FDR Proved Government Can Work in a Big Way
Seventy-five years ago this month Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected president of the United States. Thinking about the current White House occupant makes it pretty clear the theory of evolution does not apply to politicians.
Where Roosevelt showed the resources of government used properly can respond to aggression and mitigate the suffering of those in need, George Bush has used a national tragedy to secure unlimited enrichment for a powerful few. We need to remember “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” particularly when it comes the unending stream of lies, hypocrisy and hate cascading from the White House and its allies.
There’s always a threat, according to Bush: terrorists, illegal immigrants, marriage-inclined gays — someone who wants to prevent you, as he says, from “working hard to put food on your family.”
That’s why we can’t have government investment in helping make the lives of middle class families tolerable.
It’s guys like Bush, Scott Fitzgerald, Charlie Sykes and Paul Ryan and their right-wing bloglodytes who would have fought against the New Deal by screaming that the government, for instance, would be paying to bring electricity to rurally located illegal immigrants.
Well, that and because they’re opposed to the minimum wage, Social Security and the rights for workers established under the National Labor Relations Act.
The New Deal would never get passed today. Because, let’s face it, too many Democrats are beholden to corporate interests and too many have been cowed into fear whenever the word immigration arises.
Let’s not forget: The only reason the immigration debate is happening is because in September 2006 the Republicans realized their dual record of failure in Iraq and promoting corruption in Washington, D.C., was not a winning message for the November elections.
Democrats flinched and with that the conservative noise machine pounced. Families trying to come to America under the cover of darkness are being equated with terrorist cells, which always conveniently come up when there’s bad news brewing for the Bush administration.
All of this isn’t to say FDR didn’t have detractors. At different times, Roosevelt was described as a fascist, socialist and communist — and this was before Fox News.
But like no other president, Roosevelt harnessed the power of government to inspire in people the will to overcome adversity, while at the same time providing the tools with which the common good had the chance to succeed.
His wife was awesome too.
Scot Ross is the executive director of One Wisconsin Now, a progressive communications and online advocacy network.
Copyright ©2007, Capital Newspapers.
Hopefully we won’t need a social scenario akin to pre-Rosey, to get another crack at a trust buster, top heavy executive branch.
The current economic conditions tends to support history repeating itself though.
I have always been a huge admirer of the FDR administration: the public works projects made possible by gov’t paid CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) workers, Social Security, FDIC, etc. FDR was an aristocrat made humble by his battle with polio (imagine him running for prez today in a wheelchair!). He and his wife were in touch with, and had genuine compassion for, the minions of struggling Americans.
What would FDR do were he to be in power in the 21st century, (wheelchair and all)? Would he support the needs of the Average Hard-working American instead of Big Corporations - implementing stronger programs for healthcare, improving schools, addressing our decaying infrastructure (have all those 1930s-era dams and highways been updated?). Or would he be laughed at and considered a “no way he can win” candidate, like Dennis Kuchinich (a man with some really great ideas as well).
Seems that the USA is a different country now. FDR led our country to the “Progressive Era” (1932-1980) and Reagan and the conservative political machine have been leading us to a new Era. What shall it be called? The “Corporatocracy Era?” the “Greed Era?” the “Social Darwinism Era?” the “Short-sightedness Era?”
FDR must be rolling in his grave.
For many people, FDR was probably the most successful socialist of the 20th century.
All that is needed to emulate some new successes along the lines of Roosevelt is a Democratic President seated with a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate, all at the same time. And the less of them incumbents, the better. Australia just woke up and elected the sensible prime minister. Why not us in less than 12 months hence?
The component elements of the Roosevelt Legacy were not part of the electoral debate in ‘32. He ran as a moderate with the full support of the Klan and the Dixiecrats. Once he was in power he decided to save Capitalizm for the Capitalizts. Unions were limited to the economic forum (wages, hours, & benefits only) and social issues were excluded.
The Legacy emerged: 90% tax on earned income over $1mn ($6mn adj for inflation); 52% tax on unearned income; 50% on mega-estates (House of Morgan/Walton); Wagner Act (right to unionize); Glass-Seagal (separate Banks from Brokerage Houses); Social Security; et al. Best of luck. Your neighbors don’t care about the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. They have been trained to reject all of the above. They are equipped to be little more than galley slaves.
