Burning the History Books- The Right Wing and FDR

In the past couple of days, I've been browsing my bookshelves, revisiting the New Deal.

It seemed important right now to go back and take a look at what happened, particularly since the Right wing in this country has been vigorously spreading the lies that FDR's New Deal, perhaps the most successful reform in history, was, in fact, a failure.

The purpose of this misinformation campaign is to trip up President Obama in his attempts to restore prosperity to the American people...and return this country to the right track.

The Right-Wingnuts have worked long and hard (Since Reagan's victory in 1980) to strip this country of the prosperity and protection put in place by FDR.

As I continue to read about this, I find that Chris Miller, who's blog, Smart Remarks, I discovered a couple of days ago has written a nice piece on this debate...I recommend it.

It can be found here: http://blog.smartmemes.com/2009/02/a-dose-of-history/

The President's Speech: The Value of Communication

From the very first moments of President Barack Hussein Obama's speech last night (which I watched this morning on the NYTimes website) I felt fortunate that we have this man as our president at this time.

One of the Republican talking points during the recent campaign was that eloquence is not action...but it has always been my belief that eloquence is the primary quality a leader must have...especially in troubling times. Without the ability to express ideas, not only clearly, but in a way which invites an emotional and energic positive response, a leader of a free people can do nothing.

The President, started his speech last night by saying that:

... while our economy may be weakened and our confidence shaken, though we are living through difficult and uncertain times, tonight I want every American to know this: We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before.

The weight of this crisis will not determine the destiny of this nation. The answers to our problems don't lie beyond our reach. They exist in our laboratories and our universities; in our fields and our factories; in the imaginations of our entrepreneurs and the pride of the hardest-working people on Earth. Those qualities that have made America the greatest force of progress and prosperity in human history we still possess in ample measure. What is required now is for this country to pull together, confront boldly the challenges we face, and take responsibility for our future once more.

This is precisely the note of hope that the nation must keep top of mind, as we enter a period of reduced luxuries and harder work...and we must remember that, though our collective labors, we WILL return to prosperity.

The President also invited us to look back into our recent past, and realize that we are now reaping the bitter fruits of the crop we sowed - starting as long as twenty years ago. As a people, we chose not to break our addiction to forgiegn oil and cheep goods, and we turned to leaders who promised us easy answers:

The fact is our economy did not fall into decline overnight. Nor did all of our problems begin when the housing market collapsed or the stock market sank. We have known for decades that our survival depends on finding new sources of energy. Yet we import more oil today than ever before. The cost of health care eats up more and more of our savings each year, yet we keep delaying reform. Our children will compete for jobs in a global economy that too many of our schools do not prepare them for. And though all these challenges went unsolved, we still managed to spend more money and pile up more debt, both as individuals and through our government, than ever before.

In other words, we have lived through an era where too often short-term gains were prized over long-term prosperity; where we failed to look beyond the next payment, the next quarter, or the next election. A surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy instead of an opportunity to invest in our future. (Applause.) Regulations were gutted for the sake of a quick profit at the expense of a healthy market. People bought homes they knew they couldn't afford from banks and lenders who pushed those bad loans anyway. And all the while, critical debates and difficult decisions were put off for some other time on some other day.

Well that day of reckoning has arrived, and the time to take charge of our future is here.

Now is the time to act boldly and wisely -- to not only revive this economy, but to build a new foundation for lasting prosperity. Now is the time to jumpstart job creation, re-start lending, and invest in areas like energy, health care, and education that will grow our economy, even as we make hard choices to bring our deficit down. That is what my economic agenda is designed to do, and that is what I'd like to talk to you about tonight.

Both the reminder that, as a Democracy and a people, we put ourselves in this place, and by inviting us to remember that, through our focus and hard work, we will raise ourselves out of it, President Obama is following in the great tradition of our best orators (who, not coincidentally, have been our best leaders) Kennedy, Churchill, and Franklin Roosevelt.

I, for one, was grateful to hear the speech.

Time to Change the Rules America Must End Depedance on Oil

Just read a interesting opinion piece in the The New Republic. Written by Paul Berman, The Death of 1989 postulates the consequences of a Russia acting out of paranoia and makes a convincing case that the world has become a more uncertain place following the Kremlin's push against Georgia.

The entire piece is well worth reading, but, in the end the issue comes down to Oil plain and simple. Oil is the lifeblood on which almost all persons in the world subsist. It brings us our food, it heats our homes, earns us our living, it is as important to modern life as water in a desert, or food in a famine. It is something that people will kill for.

And yet, of course, unlike food and water, Oil is an artificial staple. Our dependence on it is real, the economic laws and realities of the world revolve around it. But this need not be so.

Berman writes in his piece:
We will have to recognize that, for the moment, questions of democratic principle, national security, and the energy crisis have decisively merged. We will need a newly combined policy, then--a reaffirmation of the principles of democratic solidarity, together with an urgent, national-priority effort to develop alternative-energy industries in order to weaken the Putin dictatorship and a series of other petro-enemies of democracy. Now, yes, after the invasion of Georgia, we will end up confirming one aspect of the Russian paranoia. Our goal should be to undo, on environmentalist grounds, the central element of Russia's rather primitive prosperity. An alternative energy program will require a turning away from free-market dogma--one more way in which a new policy cannot be traditionally conservative. The lurch will have to be leftward.

Under normal marketplace conditions, the advantages of Oil now accrue to Russia, and the Middle East. Following its present course, the United States will continue to fight wars to secure Oil, even as the sources of Oil move further from our reach...inside Russia's boarders, or under an Iranian Nuclear Umbrella.

It is as if the whole business were a giant ball game. As Americans, we are good at the game, but at the moment, the field we play on is not favorable to us.


Through a concerted effort, the United States could engage the massive economic engine of its government to change our society's relationship with the natural laws of the market place (just as an airplane engines changes our traditional relationship to the laws of gravity).

By providing artificial stimulus to the "Anti-Oil" energy business- the Government could literally "move the playing field"- the laws of the marketplace, or the rules of the game, would be the same...but the field on which we were playing would be OURS and not theirs.

An entire new industry would be born, one in which we, as a nation, took the lead. Our people would work, our coffers would be full, and, as an added bonus, the world would be cleaner.

I do not agree with Berman that this is a "leftward" idea at all. A true leftest would instead plead that we search for ways to abandon the "Zero-Sum game" of capitalism, and seek instead a cooperative, inclusive approach. While I applaud the sentiment, I can not agree that the human spirit has reached a plateau of maturity that would allow us to take the high road.

It has, after all, worked for us before. Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal began it, but the full mobilization of our Government in the cause of World War Two lead our nation back to near full employment, a leading position in manufacturing, science and technology, and the living standards that went with it.

As we look at the present world situation, which shows us ever loosing to those who have the Oil, it's time to hearken back to Roosevelt's words: "For us, this is an emergency, as serious as war itself. We must apply ourselves to our task with the same resolution, with the same sense of urgency, the same spirit of patriotism and sacrifice as we would show were we at war."