Friday, September 21, 2012

Legalized Immorality

Legalized Immorality
by Clarence Manion, October 1996

It must be remembered that 95 percent of the peace, order, and welfare existing in human society is always produced by the conscientious practice of man-to-man justice and person-to-person charity. When any part of this important domain of personal virtue is transferred to government, that part is automatically released from the restraints of morality and put into the area of conscienceless coercion. The field of personal responsibility is thus reduced at the same time and to the same extent that the boundaries of irresponsibility are enlarged.

Government cannot manage these fields of human welfare with the justice, economy, and effectiveness that are possible when these same fields are the direct responsibility of morally sensitive human beings. This loss of justice, economy, and effectiveness is increased in proportion that such governmental management is centralized....

Government cannot make men good; neither can it make them prosperous and happy. The evils in society are directly traceable to the vices of individual human beings. At its best government may simply attack the secondary manifestations of these vices. Their primary manifestations are found in the pride, covetousness, lust, envy, sloth and plain incompetency of individual people. When government goes far beyond this simple duty and deploys its forces along a broad, complicated front, under a unified command, it invariably propagates the very evils that it is designed to reduce.

In the sweet name of "human welfare" such a government begins to do things that would be gravely offensive if done by individual citizens. The government is urged to follow this course by people who consciously or subconsciously seek an impersonal outlet for the "primaries" of human weakness. An outlet in other words which will enable them to escape the moral responsibility that would be involved in their personal commission of these sins. As a convenience to this popular attitude we are assured that "government should do for the people what the people are unable to do for themselves." This is an extremely dangerous definition of the purpose of government. It is radically different from the purpose stated in the Declaration of Independence; nevertheless it is now widely accepted as correct.

Here is one example of centralized governmental operation: Paul wants some of Peter's property. For moral as well as legal reasons, Paul is unable personally to accomplish this desire. Paul therefore persuades the government to tax Peter in order to provide funds with which the government pays Paul a "subsidy." Paul now has what he wanted. His conscience is clear and he has proceeded "according to law." Who could ask for more? -- why Paul, of course, and at the very next opportunity. There is nothing to stop him now except the eventual exhaustion of Peter's resources.

The fact that there are millions of Pauls and Peters involved in such transactions does not change their essential and common characteristic. The Pauls have simply engaged the government "to do for them (the people) that which they are unable to do for themselves." Had the Pauls done this individually and directly without the help of the government, each of them would have been subject to fine and imprisonment. Furthermore, 95 percent of the Pauls would have refused to do this job because the moral conscience of each Paul would have hurt him if he did. However, where government does it for them, there is no prosecution and no pain in anybody's conscience. This encourages the unfortunate impression that by using the ballot instead of a blackjack we may take whatever we please to take from our neighbor's store of right and immunities.

Clarence Manion was dean of the college of law at Notre Dame University. This essay is from his book The Key to Peace (1950) and appeared in the 1952 issue of Essays on Liberty, published by The Foundation for Economic Education, Irvington-on-Hudson, New York.

http://www.fff.org/freedom/1096e.asp

So, Really, Why Do They Hate Us?

Weekend Edition September 21-23, 2012
The Interventionists
So, Really, Why Do They Hate Us?
by PAUL ATWOOD

Recent attacks on American embassies and consulates in numerous Muslim countries are claimed to be irrational and undue reactions to a film portraying the Muslim prophet Mohammed in a degraded manner. The film is intentionally sacrilegious and incendiary toward Islamic beliefs and seems intended to add fuel to the rage of a Muslim world already incensed at the U.S. for its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, for destructive American drone attacks in Yemen and Somalia and multiple other nations, and one-sided support for Israel accompanied by platitudes for Palestinians. Thus, the roots of widespread anti-Americanism are much deeper than can be explained merely by recent events. Instead, Muslim fury can be traced to the ever increasing intervention by Washington in Muslim countries since the end of World War II. Prior to that, the U.S. was considered a non-interventionist, even anti-imperialist, friend in much of the region. Yet, even before the war ended President Roosevelt made a secret deal with the Saudi king to provide American protection (and ultimately arms as well, used primarily to suppress his own population) to the Saudis in return for unobstructed American corporate access to the recently discovered Saudi oilfields.

Few today remember American policies during the Iranian crisis of 1946, when the U.S. obliquely threatened to force Soviet Troops out of Iran. American, British and Soviet troops occupied Iran in 1941 because it had tilted toward the Nazis under the father of the later American client, Shah Reza Pahlavi. The Soviets occupied the oil fields of northern Iran with Washington's approval during the war to prevent them from falling into Nazi hands. The Soviets were supposed to withdraw in March of that year but refused until a deal could be arranged whereby the USSR could purchase Iranian oil in order to begin rebuilding its war-ravaged society. Initially the Truman Administration encouraged the Iranian government to accept the deal. Then when the Red Army did withdraw also encouraged the Iranians to renege on the arrangement. It is worth noting that the Red Army did not then re-occupy the territory, thereby putting the lie to the claim made immediately after WWII that the Soviets were bent on world domination. There was nothing, not even employing atomic weapons, that the U.S. could have done to stop the Red Army had it chosen to reoccupy Iran's oilfields since that would have destroyed the very resources that were being contested. The Soviets were only one of the principal obstacles to American post-war plans- though they were trumpeted as the prime mover. Equally important was nationalism, especially the sort of national independence craved by countries possessing vital resources that the U.S. coveted. Few also realize that until WWII the U.S. was the prime exporter of petroleum. By war's end the U.S. had used so much of its domestic oil, and its hydrocarbon-based economy had grown so exponentially, that from that point on the U.S. was impelled to begin importing oil.

