Did you guys read the Great Propaganda put out by the NY Times today? The East is such a mecca of Propaganda isn't it... Haven't we seen this somewhere
Well, anyhow, on to the reading portion....
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/12/opinion/12mon4.html?_r=2&th&emc=th
Editorial Observer
Republicans Latest Talking Point: The New Deal Failed
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By ADAM COHEN
Published: January 11, 2009
On Christmas Eve, the conservative pundit Monica Crowley argued on Fox News that instead of rescuing America from the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelts spending on public works made it worse. She insisted that this bizarre claim was confirmed by all kinds of studies and academic work.
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The shows host backed her up. Yes, said Gregg Jarrett, I think historians pretty much agree on that. In the same vein, a recent Wall Street Journal opinion piece said F.D.R. helped turn a panic into the worst depression of modern times. Now, as Congress begins to debate President-elect Barack Obamas ambitious economic stimulus plan, this anti-New Deal talking point is popping up all over.
Conservatives have railed against the New Deal from the start. In 1934, H. L. Mencken was already decrying it as a saturnalia of expropriation and waste. When F.D.R. ran for re-election in 1936, a headline in William Randolph Hearsts newspapers insisted that Moscow Backs Roosevelt.
But Americans were not fooled. They knew F.D.R. was on their side in a way that Herbert Hoover and his fellow free-marketers hadnt been. They could see first-hand the good that Roosevelts jobs programs were doing for the Depressions victims and the slow but unmistakable improvements in the economy.
In the 1934 midterm elections, the voters delivered their first verdict on the New Deal, expanding the Democrats margins in Congress. In 1936, F.D.R. won in a bigger landslide than he had four years earlier. By 1940, the Republican nominee, Wendell Willkie, was supporting much of Roosevelts social welfare and regulatory regime.
Anti-New Deal rhetoric has never disappeared from American political life. When Barry Goldwater ran for president in 1964, he attacked President Dwight Eisenhower for having presided over a dime store New Deal. But in recent years, the attacks have heated up.
At the start of the Bush administration, conservatives talked openly about rolling back the New Deal. They were trying to unravel the regulatory state, including protections for workers, consumers and investors. They were also promoting a favorite cause of Wall Streets: privatizing Social Security, the crown jewel of the New Deal.
These days the public is in no mood, given the high costs of deregulation in the mortgage industry and the Bernard Madoff scandal, for more talk about dismantling regulations and federal oversight. But today, the new focus is Mr. Obamas stimulus package. If F.D.R.s New Deal spending made things worse, it follows that the Obama administration should not make the same mistake.
The anti-New Deal line is wrong as a matter of economics. F.D.R.s spending programs did help the economy and created millions of new jobs. The problem, we now know, is not that F.D.R. spent too much priming the pump, but rather that he spent too little. It was his decision to cut back on spending on New Deal programs that brought about a nasty recession in 1937-38.
The second problem is that the criticism overlooks the relief Roosevelts programs brought to millions. When F.D.R. took office, unemployment was 25 percent, and families were losing their homes, living in shantytowns, even fighting one another for food at garbage dumps.
The difference that the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Works Progress Administration and other New Deal public works programs made in peoples lives is incalculable.
F.D.R.s labor secretary, Frances Perkins, described in her memoir what a relief job meant to an almost deaf, elderly lawyer she knew whose practice had failed. He had gotten a job as a caretaker at a small seaside park. He made little extra plantings, she recalled, arranged charming paths and walks, acted as guide to visitors, supervised childrens play. When she saw him, she said, he would always ask me to take a message to the President a message of gratitude for a job which paid him fifteen dollars a week and kept him from starving to death.
Congressional Republicans say Mr. Obamas stimulus will cost too much, and that over time the economy will cure itself. When critics raised the same objections to F.D.R.s programs, his relief administrator, Harry Hopkins, had a ready answer: People dont eat in the long run. They eat every day.
