease the transition, hence a grade of B instead of an A.
Iran: A There has also been movement on Iran. On Oct. 1 the administration fulfilled its campaign pledge by joining other members of the United Nations Security Council and Germany in Geneva to jawbone with Iran on the nuclear issue. As a result, Iran accepted that a United Nations inspection team would visit the newly announced enrichment facility near Qom, and on Monday inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency arrived at the Fardo plant. The acceptance of inspectors is an excellent sign. As long as Tehran remains willing to allow U.N. inspections, both at Natanz near Isfahan and at Fardo (which is not operational but could eventually house 3,000 centrifuges), neither facility can be used to produce fissionable material. Obama has changed the West's dynamics with Iran by direct negotiation, something that 63 percent of the American people support.
Pakistan: B Then there is Pakistan. The Obama administration came into office determined to whittle away the "state's rights" prerogatives of the Pashtuns, who form about 12 percent of the Pakistani population, of which the tiny minority of Taliban had taken advantage. From its inception, the Pakistani federal government had inherited from the British Empire a policy of not attempting to rule the tribal Pashtuns too heavy-handedly. In addition, the Pakistani military uses some Taliban and other guerrilla groups to project influence in the Pashtun areas of neighboring Afghanistan, making the generals reluctant to move against them. In spring-summer, the Obama administration convinced the Pakistani government to launch a major military operation against the Taliban in the Swat Valley. Despite temporarily displacing 2 million residents, the operation enjoyed substantial success and gained wide popular support from a Pakistani population -- including most Pashtuns -- increasingly appalled at the brutality of Taliban rule. In October, the military launched a similar operation against the Taliban in South Waziristan, despite a raft of bombings aimed by the militants at deterring the federal government from coming after them.
Obama has, moreover, signed a $7.5 billion civilian aid package that encourages economic, educational and medical development and puts pressure on the civilian government to keep the military under its control. The Bush administration gave most of its aid in the form of military weaponry or support, something of which polling shows the Pakistani public disapproves. Obama intends to build clinics and schools and to develop an infrastructure that might help fight militancy more effectively than any drone strikes can.
Obama's Pakistan approach, of building state capacity and improving the economy and basic services, while dealing with the Pakistani Taliban through large-scale military operations, may or may not succeed. But compared to his predecessor's policy of just handing over billions to corrupt military officers, some of whom have links to factions of militants, Obama's policies have been far more coherent. His use of unmanned predator drones to kill suspected al-Qaida operatives and the aid bill's demand for the supremacy of civilian rule over the military are both unpopular in some quarters, because of fears that the U.S. is turning the country into a sort of colony and infringing against its sovereignty. Obama may need to be less heavy-handed in the future to avoid a popular backlash. If not for this insensitivity to Pakistani popular opinion, he might deserve an A. The Swat and South Waziristan campaigns, at least, appear to have the support of the Pakistani public.
The administration has not succeeded everywhere. The president has yet to make a determination on his Afghanistan policy, and so far little progress has been made on a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A verdict is still outstanding about his performance in those two regions, leading to two grades of "incomplete." But Obama's withdrawal from Iraq is actually ahead of schedule, his direct engagement with Iran is producing some tentative results, and he has strong-armed the Pakistani state into owning the problem of the Pakistani Taliban, while instituting a major civilian aid program. Far from accomplishing nothing in his first eight months, Obama has been a whirlwind of activity and has already gained a place in the Iraqi, Iranian and Pakistani history books. He receives his lowest grade for his failure to force America's chattering classes to take notice. While it is a bit of a relief not to be subjected to the constant propaganda of the Bush administration about its creation of shining cities on a hill abroad, the Obama administration has gone too far in the opposite direction, hiding its light beneath a bushel.
I believe that IF he was allowed to do all he would do without media spin and the resulting backlash, Pres. Obama could easily surpass the accomplishments of FDR. He has to tread lightly if he wants to stay alive, however, so he has to move more slowly than he would care to act and react. I think if Pres. Obama gets a second term we will all like the outcome. in the meantime, he needs time and our support.
