[img]583|left|Eric L. Wattree||no_popup[/img]In 1921, eight years before the Great Depression, Republicans took over the helm of the nation for 12 years. There were three Republican administrations, starting with Warren G. Harding. History remembers Harding's administration for one thing more than anything other, scandal. The Teapot Dome Scandal erupted during Harding's Presidency, considered the most corrupt in the history, until Nixon's, then Reagan's, and finally Bush's.
Following the sudden death of Harding, Calvin Coolidge came next, in 1923. He was the President Ronald Reagan most admired. Coolidge's policies of large tax cuts, allowing business a free rein and encouragement of stock speculation contributed greatly to the stock market crash and the Depression.
Herbert Hoover was elected in 1928, and the market crashed early in his administration. By 1933, the unemployment rate was at 33.3 percent, with 16 million people out of work. Hoover just sat, thinking the economy would rejuvenate itself.
During Hoover's administration 15,000 World War I veterans marched on Washington. They demanded to be paid what they were owed by the government. Hoover responded by calling in federal troops to throw these ex-servicemen off government property.
To the Spectacular Rescue
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a liberal Democrat, overwhelmingly was elected in 1932. He immediately surrounded himself with a group of the finest minds in the country, including Columbia professors Adolph A. Berle, Jr., Rexford G. Tugwell and Raymond Moley, known as the braintrust. After assembling these men, FDR developed a New Deal for the working class people.
It had two components, to help the economy recover from the effects of the Great Depression and to give relief to people. FDR wanted to assure people they never would be placed in total destitution again. To heal the economy, Roosevelt created programs that regulated business, controlled inflation and brought about price stabilization; to deliver relief to the people he signed the National Labor Relations Act guaranteeing workers the right to collective bargaining.
He created the Social Security Administration to guarantee workers income once they became too old to work. He signed the Fair Labor Standards Act to protect workers rights and set a minimum wage for workers.
His Accomplishments
With his New Deal in place, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a bleeding heart liberal, not only took the country out of the worst, Republican-generated, crisis we had faced, he led the free world in victory over Hitler in World War II. With the war, he ushered in the most sustained period of prosperity the world has known.
One would think that conservatives would have seen the light.
But their passion to further enrich the wealthy at the expense of the middle and lower classes seems to supersede logic. From the moment the New Deal went into place, conservatives have been determined to dismantle it. The closest they've come was during the Reagan administration with with the philosophy of supply-side economics, or Reaganomics. The battle still is raging in Washington D.C.
Supply-side economics was a scheme hatched by USC economist Arthur Laffer and the Reagan crowd with a goal of cutting the deficit and balancing the budget. The theory behind Reaganomics was, ostensibly, if you cut taxes for business and people in the upper tax brackets and deregulated business of such nuisances as safety regulations and environmental safeguards, the beneficiaries would invest their savings into creating new jobs.
Making It Work — Kind of
In that way, the money would trickle down to the rest of us. The resulting broadened tax base not only would help to bring down the deficit, but subsidize the tremendously high defense budget. When the plan was floated, even George H.W. Bush, Reagan's Vice President-to-be, called it “voodoo economics.”
Reaganomics sought to undo many of the safeguards put into place during the Roosevelt era. It restored a business environment similar to that during the Coolidge administration. What happened, however, was even more like the Coolidge era than planned.
Instead of taking the money and investing in new jobs, it was used in wild schemes and stock market speculation. One scheme, the leveraged buyout, involved buying up large companies with borrowed funds secured by the company's assets, then paying off the loan by selling off the assets of the purchased company. This practice cost the country its industrial base. In addition, the bottom fell out of the stock market. On Monday, Oct. 19, 1987, the Dow-Jones Average fell 508.32 points, the greatest one-day decline since 1914-15.
As for Ronald Reagan's promise to balance the budget and lower the deficit, by the time he left office, he was not only the most prolific spender of any President, he added more to the deficit than all Presidents since Washington.
What does the Republican Party propose to do about that? One was their Contract with America, a capital gains tax cut for the rich.