Many do remember the overthrow of the prime minister of Iran, Mohammed Mossadeqh in 1953. Exceeding its legal mandate to gather intelligence, the newly minted Central Intelligence Agency, initiated its first successful overthrow of a constitutional and elected government because that government decided that Iranian oil belonged to the Iranians and not to the British oil company that would eventually become British Petroleum. The American scheme was calculated to ensure that American companies would thereafter dominate Iranian oil production and get rid of most British competition in Iran as well. The Shah and his brutal government was then installed to act as Washington's gendarme in the region. To ensure his rule the U.S. military and CIA then trained his dreaded secret police in the fine arts of torture and terror.

Meanwhile the CIA was active in similar efforts across the planet to undermine any form of nationalism, socialism, or communism that would interfere with the overarching American agenda, which was not the promotion of "democracy" but the installation of friendly clients into positions of power in countries considered strategic for their resources or geographic position. Space does not allow a complete catalog but of importance to current events is certainly the role the "Company" played in the overthrow of the British client king of Iraq in 1958, an intrigue in which Saddam Hussein played a role and that led eventually to his dictatorship, one with which Washington was happy to cooperate after the Shah of Iran was overthrown in 1979. The famous film of Donald Rumsfeld warmly shaking Saddam's hand perfectly illustrates the lower depths to which Washington has too often stooped to achieve its ends. The U.S. provided highly technical intelligence to Iraq against Iran, aiding the mass slaughter that ensued, and when he used poison gas made from chemicals provided by American corporations against Iraqi Kurds during the war with Iran, Washington prevented sanctions against his regime. At that point he was assisting the American agenda to weaken Iranian fundamentalism so his crimes could be whitewashed. However, his invasion of Kuwait in 1990 became the perfect rationale to inject what evolved into a permanent American military presence in the Persian Gulf.

At the time of 9-11 Michael Scheur was the CIA's foremost expert on Al Qaeda. His writings emphasize that Americans had to take seriously the reasons spelled out by Osama Bin Laden for Al Qaeda's antagonism toward the U.S. One of those principal motivations was the American military presence in Saudi Arabia during and after Operation Desert Storm. Bin Laden said clearly that the presence of "infidel" troops on sacred Islamic soil was a desecration. Thereafter, all American forces were to be driven from all Islamic lands. The widespread perception in the Muslim world that Americans had defiled the holiest sites of Islam and were exploiting Muslim resources while propping up corrupt dictatorial apostates like the rulers of the Arab Gulf states contributed to the relative ease with which al Qaeda could recruit new Jihadis to its cause.

Scheur also noted that bin Laden said that the attacks on 9-11 were intended to promote further intervention by Washington in the region and thus promote more of the anti-Americanism that he hoped would fuel his movement. To a great extent American actions have worked almost precisely to Bin Laden's plan and the current explosion of violence around the world toward the U.S. is a direct outgrowth of the increasing resentment and hatred long stored in memory across the Middle East. Washington is reaping the violent whirlwind sowed by itself.

The so-called "Arab Spring" represented an upwelling of long-simmering opposition to numerous dictatorships in the region, most of them propped up by Washington with a few exceptions that rankled like Libya and Syria. Though President Obama and Hillary Clinton mouthed piously about popular democracy and the "will of the people," such didn't help the hapless residents of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, where instantaneous and brutal repression followed, with mere sighs from Washington. Remember that at first, President Obama supported Hosni Mubarak in Egypt until the intensity of the demonstrations in Cairo forced the U.S to abandon him. But not before the Egyptian military high command stepped up to reassure the State Department that it would take his place. Then they threw Mubarak "under the bus." Nevertheless, the sheer pressure of popular demand for a voice necessitated an election. Since the Egyptian Army is financed and armed by Washington, and Egypt receives the second largest sum of foreign aid (after Israel) widespread knowledge that the Egyptian Army is a creature of the U.S. led to victory in the elections by the despised Muslim Brotherhood. After the election the Egyptian courts sought to prevent the seating of this Parliament dominated by the Brotherhood and with representation by the even more vehement Salafists, but the newly seated president of Egypt, Mohammed Morsi, does indeed represent the Brotherhood. One reason the Army allowed the elections was because its leadership feared that rank and file troops would not support repression in the face of such an uprising from the depths of their own social origins. Morsi is being very careful now. It remains to be seen how the new configuration of power, of Islamists vs. the Army, will evolve.