All of my information comes from Congress-folk, their aids and online blog-services. I receive and skim from 30-75 news sources every day, gleaned from 150 news sources by my small staff. I am familiar with all that you mention and some of the failures are because the democrats are not all Liberal, but Obama is not forceful enough and he is NOT fighting hard enough, nor is he sincere enough.
He has ignored oil prices enough and some of what you spoke about have been brought to my attention sometime ago as apologists buying time with voters/supporters. The polls do not lie he is falling like a rock since the election and is in trouble at the polls in several states. Unless he comes up with some miracles none of the people I know as Far Liberals will support him again, including many Black news services.
His approach is that of a man on a mission to promote himself as a celebrity and amass dynastic wealth. A vice president of the international brokerage company through which I invest (which I am mostly shorting the DIA) was so impressed with my ideas that he has been trying, unsuccessfully to get an appointment with our senators and congressmen since Spring, with nothing but stalls and excuses. Why? Because they do NOT want to displease the people I think they should kick in the ass, all of which are big donators.
No, I am no ,longer an Obama fan and I lost that hope during the campaign when I saw the Big Money Folks piling on. That did not happen to me during the JFK Campaign.
Obama is no FDR and no JFK, and I am a guy who fought without mercy for the 1964 Civil Rights Act and was heralded by Chicago's Black press for those efforts, but truth be told I would support Jesse Jackson next time over Obama in a New York Minute. JFK would habve nailed the insurance companies to the walls by now and so would FDR. Go down fighting or take the cash and good will of the MIC, and Obama has taken the latter.
I will pass a link to this blog around many times over.
Every time I read someone like you I have hope that REAL change will eventually happen in this country.
All the Best,
-David Logan
Lalucas - thank you for adding some objectivity to this post.
Not only does President Obama have to contend with much more "irrational" noise (because of his race) and the never ending "news" cycle (CNN, internet, etc.), when has a "failed" TERM been measured in months rather than years?
Not Rated
Hey, thanks.
"I'd add accountability for not bringing the torturers -- and those who enabled/encouraged them -- to justice.
But I still retain some hope here...." I have hope that he will turn it around also and that my Brokerage house would set up the meeting they requested for my plan. But I did post it on Obama's website and he thanked me for it and someone liked it at his office but we never heard more about it.
I know that some of his people read my blogs. Maybe they can tweek him to move on a meeting.
Boanerges1"
Dan, one does not wait until 2012 to complain about what is wrong. They used MY money and yours to create another Ponzi Scheme lending our cash to people who blew it in the first place, while our savings interest rates fall to near Zero, while they lend more money to those who will be the victims of the next fall of the DOW.
I wanted them to give that "Stimulus" Package to the poor who would make needed expenditures thus stimulating the economy from the bottom up instead of the Obama non-innovative trickle down Reaganomics plan. It didn't work then nor will it now. I have been paper-shorting the DIA and made $2600 Friday and $2300 a few weeks ago to go with the short sales from 14,198 on the DIA/DOW down to 7600 and later from 9500 down to 6500.
So be diligent about your cash and your stocks. I went out of stocks in Spring/summer of 2008, looking to shorting from August to October 15th 2008 and again after February 15th at 9500 to March 15th to 6455.
Keep a tight watch on you stocks if any and your cash.
Don't know but hope that by being tough on this admin we may avoid/circumvent, the mistakes of the last admin. I will be happy to see if this admin will get innovative instead of copying what the Republicans started by giving money to the rich instead of to the poor where it should have gone but not in mortgage money but in cash for every day sales. That is what will truly stimulate the economy and the jobs market, people buying stuff they need.
(banging head on desk)
I'll take that as a confirmation.
But, now its' gone, gone, gone, and he's done maybe 3% of what he so solemnly swore he would do during the presidential campaign.
In fact, things are worse than ever. with Rahm Emanuel and the Clinton DLC right wing dems calling all the shots.
Never in recorded history has a man had the chance to do so much good who flushed it all down the nearest toilet.