It is no longer difficult to imagine the hysterical response Roosevelt got from the Richfilth and their Overseers. The only surprising element is that they didn’t assassinate him and stage a coup by ‘35-’36. We know the Psychotic American Richfilth much better now. They will design, create, and infect your children with a chronic disease so they can sell you the maintenance drug – and laugh at you while they do it. We’ve already heard variations on this with the voice tapes that came from the Enron boys when they were fucking California.
There is no abomination they will not commit. That is our country. It is how our Masters do business. After all, they committed genocide and got away with it, they built our country on the backs of slave labor and Jim Crow and got away with it. They even nuked helpless civilian populations and got away with it. They can do anything to anybody with total impunity. Why would they doubt it?
That’s why the US is going to Shatter into 50 separate states. Our Masters are Psychotic, they have total control, facts do not matter, and no one will say them “No”. Always remember Louis XIV & Czar Alexander had airtight security and secret police agencies and torture was merely the normal form of interrogation for them. Just like us.
Perfect Storm. Sorry. We’re simply marking time til we reach Stage II, the proper moment for Martial Law. In the short term, you might want to start thinking about strategies for dealing with roving bands of Blackwater rapists moving through your neighborhoods under color of authority. They’ve already established their pattern in New Orleans. When designing these strategies always remember, they depend on their weapons, transport, and communications – and they are fatally arrogant, which means they can be provoked into hysterical response – and you can be waiting for them. They take no prisoners. They have no mercy – not for you, not for your children. The decision as to whether or not to use their corpses as display art will be up to you. After they have raped, tortured, or murdered members of your family this will not be an academic question, not even for the women, and they might surprise a few of you fellows. Women are some of the best covert strategists I’ve ever met. They remember where the back doors and all the bathrooms are and if you’ve ever heard women do a psych analysis of a guy, well, they’re pretty scary. Your assets are everywhere, and as you sit right now, if you look at the odd objects that surround you I suspect you have at least 30 lethal objects. Attitude is everything.
We are going to WAR. We are going to win. It will be on the streets of America. It will be for survival, for Democracy, for our Republic. All the best to you in the dark days that lie ahead.
Piece.
Daniel David,
Sorry but that is not all that is needed. The problem would be the supreme court. They would certainly find all of the new deal unconstitutional. In fact, the supreme court of FDR’s time did also, until he began threatening to add two more supremes in order to weight the court in his favor. He began the wheels turning in that direction when the court decided it was better to let him have his way than to water down the court, the implications of which would have been far-reaching.
The new court recently ruled much of McCaine Feingold campaign finance laws unconsitutional, and it appears the only way now to get real campaign finance reform through would be with an ammendment, something guaranteed to never happen.
In essence though this is all true. FDR’s new deal took us from the depression which was in essence the final result of the guilded age’s concentration of wealth, to the longest most sustained upturn in any modern economy ever experienced.
We can only hope for a president that would push his aggenda as strongly, but be careful what you ask for, because we currently have one. Of course, he’s goin in the wrong direction.
Cheney’s push for a unitary executive is applauded by the right because they know it’s much easier for them to get one man in at the top than to try to win majorities in congress. By the time we have a true Democratic majority in congress it will be too late; they will already have conceded power to the king.
FDR had something that the current President doesn’t have. An informed public.
Hoa binh
qbaldsmoove, the more you write, the more you make my case. Total Control. Anything that serves the general population is EVIL. No education. No jobs worth a damn. No Health Care. No property rights. NOTHING FOR YOU. And they own the entire Whorehouse. But you may vote on Master’s Voting Machines for the candidates that Master has chosen for you. “It doesn’t matter how many vote. It matters who counts the votes.”
No, this time it gets bloody. American Bloody. Civil War bloody. Social Chaos bloody. I didn’t make it that way. My fellow Americans did. They’ve turned their backs on every movement for economic or social justice for the last 40 years - and now Master is going to make them bleed.
Peace.
Looking at EVERY conceviable statistic, the US economy got WORSE, not better under 12 years of the New Deal. That is FACT.