The killing of the American ambassador and three other Americans in Libya prompted an embittered Secretary Clinton to ask how those who owed their "liberation" to the U.S. could be so ungrateful to their emancipators, thereby confirming how little she understands of the circumstances fostering the Libyan uprising, nor those her government has wrought, or the degree to which the planned outcome of U.S. intervention islikely to fail utterly. The standard interpretation of what transpired in Libya is that the U.S. and its European allies in NATO conducted a humanitarian intervention to rid Libya of another brutal dictator. It is true that Muammar Qaddaffi ruled autocratically but in this he was supported by a substantial majority at least in western Libya, where traditional tribes were loyal.

Libya came into existence as an independent state only in 1951. Before that it had been an Italian colony, or rather three separate colonies cobbled together and given the name the ancient Romans called most of North Africa. In its efforts to subdue these colonies Italy became the very first European empire to use the airplane in primitive bombing runs on resisting tribes. In this they were soon followed by the French in Syria and Lebanon, and by the British in Iraq and Afghanistan, facts still well remembered in the region. Therefore, like so many nations that acquired independence after World War II, Libya was an artificial construct, merging mutually suspicious or hostile ethnic groups and tribes into a configuration designed by former colonial masters to serve their interests. When Qaddaffi overthrew the corrupt king of Libya in 1969, who made sweetheart deals with western oil companies, and hoarded revenues from Libya's newly discovered oil, he took over a country already riven with tribal animosities. One of his difficulties was that much of Libya's oil was in the east, where tribes different from his own loyalists dwelled. He suppressed opposition brutally.

Another problem which Quaddaffi dealt with successfully and which brought him the unending hostility of the west and led to a deadly cat and mouse game that played out over forty years- were those western oil companies that dominated the industry and reaped the greatest share of profits. Qaddaffi immediately nationalized oil but allowed some companies to remain. However, he imposed significantly higher taxes and royalties on those, like the American company Occidental, resulting in a considerable increase in revenues available to him but he used these to raise the standard of living substantially, mainly for his loyalists, but also to an extent for the entire population. Whether his example stimulated what followed is unclear but the facts are that numerous other former oil producing colonies of the western powers subsequently initiated their own nationalizations, thereby upsetting longstanding and profitable western arrangements. He also refused to peg the Libyan currency, the dinar, to the International Monetary Fund, and refused to submit to the World Bank and International Bank for Settlements. Qaddaffi also styled himself the champion of pan-Arabism, the movement to unify the entire Arab world and funded many nationalist movements hostile to the west.

During all this time the CIA was actively involved with Qaddaffi's opponents to find a way to overthrow him. This lethal contest led to mutual terrorism (though most American media and scholarly accounts omit the U.S. actions) and culminating in the atrocity of Lockerbie, followed by the bombing of Libya, including Qaddaffi's house where his adoptive three year old daughter was killed. Qaddaffi then intensified efforts to acquire chemical weapons, and even undertook a nuclear program. However sanctions led him to submit the Lockerbie suspects for trial in the UK, and later to give up these WMD programs. At that point western media reports declared that Qaddaffi had "normalized'" affairs with the west.

Whatever he imagined about his new relations with former enemies, the CIA had other ideas. So when the "Arab Spring" erupted in Tunisia and soon spread across the entire region, many Libyans followed suit and Libya descended into the civil war that Washington and NATO then leapt upon in order to accomplish finally what the western governments and energy corporations had desired all along- the overthrow of Qaddaffi and his replacement with an installed government essentially of handpicked clients who would restore Libyan resources to western corporate domination. In the midst of fighting the private global intelligence company STRATFOR published and circulated a detailed map showing most of Libya's oil was located in the eastern area of Benghazi. It was also well known that the oil Libya produced was of a type that is refined easily into the gasoline required in European automobiles. South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham waxed feverishly over the lure of profits, braying "Let's get in on the ground. There's a lot of money to be made in Libya. Lots of oil to be produced. Let's get on the ground and help the Libyan people establish a democracy and a functioning economy based on free market principles." Even before the "revolution" had succeeded and a new government was installed, the rebel group claiming authority announced the dissolution of Qaddaffi's national bank and replaced it with a new central bank tied to international institutions, which, of course, are dominated by the western financial establishment.

As media images showed clearly, Qaddaffi still had enormous support. The "rebels" included eastern tribal members long hostile to rule from western Libya, but also ethnic minorities like the Berbers, but also Libyan members of al Qaeda as well as al Qaeda jihadists from around the Arab and Muslim world. Included in the toxic mix were CIA operatives and covert American Special Forces. Without western arms supplied to Qaddaffi's opponents, and especially the U.S. led bombing campaign it is likely Qaddaffi would have hung on. The result we see today, however, was utterly predictable.

The so-called government installed in Tripoli, in the west of Libya, has no control over anything, especially in eastern Benghazi. In May the interim prime minister's offices were attacked with four aides killed. In June a bomb exploded in the same consulate building where Ambassador Stevens was killed. The British ambassador narrowly escaped assassination last spring. The January ransacking of the National Transition Council offices provides evidence that factions in Benghazi want independence, not the unified state. What more would it have taken for Washington to realize that its best laid plans were going awry? Writing in the Guardian, Benjamin Barber notes that at minimum 100,000 militants of one faction or another, all armed with American and NATO weapons (including the rocket-propelled-grenade launchers used against the American consulate) continue to wage war or jihad upon each other, and that al Qaeda is as much a home grown faction as any other. Indeed, al Qaeda raised its flag over the Benghazi courthouse the day after Qaddaffi was killed.