There are no words in any language for the "betrayal" of this human hologram.
And jeez, will he EVER shut the f___ up ???
Our only hope left is apolitical international activism.
Bill
rated:)
But you won't convince the knowitalls, who know less than nothing. They have no experience in politics, no successes and still they think they know something. God help them. Ameerica now is an idiots delight.
The real Black Bart as I am sure you know was Charles Earl Bowles, a stage coach robber. There was also the pirate (very successful) named Black Bart. Now, I collect and quick Draw with six guns SA, Colts, so cowboy shooting is a thing I know a little about, been doing it since I was a kid in high school. What are the two guns you are holding?
After the devastating past 8 years I can only see the past 8 months as normalizing a tiptilting country. You talked of executive orders. Is it not true that executive orders set a bad precedence? Democracy after all is the most inefficient form of government in terms of "time needed to change things" is concerned. That way a totalitarian government is the fastest. Is that what one really wants though?Should'nt we want most changes to be a consequence of due process through the normal channels even if it takes time? I can still remember the brief period in India when Ms Gandhi imposed emergency and extraordinary executive powers. You had trains running on time and electricity and water and all the good things but we also saw police with guns in railway stations and plenty in jail, muzzled and shut down.
In the end change in a country comes about in spite of the government. It is when people make necessary changes in their own lives and decisions that real change takes place. If people wait for the government to act will it not be a long long wait?
One of the things that always amazes me about the US is the belief in the government. Dont get me wrong. I find it amazing. But from where I come ...no one believes in the government to be actually looking out for anybody but themselves and their parties or their little causes. If India has done well in the recent past it is because of the people who have "done" in spite of the slow machinery of the government. True the policy of laying down a strong education system went a long way towards the purpose. The opening up of policies also helped.In the end however, change came about because of the change in the citizen's attitudes in spite of the government.
I have to think more about all this. The biggest mistake I feel in the present govt. is the appointment of Geitner and Summers who I do not trust.
I still feel Pres O has much potential and has taken on a lot. I am hoping that he focuses on a few things to change.............
You can only have a real democracy if there are opposing forces in government. We no longer have that, what we have is mass freed and fascism devouring both parties and Obama has taken the safe, Bush way out. Why is Afghanistan so much the "main War"? Think about it, we sold them arms and sympathized with the Afghans when Russia occupied and made war on them. We even had heroic Rambo films about how the Afghans take, to quote Stalone, "no shit from anyone."
Before the Taliban were in charge Afghanistan was #3 in Opium production, sales mostly to nefarious drug dealers. After they took over they (The Taliban) destroyed the poppy fields and drug production was nil.
Here enter GW Bush ("former" drug addict and alcoholic) under the guidance of Satan's top man, Cheney. Within a year after the Bush armies occupied Afghanistan it went to Number 1 in opium production and sales and remains number one, with $100,000,000 in raw opium sales, mostly to Cheney's WASP mafia Pals.
During the Clinton admin Taliban chieftains were regulars at the Bush ranch in Crawford seeking $2 billion dollars to "guard a proposed oil pipeline, which Big Oil wanted Clinton to fund for them.
He said a resounding NO!!, to that rippoff idea, so they impeached him, and that had naught to do with cigars or Monica BJ's/
Afghanistan now has the pipeline and us killing the people who destroyed the opium. American presidents are in the illicit drug business and have been for a number of years and we remain so in this admin. The entire idea of a War ON Terrorism is so stupid as to be believed only by morons or ringtone shopping idiots This is about DRUGS and OIL PIPELINES.
Executive Orders are NOT Marital Law, they are what they have always been, quick ways to get things done when lawmakers are dragging their heels. They are not evil they are a legitimate part of our constitution and should be. FDR used them to shame the lawmakers into action and they worked.