RMouse you are as deluded as they come. What the New Deal provided was hope for a better future, without it the states would have had either a communist revolution, or a fascist one. Democracy would have died long before gw bushie threatened to kill it himself. A new deal in this era will require the same conditions that the last one did. That is; a long term Repuke government which had stolen everything not nailed down as well as sponsoring greedy robber barrons who take down the stock market.
You ignore what the conditions were at the start of the Depression. Do you think Herb Hoover knew what the hell he was doing in 1930? Fuck no. By the time FDR was elected the us economy could NOT get any worse than it was. The only way it could go was up, and even then it took the outbreak of a real war for the elites to stop protesting the tax hikes.
RMouse… Your name should be Mickey Mouse, go worship at the alter of Raygun.
luckylefty,
You wrote:
The only surprising element is that they didn’t assassinate him and stage a coup by ‘35-’36.
I hope you realize that a coup was attempted by some of the most powerful players on Wall Street, but it crumbled when the military man chosen to lead it, Smedley Butler, turned on the would-be traitors. Congress held hearings and warned the plotters that it was not nice to overthrow governments and that they had better not try it again or Congress might have to pass a resolution or something saying bad things about them.
We should all recognize that anyone elected US president under the current conditions who would try to institute fundamental change, e.g. Kucinich or Nader, would not live very long. The corporate oligarchs will “erase our mistake” should we, the non-oligarchs, ever miraculously overcome all the obstacles the corporate media puts in our way to electing someone who would truly represent our interests.
The elections are already completely gamed anyway, so efforts must be directed at more fundamental levels.
LOL! Try again.
Table 1: Statistics[29] 1929 1931 1933 1937 1938
Real Gross National Product (GNP) (1) 101.4 84.3 68.3 103.9 96.7
Real Gross National Product (GNP) (1) 101.4 84.3 68.3 103.9 96.7
Consumer Price Index (2) 122.5 108.7 92.4 102.7 99.4
Index of Industrial Production (2) 109 75 69 112 89
Money Supply M2 ($ billions) 46.6 42.7 32.2 45.7 49.3
Exports ($ billions) 5.24 2.42 1.67 3.35 3.18
Unemployment (% of civilian work force) 3.1 16.1 25.2 13.8 16.5
LOOK AT THOSE UNEMPLOYMENT NUMBERS!!!
LOL. The New Deal was a farce. The ramp up for World War II saved the US economy. That is FACT.
The more we explore the more we move left.
The more we understand the more we move left.
The more we seek justice the more we move left.
The more sustainably we live the more we move left.
The more efficient we are the more we move left.
The more honest we are the more we move left.
The more integrity we build the more we move left.
The more spiritual we are the more we move left.
The more truthful we are the more we move left.
Because of Roosevelt’s social programs, I and my siblings were able to afford to attend college. After almost 30 years with my degree under my belt, I still wear my beloved college class ring as a reminder to myself of what a gift that was and how it also means that the government was willing to invest in four fatherless children and provide us with an education so that we wouldn’t end up being a burden to society.
My father served in WWII. He was a beneficiary of the G.I. Bill himself. It allowed him to receive a college education and move up the academic ladder. He was just completing his Ph.D. when he died in a car accident. His Social Security and G.I. Survivor’s benefits were paid to my mom, and then to us kids separately as we came of age to provide for our educations. Believe me, we all took advantage of that money for school expenses. As a result, we all graduated from our respective colleges and universities debt free.
That kind of investment is worthwhile. Some may call it “socialism”, but if that’s socialism, then we need it. This whole bogus attempt at privatization is just the attempt to completely dismantle 60 years of Rooseveltian progress. Oh, I know that there are some who, from the get-go, opposed FDR’s social programs as a drain on the government, but that’s what government is supposed to do, help people get a leg up in society, not force them to be a burden on social service agencies and taxpayers.
People balk at the idea of paying taxes so that folks like me were able to receive two government checks a month to pay my way through college, but what people don’t realize is that they’re going to pay taxes anyway in the form of property tax levies to fund social service agencies, if those levies succeed at the polls. And if they don’t, that leaves more people out in the cold who have to turn someplace for help or turn to welfare, which is hardly enough to live on and survive.