On March 2, 2007 Retired General Wesley Clark, former Supreme Commander of NATO forces, and 2004 Democratic contender for the presidency, appeared on Amy Goodman's televised program Democracy Now. In the interview he revealed that shortly before the invasion of Iraq a highly placed Pentagon officer divulged a secret plan to him to overthrow the governments of seven countries-Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran. Speaking in San Francisco the following October Clark repeated this and added commentary about a conversation he had in 1992 with Paul Wolfowitz, a prime architect of George W. Bush's policies, who at the time was number three in the Defense department. Quoting Wolfowitz Clark said: "One thing we learned [in the Persian Gulf War] is that we can use our military in the region- in the Middle East- and the Soviets won't stop us. And we've got five or ten years to clean up those old Soviet regimes Syria, Iran, Iraq- before the next superpower comes along to stop us."

The Neo-Conservatives were supposed to have been swept from power by the new Obama Administration, and yet the withdrawal (that is not really a withdrawal) from Iraq was negotiated by Bush, and the "surge" in Afghanistan ordered by Obama out neo-conned the neo-cons, just as the "liberation" of Libya certainly followed their template if not their foolish expectations. Syria awaits our humanitarian ministrations. But that may prove the most disastrous escapade of all.

Paul Atwood is Interim Director of the William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences, and faculty in the American Studies Department, University of Massachusetts-Boston, and member of the Smedley Butler Brigade, the Boston chapter of Veterans for Peace. He is the author of War and Empire: the American Way of Life.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/09/21/so-really-why-do-they-hate-us/

The New Deal Illusion

August 29, 2012
A CounterPunch Special Report on How Democrats Have Distorted the True History FDR's Signature Program
The New Deal Illusion
by GABRIEL KOLKO

What was the New Deal of the 1930s? There are so many myths surrounding it, and to a large extent the Democratic Party's credibility today is based on the assumption they were fundamental social innovators, progressive if you will, during the New Deal.

But the 1920s and 1930 was a very complex period and are best treated as one unified era because the administration of Herbert Hoover, the much-reviled president during the Great Depression that began in 1929 and lasted well into the 1930s, was also a part of the American "Progressive" tradition. As I have argued elsewhere, American "progressivism" was a part of a big business effort to attain protection from the unpredictability of too much competition. [See my book The Triumph of Conservatism: A reinterpretation of American History, 1900-1916, New York, 1962] In fact, the New Deal was many things, having numerous aspects: what was not made up on the spur of the moment was copied from earlier efforts. The Democrats did not have a real economic strategy when they came to power. Most of what they said about the economy during the election campaign was, naturally, simply designed to get votes. They certainly had no idea the day they came to office how to deal with the Depression. Hoover had more ideas than they did.

Most historians know this; Hoover was far from being a bloodless conservative. If he did not act decisively, his ostensible reason was usually that he needed more information. Politics aside, Hoover's alleged empiricism appealed to many Democrats, and both parties still retain a belief in the redeeming virtues, even the adequacy, of getting the facts first: on the assumptions reality or political exigencies can always wait for them. Sometimes they will, sometimes they will not.

Roosevelt was wholly dependent on his advisers. The only thing the Democrats were nominally committed to was balancing the budget; Hoover ran a deficit so the Democrats used it against him: it was strictly an election ploy. The Democratslike the Republicans before and after, were split, and some -- Louis D. Brandeis and Felix Frankfurter were the most notable -- wanted to follow Woodrow Wilson's more classic liberal "New Freedom" plan. Louis Johnson and those who were on Wilson's War Industries Board, wanted some form of centralized "planning."

By April 1933 Roosevelt had so much conflicting advice before him that he decided not to do anything for the time being, but changed his mind quickly when the Senate threatened to pass the Black Bill for a 30-hour work week, which big business immediately opposed. Roosevelt and most of his advisers opposed it also.

The Democratic Senate and House seemed ready to enact a more "radical" set of proposals. He authorized his Secretary of Labor, Francis Perkins, to present Congress an alternative to the Black Bill that would not arouse the ire of business, and he asked his leading adviser, Raymond Moley, to come up with a recovery plan based on business-government cooperation.

Though Herbert Hoover was clearly Roosevelt's intellectual superior, he was unlucky to have presided over an economic depression within eight months of taking office. The depression was the product of much larger forces in the world and the American economy rather than which party was in power. If the Democrats had been in the White House in 1929, there would have been an identical economic downturn.   And in many regards Hoover's social thought was far more advanced than Franklin Roosevelt's, "progressive" in the sense that Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson were. A Quaker, Hoover was an entirely self-made man, a very successful mining engineer-entrepreneur who made a fortune; he mastered Latin to the point that he made the still-standard translation of Georgius Agricola's De re metallica and knew Mandarin. Roosevelt was born into privilege, went to Harvard, where he was a "C" student and a cheerleader. He was an ardent stamp collector.