Obama is what he is , a shade better than McCain but no, FDR. No president who started out by ignoring his own promises ever rallied. He is now what he will be in the end. Persons are consistent and in today's world, he is now the enemy of humans who want justice. He is whimping out and only wishful thinkers fantasize he will improve, he will not. President's do not start slow and became whirlwinds. I would prefer Jesse Jackson by far, or Elliot Spitzer, or ME. But the former, scares white people who are cowards, Spitzer had sex with a hooker-(God bless him for that) and I am neither electable or available, by the grace of God.
And that is the story, and thanks for writing.
We need to support the lid loosener, or nothing will be cleaned up for the next president, who will whip off that lid and get all of the credit.
As far as being FDR, FDR is no Obama, either. Did FDR have to deal with the crap that is going on right now?
I'm with you, though, the ivory tower, passive aggressive approach has to go. Obama can't hide behind the podium forever, and I want some justice, and restitution, too.
He won the war, ended the depression, bought out bankrupt companies and built them up and sold them putting the profits into the Treasury. All of that without ever taking a step free of his wheel chair or braces. This mess is child's play compared to what FDR faced and overcame.
What FDR Gave Us
By David Glenn Cox
http://theservantsofpilate.com
Both of my parents lived through the Great Depression. My father was born in 1920, and my mother was born in 1926. My father was raised in a small industrial town, my mother in inner city Chicago. Those of you familiar with Chicago’s waterfront might be surprised to learn that children once played in the empty shell of what now is the Museum of Science and Industry. It was dilapidated, hollow, crime was rampant in the area, vegetable gardens were guarded with shotguns, and in a strange dichotomy whole families would sleep on the beaches of Lake Michigan on summer nights to escape the heat.
My father grew up in Springfield, Ohio, which at the time was a mill town. Springfield once had eight iron mills, but during the last Great Depression most all of them faded away. My father was the youngest of seven boys and because of the hard times he was sent away to live with his grandfather on the farm in Ross County. My father never really got over his feeling of abandonment, too young to understand the financial reasons for the separation.
As a teen he ran away from the farm and rode the rails, living his own “Bound for Glory” Woody Guthrie tale. He told me about finding a lost boy of about fourteen who was crying and wanting to go home. So he and another boy promised him they would take him home. In their mind's eye they saw a grateful, crying mother and a thankful, relived father insisting they take a reward as the mother fed them home cooking. What they got was an unpleasant, “Thanks,” and the door slammed in their faces. Such is the fate sometimes of the well intentioned; the boy was more abandoned than lost and as my father and his friend discussed it they understood why it was that no one was looking for them.
Years later when I was a child, long before seat belt use became common, I would lean forward on the back of the car seat and talk to my father as he drove. We had a game we regularly played, “See it!” He’d say, “That’s a WPA Bridge.” I bet we counted a thousand of them; most are gone today but a few survive in rural areas. They were concrete bridges for the most part. Built to high standards and in many cases over-engineered for their time. As my dad would tell it, before those, the bridges across America were rickety wooden bridges built with local expertise for horse traffic, or in many cases just didn’t exist at all.
Now, as our own current day economy continues to slide towards the brink, I have heard academic free market economists make the claim that FDR and the New Deal actually made the Great Depression worse. This is picked up and parroted by right wing partisans who, using 20/20 hindsight, pick apart the failings of the New Deal without counting up all those things that the New Deal gave us.
It is easy enough to give credence to what the academics say because that’s their business, knowledge and facts and figures and all. Could they be wrong? I mean, a few bridges versus all those statistics. Of course, using that same historical lens, what did Moses do really? Just a delivery boy with a bad sense of direction, but it was what Moses delivered to the people and where he led them and what he led them from that is remembered as important.
Let’s look at Roosevelt’s predecessor, Herbert Hoover. Hoover was strongly against any direct aid to the poor, fearing that they would become demoralized. The Republican Congress, likewise, was against any national scheme to aid the poor. The United States was the only industrial power with no system of social security. No system of national unemployment. No minimum wage law, no national labor laws of any kind. No aid for the elderly or the disabled. Looking back at that America it is like looking into a gow of almost medieval proportions.