Due to the continued freewheeling fiscal policies of conservative Republicans between 1986 and 1989, spanning the Presidencies of Reagan and Bush Sr., the FSLIC had to pay off all the depositors of 296 institutions with assets of over $125 billion.
The collapse of Silverado Savings and Loan in 1988 ended up costing taxpayers $1.3 billion. Silverado was headed by Neil Bush, brother of former President George W. Bush. The investigation alleged that Neil Bush was guilty of “breaches of his fiduciary duties involving multiple conflicts of interest.” The issue was eventually settled out of court with Bush paying a mere $50,000 settlement.
Then there was the Lincoln Savings and loan scandal in 1987, involving Sen. John McCain. The scandal was similar to the one playing out now on Wall Street. He was among a group of senators dubbed the Keating Five.
In 1976, Charles Keating moved to Arizona to run the American Continental Corp. In 1984, shortly after the Reagan era push to deregulate the savings and loan community, Keating bought Lincoln Savings and Loan. He engaged in highly risky investments with the depositors' savings. By 1989, the parent company, which Keating headed, went bankrupt. Some 21,000 investors, mostly elderly, lost their life savings, totaling $285 million.
After receiving more than $1 million from Keating in illegal campaign contributions, gifts, free trips, and other gratuities, the Keating Five — Sens. John Glenn, Don Riegle, Dennis DeConcini, Alan Cranston, and McCain — attempted to intervene in the investigation into Keating's activities by the regulators.
Later, they were admonished to varying degrees by the Senate.
Charles Keating was convicted of fraud, racketeering and conspiracy. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison by a state court and an additional 12 by a federal court. After 4½ years, his convictions were overturned. But prior to being retried, he pleaded guilty to a number of felonies in return for a sentence of time served.
Then came the George W. Bush administration that caused close to a million people to die uselessly in an illegal war in Iraq, robbed people blind, and fumbled the longest war in American history in Afghanistan. The Bush administration greed nearly sent the nation into another depression.
After repeated efforts to deplete the national treasury, Republicans are unanimously voting against every piece of legislation the Democrats propose to repair the damage they caused. They have the audacity to claim that they're doing it because they're concerned about deficit spending.
They're against affordable healthcare for families; they're against any kind of spending to put Americans back to work, and they're against extending unemployment insurance to relieve the burden of the unemployed. What's particularly telling, however, is they're also against strong legislation to prevent the financial community (them) from being able to rob in the future.
They want is to maintain the status quo, and make sure people suffer until the 2012 elections so they'll have a chance to regain power and raid the treasury again. That's their only agenda.
History is clear. Conservative Republicans don't mind spending money, they just don't want to spend it on those who need it, us. Remember, they're the party of Alexander Hamilton, one of the founding fathers who believed that only those who owned property should even be allowed to vote. He also said:
“All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and well-born, the other, the mass of the people… The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second, and as they cannot receive any advantage by a change, they therefore will ever maintain good government.” Debates of the Federalist Convention (May 14-Sept. 17, 1787).
Let's set the record straight. Franklin Delano Roosevelt not only brought the nation back from the Great Depression and saved the world from Hitler during his life, but his New Deal gave us the greatest prosperity we've ever known, and allowed him to reach back from the grave to save the nation from Ronald Reagan 40 years after his death.
That isn't to say that the liberal Democratic philosophy corners the market on what is in the best interests of the nation because both parties have had illustrious moments in the past. Rather, this is one of those defining issues in politics that determines whether this is to be a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, or a government where the citizens are nothing more than disposable resources for big business.
In the past the Democratic Party has always been there to draw a line in the sand on this issue, but in recent history the liberal philosophy has been distorted to the point that even Democrats are distancing themselves from their own political philosophy.
What makes America great are those dramatic moments in Apolitics when one person has the courage to put everything on the line to defend, protect, and save the people from disaster. Modern history will show that during those moments, it was a bleeding heart liberal who stepped up to the plate. First FDR, then Bill Clinton, and now Barack Hussein Obama.
Future historians will record nothing is more honorable in politics than a bleeding heart because their hearts bleed for America.
Mr. Wattree may be contacted at wattree.blogspot.com or Ewattree@Gmail.com
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