In 1920, Roosevelt said of Hoover, "There could not be a finer one." Wilson was alleged to want him to have the 1920 Democratic presidential nomination. Hoover didn't think the Democrats would win, and tied his star to the Republicans. But he was essentially an apolitical technocrat. There was always an empiricism about Hoover's actions and this often transcended politics. In 1947, President Harry Truman, Roosevelt's successor and a Democratic politician par excellence, appointed Hoover as chairman of a commission to reform the executive branch of government. He never sought glory but it came to him because of his substantial abilities. The Depression was more than a match for him, and it proved more than a match for Roosevelt. Basically, it was the Second World War that got the U. S. out of the Great Depression completely

There was both ambiguity and ambivalence in Hoover's thinking, but there was in Roosevelt's also. Hoover regarded himself as part of the "progressive" continuum, and there were many things that he had in common with both the Democrats and Republicans who preceded him. Hoover tried to combat the ensuing Great Depression with public works projects such as major dams, volunteer efforts, new tariffs and raises in individual and corporate taxes. He created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, mainly to give loans to weak banks. Roosevelt continued and expanded the RFC somewhat, also loaning the money to weak banks, railroads, and using it for work relief. Then the sums loaned dropped off in 1934 until World War Two, when the RFC began financing construction of munitions plants. Libertarians argued years later that Hoover's economics were statist, and that he belonged in the continuum of government and business collaboration that began around the turn of the century.   I must agree with them.

Hoover's initiatives did not produce economic recovery, but served as the groundwork for various policies laid out in Franklin D. Roosevelt's "New Deal." As Secretary of Commerce under the preceding Republican presidents, he had been particularly active in creating trade associations in hundreds of industries, and these associations were to become the backbone of the National Recovery Administration, the first New Deal.

When the Democrats won in 1933 they favored business and government cooperation. Moley was joined by a group, including Hugh Johnson, who had served on Wilson's War Industries Board, Chamber of Commerce representatives, assorted trade association lawyers, bankers, and academics. Many people helped formulate the first phase of the New Deal. They were certainly not radicals nor did they want to be. The trade association movement was the heart of the first New Deal, but the Supreme Court outlawed the NRA in May 1935 as unconstitutional.

The NRA's trade association provisions actually consisted of nearly 600 associations codes, and appears very complex because businesses are naturally divided by their different labor overhead, regional cost differences are often very great, and expenses vary. Whenever some firm has an advantage that produces profits they want to keep it and make money. That means that trade association codes, which deal with labor pay, output allowed, and the like, were often hotly contested by the various businesses in an industry–divided generally by region and size. The result was a mess of conflicts, but historians like Ellis Hawley, who have studied this period in great detail, concluded that big business was the major winner in the entire process of fixing the many codes. They were helped immensely because many key government officials were drawn themselves from business and industry, and Johnson, the head of the NRA, was sympathetic to business.   Given the fact there were many codes there were many exceptions, but labor was generally very under-represented in the code authorities.

Roosevelt himself contributed little, perhaps nothing, to the formulation of the New Deal, most of which had existed in an early form in the trade associations. Trade associations wanted federal governmental protection from other members of the industry who competed too energeticallywhich classical economic theory declared was a good thing. Labor costs are equalized when labor is organized or child-labor outlawed; this became an issue when some codes, particularly in textiles, were formulated.

All this just shows what has been known for a long time: there is no difference between the parties and firms' use of federal regulations to make money. Labor unions can therefore emerge as many things, including as a form of intra-industry struggle. The coal, apparel, and textiles industries are good examples: Northern textiles were for limits on child labor, the Southern textile industry (which used children as cheap factory hands), against federal control of it.

Reform in the United States, beginning with the Interstate Commerce Commission of 1887 (which eventually regulated the trucking industry also), has embodied the principle that government sanctions are used to back private power in specific industries, meaning generally the biggest firms in the industries involved. The Democratic Administration under Roosevelt was explicitly for this principle, and the new Securities and Exchange Commission under Joseph P. Kennedy (the later President's father), a former speculator, made it explicit that the new SEC was intended to be the bankers' friend. And it was.

All the banking and financial legislation the Democrats passed proved very useful to at least some–generally the biggest–firms in the industry.

There were critics of whatever the Roosevelt Administration did: Some were ideological, some were regionalfearing that too much power would move to New York or Washington and damage their interests (Amadeo Giannini's Bank of America, which was then largely California- based), small business interests in the South, some coal mine operators, who detested high wage unions but were in fact often marginally economically whether or not they had unions. But the depression had shaken up many businessmen, financially and psychologically. They conceded change was needed, inevitable, or both. The Roosevelt Administration was ready to cooperate with them, and it did. Unions grew under the New Deal but largely because of the willingness of workers to strike and organize. Code rules sometimes helped them, especially in garments and highly competitive industries, but they were not the primary reason for their growth.