When Roosevelt had been struck down by polio, he searched the world seeking a cure and ended up in Warm Springs, Georgia. Warm Springs is about an hour from Atlanta but it was light years from Roosevelt’s home in Hyde Park. He was shocked by the living conditions of the people. The lack of electricity and education for the majority of the people, many barely eking out a living by scratching in the dirt as share croppers. But the people welcomed him; their warmth and compassion for his situation touched him. He was like the Buddha leaving the imperial city to find a world of suffering. The townsfolk called him Mr. Frank until the election; then they called him Mr. President.
Before the New Deal, the elderly were the poorest demographic in the country. When you got too old to work, you lived on your savings, and if you didn’t have savings you starved or lived on charity or with your children. America was mainly rural then with most people living on farms, so those elderly worked until the day they died. Healthcare existed only for the rich and hospitals were a cash affair except for the “charity ward”. If you were sick or injured you went home and you either got better or you died. There was no public health service. Hypothermia was the second leading cause of death for the elderly and pneumonia was the first. In Detroit in 1932 two people an hour died of starvation; in Toledo unemployment was at 70%.
The Americans of that generation, like our own, sought change and hope, and in 1932 the Republicans were completely repudiated. Roosevelt reversed the federal government's position completely with what was called the alphabet soup of government programs. Of course the most obvious is Social Security for the elderly, but there were many other programs that have faded into history and been forgotten.
In New Orleans, just to use one city as an example, the programs included paving streets, building the airport, and archeology projects for the region as white-collar workers established federal archives for Orleans Parish. Workers were trained in book binding, recovering 25,000 school and library books. The WPA built libraries and refurbished other public buildings. They made mattresses that were distributed to the poor and to hospitals. The canals were dredged and cleared; levees were built. People were trained as cooks, heavy equipment operators, surveyors, and even musicians. You see, the Bourbon Street that you know today might have disappeared except that the WPA put musicians to work as teachers, teaching music to others.
Some projects were frivolous, like harmonica bands, but you have to look at the situation with the understanding of the times, harmonica bands versus doing nothing. These projects were carried out all across America; no matter where you go today you will see something that was originally built by the WPA. No matter where you work or what you do for a living, the New Deal has had a positive impact upon your life. If you get hurt at work your employer is responsible for your medical bills; that was not the case before the New Deal.
My grandfather worked in the steel mills and told of people burned who were just carried home to die. Tonight when the sun goes down and you turn on the lights, think of the smiling photograph of FDR because before FDR most Americans in the South didn’t have electricity. In the 1930’s only 10% of rural Americans had electricity in their homes. Private power companies maintained that it wasn’t cost effective to string power lines outside the cities, another fine example of letting the marketplace work.
There were summer camps for children to give them an escape from poverty. Youth leagues, dance classes, even free showers. Yes, the WPA advertised free, safe, clean showers to the people of New Orleans. Parks, playgrounds and even a dark room where returning soldiers could develop their photos gratis, courtesy of a grateful nation.
The Tennessee Valley Authority, in 1934, began providing power service for the people of Tupelo, Mississippi. Building 26 major dams and hundreds of smaller ones, the TVA changed the face of the rural South. Did you know that in the 1930’s, 30% of the inhabitants in the Tennessee Valley were afflicted with malaria? Wages and living standards were the lowest in the nation, even by Great Depression standards. The modern cities of Atlanta, Chattanooga, Knoxville, Birmingham, Huntsville, Hopkinsville, Paducah, Memphis and Nashville were all built on TVA power.
During the 1940’s the United States armed forces needed aluminum and the shortage was so great that Harry Truman once said, "I want aluminum. I don't care if I get it from Alcoa or Al Capone." The production of aluminum requires large amounts of electricity that the TVA supplied. There were other effects wrought by the TVA, flood control, barge traffic, locks that opened up new vistas to a previously poor and suffering region. It is not by accident that America’s nuclear laboratory was located in Oakridge, Tennessee. The refining of uranium into fissionable materials also requires huge amounts of electricity; without the TVA we might not have gotten the atom bomb first.