Anybody wonder why there are now so many homeless people out there and why homeless shelters are so overburdened that they have to turn away requests for help? The mean spirited anti-Rooseveltians who have done their level best to dismantle the social safety net are responsible for this human disaster. It’s shameful and I am willing to bet that FDR is rolling in his grave at what has become of his legacy.
I and my siblings are living proof that when the government takes the time to invest in its people, good things result. None of us is a burden on anyone. We’re all self sufficient people who got good educations and three out of four of us work (one sister is a stay-at-home mom of teenagers). I call that investing in this country’s greatest resource - its people. And when you fail the people, you fail the country. Unfortunately, we’ve been burdened for seven years now with a brutal failure of a government that had no business assuming office in the first place and got there illegally.
I just wonder if it will ever again be possible to have any faith left in government after so many years of being governed by those who insist that government is the problem (Reagan used to say that the last words that anyone wants to hear are, “Hi, I’m from the government and I’m here to help”) and that it ought to be reduced to the size of where it can be drowned in a bathtub. I suspect it’s irretrievably broken and maybe it’s time to abolish our current system and come up with a new one, maybe the restoration of the Parliamentary system of government where leaders can be deposed merely by a no-confidence vote in the Parliament.
After all, MP’s are the elected representatives of the people in that system. Maybe we ought to give it a try and give up on what we’ve been stuck with for this long. It’s obviously long overdue time for a change.
RMouse,
So you either have bought into their rhetoric or you are one of them that is selling it. You sell the “no one ever said life is fair,” a quote that was certainly not coined by the downtrodden, just sold to them over and over until they begin to believe it.
I don’t trust your numbers or you. According to today’s statistics there is no inflation (relatively). Of course, that is after removing the volatile food and energy “commodities,” which are really the most important to those who spend a substantial percentage of their income on them. Then what is left? Consumer electronics? Figure that in and of course their is no inflation, Moore’s law takes over.
Where do your statistics come from? A FOX news site? And even then they do show the bottom in the middle of the depression and an upswing as time goes on.
Tell me that anybody that buys into the “tax the poor guy and cut taxes to the rich” otherwise known as voodoo trickle-down economics is not either rich or has bought into what the rich are selling over and over again.
It seems that FDR recognised that mankind had only ever experienced one system of government and would continue do so in the future: Socialism.
Within that system, of course, there are very significant degress of economic EXCLUSIVITY/INCLUSIVITY:
a) Despots decree that what’s mine is mine; and what’s yours is mine;
b) Oligarchies, right down to putatively democratic Conservative governments, either bare-faced or in the guise of “middle of the road”, free marketeers, or in the guise of a new form of New Labour government, decree that what’s ours is ours; and what’s yours is ours; and our friends…;
c) INCLUSIVE Socialist governments, organised for the economic benefit of the whole of the population, from the cradle to the grave.
FDR wanted a prosperous and stable, one-nation government, and achieved it; until the low-life sociopaths of the far right wrested it from the people, as Eisenhower had feared they would.
After President Taft any direction looked better. Unfortunately it took WWII to really (over) expand the US economy. FDR was careful not to overspend and to make the corporations pay for most of the war cost. Thankfully or you and I would still be paying off those old War Bonds.
It’s the old left/right charade again. There’s only one thing that can work: honest, intelligent and wise people in positions of power to effect change. Maybe it’s government, maybe not. But wherever you find that nexus of people, in a position to affect change (political/cultural/economic/legal/etc.), you’ll have something that’ll “work in a big way.”
The present system is so terribly rigged against such people rising into positions of power — and most people who are genuinely sincere are not capable of doing what is required to get into such positions.
It’s practically a tautology that government cannot work right now. One look at the national news tells you what a shameful dish is cooked up by a recipe of cowardice, corruption, cronyism, arrogance, dynastic politics and the like.
Perhaps it’ll take well-known personalities who enjoy powerful name recognition (actors, authors, artists, musicians, professional athletes, etc.). They ought to create think tanks and populate them by the thousands with dedicated activists like YOU AND ME — and become OUR mouthpieces, since the MSM ignores ordinary people, and too many people are utterly reliant on the MSM. We need to break this catch-22.