Roosevelt the Presidential candidate blasted the Republican incumbent for spending and taxing too much, increasing national debt, raising tariffs and blocking trade, as well as placing millions on the government dole. Roosevelt attacked Hoover for "reckless and extravagant" spending, of thinking "that we ought to center control of everything in Washington as rapidly as possible." Roosevelt's running mate, John Nance Garner, accused the Republicans of "leading the country down the path of socialism". Hoover believed the government should spend more money on dams and public works during business downturns, a kind of early Keynesism.

There was a complexity in Hoover and Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression that makes very misleading their historical reputations that have survived in the common political rhetoric until now. Historians who have studied Hoover and Roosevelt in much greater detail, have come away with far better informed, nuanced, essentially critical judgments. The problem–among others– is that the general political community rarely reads their rather detailed academic monographs. But the persistence of the notion that somehow the Democrats are somehow better than Republicans is also related to the fact that the GOP more often falls under the sway of yahoos, making the Democrats seem less objectionable.

These simplifications have benefited the Democrats most, allowing them to portray themselves as somehow most able to meet the U.S.' social problems both then and thereafter. The interwar period was far more complex and does not lend itself to easy generalizations: it is a nuanced time and makes easy generalizations impossible.

Suffice it to say, unemployment went from 4.2 percent of the labor force in 1928 to 23.6 percent in 1932, the worst point in the Depression, fell back down to 16.0 percent in 1936 and shot back up to 19.0 in 1938. The Roosevelt Administration also introduced the Works Projects Administration (WPA), and while it employed some labor up to 30-hours a week, it could not teach these men and women skills until 1940 because some unions opposed doing so. Until the war had begun. WPA or not, unemployment remained very high. By 1939 the New Deal's social technology was exhausted and there was only a confused debate between Democrats about the virtues–or lack of them–of laissez faire and competition versus the panoply of ideas behind "planning" and control of competition.   Only the Second World War, not the New Deal or Hoover's efforts, ended the depression. As the former NRA research director, Charles F. Roos, concluded, the "…NRA must, as a whole, be regarded as a sincere but ineffective effort to alleviate depression."

In the end, Hoover and Roosevelt had much in common programmatically; both failed to reverse the depression, and many of the measures they adopted in the effort to do so were very similar. There is certainly a continuity in the American "reform" tradition, such as it is, across the entire twentieth century. Both Hoover and Roosevelt were integral parts of it. Years later, one of Roosevelt's closest advisers, Rexford Tugwell, admitted that "practically the whole New Deal was extrapolated from programs that Hoover started." But Hoover had not started anything himself; he had only taken over efforts of a faction of the trade association movement to protect elements of specific industries–there were 100s–from poorer. smaller firms, generally but not always in the Southfrom the price-cutting and overproduction that some businessmen detested.

Americans are pragmatic and all-too-many dislike theoretical thinking. Sometimes they are simply unable, unwilling, or both, to generalize about their actions. Looking reality straight in the face can shatter myths that are politically useful. The "New Deal" is such a case, which the Democrats foster as if there is something uniquely pro-people about their party. But the so-called New Deal is an integral part of a movement in modern American history, one that largely reflected the business world's response to the complexities of the American economy after the late 1890s.

State intervention is used to resolve disputes or conflicting interests within specific industries that cannot be settled by competing firms by voluntary means. The problem is that these efforts to regulate the economy fail so often. leaving the American economy devoid of an effective social technology to deal with crises. Wars–real and cold–have rescued it. But this intriguing enigma is a separate topic that would require too much time and space for me to deal with adequately here.

By 1936 the New Deal was at an analytic and programmatic impasse. It cobbled together new legislation that retained some of provisions of the old NRAthe Wagner Act on labor, explicitly allowing unions, but it could not legislate the end of unemployment. But while it had strong business opposition, the history of trade associations had revealed that there were also business elements that were pro-union because the equalization of labor costs proved vital to their interests. This was a major objective of many trade association codes. It can be debated whether businesses are pro-union but unions can be and are useful to the extent that they often eliminate labor cost differentials. Many of the so-called pro-labor provisions of the Wagner Act simply gave workers explicit rights they should have had earlier. Anyway, it sealed even more tightly the unions' bond with the Democratic Party and what are called liberals.

Anyone who looks at recent American history, the statements and policies of the Democrats and Republicans, will conclude that there is a much greater consensus between the parties than differences, and always has been. They frequently try to accentuate the differences, and sustaining political myths are often necessary to winning elections. The New Deal is one such myth that the Democrats gain from.

The New Deal illusion survives because it is a very useful to today's Democratic Party. It needs myths, but if one knows the truth about it then we have the basis for understanding the essentially conservative nature of today's Democratic Party.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/08/29/the-new-deal-illusion/

Re:

mental illness is not funny ... but the mindset of socialists is

On Sep 21, 12:54 pm, Bruce Majors <majors.br...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Jesse Jackson Jr. $2.5 million house in DC for sale now that he is in the
> loony bin. Apparently being a Congresscritter and a community organizer
> pays well
>
> http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2012/09/rep_jesse_jackson_jr_washingt...