The New Deal changed the face of America; it is the seed that modern America was built upon. And it was built without a road map; no administration had ever faced such a situation bordering on a total economic collapse. It should come as no surprise that Roosevelt won four terms in office; he was an American Moses. He led the American people out of the wilderness, and they would have elected him for four more terms if they could.
My own father, who was sent away because his family couldn’t feed him, was able to go home. He finished high school and during WWII he became a Navy pilot. Then after the war he did something that he never dreamed possible. He enrolled at Ohio State University and became a mechanical engineer, thanks to the GI Bill. He went on to become vice president of a mid-sized corporation and then became a professor at a university in Tennessee which didn’t exist before the New Deal.
He never forgot being fifteen and riding the rails and living in hobo jungles with absolutely no opportunities whatsoever. Or to what he became, all thanks to the New Deal and FDR. That’s why it was so important for him to tell his son, “See it!” He’d say, “that’s a WPA Bridge.” Moses wandered for forty years seeking the Promised Land; Roosevelt found it in a little more than twelve. As to the academics, well there are some things that just can’t be quantified or measured by statistics. The things that are made up more of feelings and intentions and in just caring about the people's suffering, like the difference between the WPA in New Orleans in 1935 and hurricane Katrina in 2005.
http://joshfulton.blogspot.com/2009/10/israeli-police-storm-jerusalems-holiest.html
Okay, relaxed now? Open that special connection to Deity that you claim and just pray like crazy for his success! Stop putting negativity propelled by your magnificent brain into the mind of this coutry, please? Put your power into positivity and send it. Thank you.
Actually, I was the first to predict the depression and followed my predictions with shorting the DIA/DOW, Spy and iShares for Builders and everyone back then said exactly what you just said, that I was being negative when I called this depression a year in advance to the very the week of when the DOW would break from 14,198 to 8,000 and everyone said I was being Negative, Including the VP of my brokerage. He lost $250,000 we lost NADA and i n fact gained a small fortune shorting what everyone else was buying.
All of my critics lost half or more of their money, we lost nothing and gained huge cash through my what others called "frivelous shorting of the markets"
By the 100 day mark FDR had put 1 million people back to work. Ma'am in all respect, if you cannot see the future, please stop asking for more time. As FDR said, "The Time is NOW! not next month or net year."
Every time in my life I have called the future accurately, someone has asked me to be positive. You see I am positive of what I see, others cannot see it, unfortunately and it is our job to Push not complement those in power. What should I say? Mr. president you are doing a fine job in not destroying the poppy fields and the $100 million dollars in Opium growth in Afghanistan, as did Bush. For killing people in two nations as did Bush, for bailing out the people whose stupidity started this mess, instead of the poor. Congrats Mr. Obama for Not passing an executive order to nail the banks which charge college students exorbitant fees. Thanks for giving the credit card companies 9 months to continue cheating their members. Thanks for ignoring the poor and bailing out the rich? Thanks for not investigating the War Crimes? Thanks for not sending Thom DeLaye to jail? Thanks for making DC and the world less safe and more corrupt by ignoring the investigations of a number of peoples advocates into crimes committed by credit services, credit cards and banking firms?
One of GW Bush's people in Chicago told me just what you did when I started saying Bush would lead us into an oil war. Almost exactly your words including the complement and a priest said to me, Professor we all believe you to be a prophet, truly we do, but we also believe that you misinterpreted God's will by not supporting Mr. Bush."
With all due respect, Mr. Obama was situated at a place to make the world a better place, and instead he followed the very path of GW Bush and he lied to us about his plans for Iraq and Afghanistan and health-care. The choices were simple and he has NOT used the power of Executive Orders to achieve his goals and shame congress into acting, nor has he once tried to rally US to march for health care right to the steps of the capital building as he should have.
When I hire someone I expect them to do the job they promised every day starting the day after I hire them not in some distant murky future. The Future is here, but Obama is not.
He has failed and will continue to fail and because of that he is DESTINED to be a One Term Phenomenon. I backed him because he was the only choice I would have preferred Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton, or Hillary, or Spitzer.