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Re: Liberal Hypocrisy

St. Paul mom, daughter hold burglar for police with pink gun

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New post on ACGR's "News with Attitude"

St. Paul mom, daughter hold burglar for police with pink gun

by Harold

MyFoxTwinCities.com 9/20/2012 Source ..... A St. Paul mother and daughter pinned a burglar to the floor of their home and called police, while keeping a pink-stocked gun pointed at their intruder until officers arrived. "What the hell are you doing in my home?" said 56-year-old Rebecca Larson, when she found suspected burglar Marty Childs inside [...]

Liberal Hypocrisy

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New post on Scotty Starnes's Blog

Liberal Hypocrisy

by Scotty Starnes

Scotty Starnes | September 21, 2012 at 6:30 AM | Tags: 9/11, Beyonce, Democrats, fundrasiers, liberal hypocrisy, Libya, parties, President Bush, President Obama, US Embassy | Categories: Political Issues | URL: http://wp.me/pvnFC-8e3

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The Cult is Creepin’ Me Out

The Creepy Cult

http://itsbigfurhat.com/main/the-creepy-cult/

Furious Liberal Friday

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New post on Scotty Starnes's Blog

Furious Liberal Friday

by Scotty Starnes

Scotty Starnes | September 21, 2012 at 8:30 AM | Tags: bigoted, Christians, liberal logic, Muslims, racist, violence | Categories: Political Issues | URL: http://wp.me/pvnFC-8ea

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Re:

Never get the jackson stink out of it.

On Fri, Sep 21, 2012 at 12:54 PM, Bruce Majors <majors.bruce@gmail.com> wrote:

Jesse Jackson Jr. $2.5 million house in DC for sale now that he is in the loony bin. Apparently being a Congresscritter and a community organizer pays well

http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2012/09/rep_jesse_jackson_jr_washingto.html
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Jesse Jackson Jr. $2.5 million house in DC for sale now that he is in the loony bin. Apparently being a Congresscritter and a community organizer pays well

http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2012/09/rep_jesse_jackson_jr_washingto.html

Re: Muslim Pastor Burns Bible, Promises To Piss On One Next

Alas the distinction, the New Covenents pretty much make that little
chapter and verse null and void.....
---
not for the jews in or outside of israel.
and you're still bonded to israel because of your religious beliefs.

good luck!

On Sep 21, 12:47 pm, Keith In Tampa <keithinta...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Alas the distinction, the New Covenents pretty much make that little
> chapter and verse null and void.....
>
> On Fri, Sep 21, 2012 at 6:17 PM, plainolamerican
> <plainolameri...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > You're not suggesting that there is any correlation
> > between the Bible and the Quo'ran are ya?
> > ---
> > Slay them wherever ye find them and drive them out of the places
> > whence they drove you out, for persecution is worse than slaughter. -
> > Quran 2:191
>
> > Anyone arrogant enough to reject the verdict of the judge or of the
> > priest who represents the LORD your God must be put to death. Such
> > evil must be purged from Israel. (Deuteronomy 17:12 NLT)
>
> > On Sep 21, 10:29 am, Keith In Tampa <keithinta...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > You lost me Greg......You're not suggesting that there is any correlation
> > > between the Bible and the Quo'ran are ya?
>
> > > (Good to see you by the way!)
>
> > > On Fri, Sep 21, 2012 at 5:23 PM, GregfromBoston <greg.vinc...@yahoo.com
> > >wrote:
>
> > > > Poor cupcake doesn't realize he just burned large sections of the
> > Qu'ran,
> > > > verbatim.
>
> > > > On Thursday, September 20, 2012 10:23:07 PM UTC-4, Travis wrote:
>
> > > >>http://patdollard.com/2012/09/**muslim-pastor-burns-bible-**
> > > >> promises-to-piss-on-one-next/<
> >http://patdollard.com/2012/09/muslim-pastor-burns-bible-promises-to-p...>
>
> > > >> --
> > > > Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
> > > > For options & help seehttp://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
>
> > > > * Visit our other community athttp://www.PoliticalForum.com/
> > > > * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
> > > > * Read the latest breaking news, and more.
>
> > --
> > Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
> > For options & help seehttp://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
>
> > * Visit our other community athttp://www.PoliticalForum.com/
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Re: The Federal Reserve Was Created to Bailout Banks

The Federal Reserve Was Created to Bailout Banks
---
Purpose

The primary motivation for creating the Federal Reserve System was to
address banking panics.[3] Other purposes are stated in the Federal
Reserve Act, such as "to furnish an elastic currency, to afford means
of rediscounting commercial paper, to establish a more effective
supervision of banking in the United States, and for other purposes".
[23] Before the founding of the Federal Reserve, the United States
underwent several financial crises. A particularly severe crisis in
1907 led Congress to enact the Federal Reserve Act in 1913. Today the
Federal Reserve System has broader responsibilities than only ensuring
the stability of the financial system.[24]

Current functions of the Federal Reserve System include:[12][24]

To address the problem of banking panics
To serve as the central bank for the United States
To strike a balance between private interests of banks and the
centralized responsibility of government
To supervise and regulate banking institutions
To protect the credit rights of consumers
To manage the nation's money supply through monetary policy to
achieve the sometimes-conflicting goals of
maximum employment
stable prices, including prevention of either inflation or
deflation[25]
moderate long-term interest rates
To maintain the stability of the financial system and contain
systemic risk in financial markets
To provide financial services to depository institutions, the U.S.
government, and foreign official institutions, including playing a
major role in operating the nation's payments system
To facilitate the exchange of payments among regions
To respond to local liquidity needs
To strengthen U.S. standing in the world economy

On Sep 21, 9:53 am, Travis <baconl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> **
> lowtechgrannie posted: "99 years ago, a group of powerful bankers and
> politicians met secretly on a privately-owned Jekyll Island off the coast
> of Georgia to create a banking cartel. They called their new entity the
> Federal Reserve Bank. Congress passed the enabling " Respond to this
> post by replying above this line
> New post on *Fellowship of the Minds*
> <http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/author/lowtechgrannie/> The
> Federal Reserve Was Created to Bailout
> Banks<http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/2012/09/20/the-federal-reserve...>by
> lowtechgrannie<http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/author/lowtechgrannie/>
>
> 99 years ago, a group of powerful bankers and politicians met secretly on a
> privately-owned Jekyll Island off the coast of Georgia to create a banking
> cartel.
>
> <http://fellowshipofminds.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/jekyllclub.jpg>
>
> They called their new entity the Federal Reserve Bank. Congress passed
> the enabling legislation on December 23, 1913 that made the federal
> government a "partner" in their private cartel..
>
> *lowtechgrannie<http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/author/lowtechgrannie/>
> * | September 20, 2012 at 11:34 am | Tags: Banking
> Cartel<http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?tag=banking-cartel>,
> Creature from Jekyll
> Island<http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?tag=creature-from-jekyll-island>,
> Federal Reserve
> Bank<http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?tag=federal-reserve-bank>,
> G Edward Griffin<http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?tag=g-edward-griffin>,
> Jekyll Island <http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?tag=jekyll-island>,
> Jekyll
> Island Club <http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?tag=jekyll-island-club>,
> JP Morgan <http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?tag=jp-morgan>, Senator
> Nelson Aldrich<http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?tag=senator-nelson-aldrich>,
> William Rockefeller<http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?tag=william-rockefeller>|
> Categories:
> Economy <http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?cat=17656840>, The Powers
> That Be <http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?cat=499558>, US
> Presidents<http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/?cat=51656283>| URL:http://wp.me/pKuKY-hiI
>
> Comment<http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/2012/09/20/the-federal-reserve...>
> See all comments<http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/2012/09/20/the-federal-reserve...>
>
> Unsubscribe or change your email settings at Manage
> Subscriptions<https://subscribe.wordpress.com/?key=80d8873ee52adffe4e178d01c25562cf...>.
>
> *Trouble clicking?* Copy and paste this URL into your browser:http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/2012/09/20/the-federal-reserve...
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Re: Muslim Pastor Burns Bible, Promises To Piss On One Next

You're not suggesting that there is any correlation
between the Bible and the Quo'ran are ya?
---
Slay them wherever ye find them and drive them out of the places
whence they drove you out, for persecution is worse than slaughter. -
Quran 2:191

Anyone arrogant enough to reject the verdict of the judge or of the
priest who represents the LORD your God must be put to death. Such
evil must be purged from Israel. (Deuteronomy 17:12 NLT)

On Sep 21, 10:29 am, Keith In Tampa <keithinta...@gmail.com> wrote:
> You lost me Greg......You're not suggesting that there is any correlation
> between the Bible and the Quo'ran are ya?
>
> (Good to see you by the way!)
>
> On Fri, Sep 21, 2012 at 5:23 PM, GregfromBoston <greg.vinc...@yahoo.com>wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Poor cupcake doesn't realize he just burned large sections of the Qu'ran,
> > verbatim.
>
> > On Thursday, September 20, 2012 10:23:07 PM UTC-4, Travis wrote:
>
> >>http://patdollard.com/2012/09/**muslim-pastor-burns-bible-**
> >> promises-to-piss-on-one-next/<http://patdollard.com/2012/09/muslim-pastor-burns-bible-promises-to-p...>
>
> >> --
> > Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
> > For options & help seehttp://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
>
> > * Visit our other community athttp://www.PoliticalForum.com/
> > * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
> > * Read the latest breaking news, and more.

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Re: Just In ..... NAVY NEWS ALERT !

Thanks Travis.

I just sent that to my entire family. My sister will call me racist, again. But the rest will get it. Unfortunately.

Bear

On 21 September 2012 10:53, Travis <baconlard@gmail.com> wrote:

News just in...

A Canadian Navy Destroyer stops four Muslims in a row boat, rowing towards Halifax . The captain gets on the loud haler and shouts, "Ahoy, small craft, where are you heading?"

One of the Muslims stands up and shouts, "We are invading Canada !"

The crew of the Destroyer all start laughing and when the captain finally stops, he gets back on the loud haler and says,

"Just the four of you?"

The Muslim stands up again and shouts, "No, we're the last four. The rest are already there!"

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