When someone is paying me for what I do, I do it right the moment the contract is signed, not three years later..
Babies are dying, children are dying and men and women are dying over seas in war zones, and here for lack of proper health care and you say I should be patient. If if it was your sons or grand kids which were the ones dying in Afghanistan, Iraq and America, how patient would you be?
The next president will be a moderate Republican
I guess those who are voting are feeling on the edge as well. here are the polls of two states up for governors. In both, the Incumbents are Democrats; Tim Kaine, in Virginia & New Jersey's Governor is Democrat Jon Corzine. One is down by 2.7%, the other by 13,8%. If the people had not felt cheated they would go along with the democrat. But even if a miracle occurs and one or both sneak by the polls show deep discontent with Obama's first year and what that projects for the future.
In FDR's time, during WWII, the American people expected to sacrifice something for the war. The rich were taxed at an exorbitant rate, people were rationed, and there was a draft.
Yet in this day and age, God forbid we ask the American people to give something up for all we have. Bush must have known that on some level, if he'd asked for Americans' support via a tax, let alone rations, we never would have let him get away with it.
And so he put both wars on the national credit card, along with his tax cuts and the pharmacy addition to Medicare. The Dems, of course, supported all of it.
If Obama were *really* tough, he would say to our citizens: "Look, we're in a financial mess, and we're all going to have to give something up to get out of it."
Can you imagine?
Rated.
I wrote a series of posts last Fall that we liberals were going to be surprised and disappointed when we found that Obama was a centrist and was not likely to change much of anything. I got roundly booed back then because everyone had rose covered glasses on and pictures of a new Camelot in their noggins. I voted for Obama but had no grand expectations, and still do not.
I worked for both JFK and LBJ in the Executive Office of the President and the current crowd surrounding the President cannot hold a candle to the advisers and Cabinet officers of those two Presidents.
When a President intentionally surrounds himself with the purveyors of the current system of greed there is really no reason to be surprised when nothing much changes.
Monte
The only solace is in believing -- nay, knowing -- that things would have been much worse under President McCain, and godforbid, President Palin.
Tom Cordle: I also knew from the start, but hoped against hope. The only solace is knowing how much worse it might have been under McCain or Palin.
No, he's not FDR! Of course he's not FDR. FDR was a unique and privileged man, born to privilege and power. He personified the ideal of our founding Fathers. That ideal was that our country should be ruled by highly educated men who are independently wealthy. They should be wealthy so that they wouldn't be tempted by forces who would buy their influence, they should be extremely well educated so that they will do the right thing.
The Electoral College was an insurance policy. Just in case an idiot won the popular vote the electoral college was meant to circumvent that.
Most of our founding Fathers subscribed to the adage that the "masses are asses." The electoral college was the antidote.
By the 100 day mark FDR had put 1 million people back to work. Ma’am in all respect, if you cannot see the future, please stops asking for more time. As FDR said, "The Time is NOW! Not next month or net year."
One of GW Bush's people in Chicago told me just what you did when I started saying Bush would lead us into an oil war. Almost exactly your words including the complement and a priest said to me, Professor we all believe you to be a prophet, truly we do, but we also believe that you misinterpreted God's will by not supporting Mr. Bush."
With all due respect, Mr. Obama was situated at a time and place, a rare event to make the world a better place, and instead he followed the very path of GW Bush and he lied to us about his plans for Iraq and Afghanistan and health-care. The choices were simple and he has NOT used the power of Executive Orders to achieve his goals and shame congress into acting, nor has he once tried to rally US to march for health care right to the steps of the capital building as he should have.
When I hire someone I expect them to do the job they promised every day starting the day after I hire them not in some distant murky future. The Future is here, but Obama is not.
He has failed and will continue to fail and because of that he is DESTINED to be a One Term Phenomenon. I backed him because he was the only choice I would have preferred Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton, or Hillary, or Spitzer.
When someone is paying me for what I do, I do it right the moment the contract is signed, not three years later..
Babies are dying, children are dying and men and women are dying over seas in war zones, and here for lack of proper health care and you say I should be patient. If if it was your sons or grand kids which were the ones dying in Afghanistan, Iraq and America, how patient would you be?
The next president will be a moderate Republican
I guess those who are voting are feeling on the edge as well. here are the polls of two states up for governors. In both, the Incumbents are Democrats; Tim Kaine, in Virginia & New Jersey's Governor is Democrat Jon Corzine. One is down by 2.7%, the other by 13,8%. If the people had not felt cheated they would go along with the democrat. But even if a miracle occurs and one or both sneak by the polls show deep discontent with Obama's first year and what that projects for the future.
GW Bush peppered America with Executive Orders to push his agenda, so did FDR. Obama has done little to nothing with that vehicle. Moreover, the Military Commission's Act against which most Democrats railed is still in place and it has shattered the BILL OF RIGHTS and so is The PATRIOT ACT is still untouched, where are the executive orders? One does not need congress for them. I saw this same BS Play out in Viet Nam, the BS of how hard evacuation was until Democrat Senator Fulbright threatened an "investigation" and stirred congress to no longer support President Johnson's war policies. JFK was killed because he refused to enter a war in Vietnam and because he lay the steel companies out cold after they tried to do what the insurance companies are doing now. It was the congress that dumped the war where we had 2 million at arms. That was certainly harder to do than this war.
Every time in my life I have called the future accurately, someone has asked me to be positive. This time as in 1987 and 1992 they lost their nest-eggs and I did not.
You see I am positive of what I see, others are guessing, go back a few years and read my predictions elsewhere. People waste their time and cannot see it, unfortunately and it is our job to Push not complements those in power. What should I say? Mr. president you are doing a fine job in not destroying the poppy fields and the $100 million dollars in Opium growth in Afghanistan, as did Bush. For killing people in two nations as did Bush, for bailing out the people whose stupidity started this mess, instead of the poor.
Congrats Mr. Obama for Not passing an executive order to nail the banks which charge college students exorbitant fees. Thanks for giving the credit card companies 9 months to continue cheating their members. Thanks for ignoring the poor and bailing out the rich? Thanks for not investigating the War Crimes? Thanks for not sending Thom Delayed to jail? Thanks for making DC and the world less safe and more corrupt by ignoring the investigations of a number of peoples advocates into crimes committed by credit services, credit cards and banking firms?
One does not wait until 2012 to complain about what is wrong. They used MY money and yours to create another Ponzi Scheme lending our cash to people who blew it in the first place, while our savings interest rates fall to near Zero, while they lend more money to those who will be the victims of the next fall of the DOW.
I wanted them to give that "Stimulus" Package to the poor who would make needed expenditures thus stimulating the economy from the bottom up instead of the Obama non-innovative trickle down Reaganomics plan. It didn't work then nor will it now. I have been paper-shorting the DIA and made $2600 Friday and $2300 a few weeks ago to go with the short sales from 14,198 on the DIA/DOW down to 7600 and later from 9500 down to 6500.
What I'm saying is, instead of condemning and blaming it all on Obama, USE the power of your intellect for ...
Oh, never mind.
Of course you are right about everything. I'm sure that is helping our country.
But please be my guest and do what you think is best and I will do the same. I warned my friends and some got out in time others never attempted to and lost their shoes.
There are 36 men and women shouting in canyons of concrete and glass and now in canyon of electrons and the 'Net. Those with ears will hear those without will not. Already hundreds who read this same article elsewhere have emailed me with action to try to avoid the next Virginia. New Jersey fallout. How to help? Get busy in your local elections as I am and find candidates who are not watching them selves in the mirrors. I am tired of giving away my money to those who neither listen nor try to help themselves.
If you are comfortable with your path of clamming up by all means be my guest and see what that accomplishes. In my career of watching those who say nothing as the world collapses around them, who watch young lovers and say, "Get a room|!" I say, you are in my prayers and don't watch the young lovers, get your own room.