FDR besides having a seriously desperate situation, also had a filabuster-proof majoritiy in both the House and Senate. The last time America was at a crossroad our leadership chose to go to the left–the next time we might just elect our very own Nascar Nation, corn-pone Hitler who will make our current President look like a patriot and go further right. The compliant court, “adjustable” Diebold voting machines, national security establishment, and “Homeland Security” are all in place–all it will take is some Manchurian candidate (John McCain?) to pull it together.
On the other hand what if the likes of Hillary or Barack O had the equivalent of a Damascus road political conversion and became a traitor to their class of society (because that’s what it would take to become another FDR)?
Hoa Binh - excellent point! The observations about FDR are valid, but I’ve read a lot of this “if such and such that happened in the past … wouldn’t happen today” sentiment and, I must say; it’s useless. The fact is that none of the problems of today can be dealt with by focusing on the past. While it is essential to know where we came from, it’s more important to know where we are and where we want to go. The hard part is figuring out how to get there and, as most of you know - it won’t happen by watching the news. The issues that matter are the ones that have been touched on in the comments above: the wealthy, the powerful, the corporations, the government, you name it; they exist only to maintain and expand their domains. As such, we must use the only tool that we have left to fight them. In this battle, only one force has an obligation to help us; the government. The government of FDR did that - so let’s find the next FDR!
The Supreme Court will have several vacancies during the next administration because several have held on staying in there waiting for a democratic president and others are getting very old.
So the enxt President better be a Democrat or else yes, if another Romney or Giuliani ( we know he would appoint Keric to the Suprmeme Court) so we simply must avoid any Republican if we want to salvage the supreme court.
By the way- Zogby poll came out and said that all those Republicans can beat Hillary but an earl;ier poll done with obama showed he could win handily over all of them!!!!! So we hope to pick Obama but if it is Hillary we will have to hold our noses and still vote for her - better than getting in the Republicans all of them want to bomb Iran for starters.
There’s only one way to resurrect the New Deal: dig up FDR and re-animate his corpse. He won’t look too good, but I hear makeup artists can do wonders.
SallyUUKent___You have a great story about why our country has taken the wrong road and has to be turned around if we are to exist with a decent chance for all instead of just the rich. It will be difficult, because the course we need to take has been vilified by Ray Gun and his admirers so badly. Liberals, Socialists, Welfare Queens, Defeatists, Traitors, Tax and spenders, and any other demeaning tags the Repugs can hang on us have a great effect. On the other hand they have glorified Conservatism, Wars of all kinds, Low taxes (High debt), Fundamentalism, Patriotism (Nationalism), Privatization (Destruction), Morality (Whose), and strict constructionism of our Constitution (Sounds good). Is it any wonder the Dems are having a hard time getting anywhere?
FDR was actually a cross between a Fascist and Socialist, both of which believe in a strong Central government. He was impressed with Mussolini’s form of fascism. We forget the National Industrial Recovery Act. Despite being struck down 2 years later by the Supreme Court, it was the beginning of the fascism in the US, which has continued today. His New Deal Socialist policies were expanded through the 60’s.
After the clash between the Socialist and Fascist elites, starting from JFK and the chaos through the Nixon years (assassinations, attempted assassinations, impeachment, etc), the victor emerged and continues today through the guidance of the Trilateral Commission. Socialism as the ideal died and was buried, and so the Soviet Union pulled the plug on it while China transformed itself into Capitalists, but without the baggage of Democracy. Today, our government is freeing itself of the baggage of Democracy and making Russia and China rich as they bankrupt America.
Back to FDR. As Hitler took power and began his War of Aggression, not to mention his policies against the German Jews, which were widely covered in the US press, FDR allowed American Bankers and Industrialists to invest freely in Germany without restraint, while they maintained tight credit at home to keep the Depression lingering. Without US financial investment and technology (eg. synthetic fuels and synthetic rubber), Hitler could not have built his war machine to use against the Soviet Union which was his prime target.
But you see, WW II was necessary to get out of the manufactured Depression and get Corporate America richer, not to mention strengthening our Empire, so we needed to help Hitler build his war machine. We also financed Stalin in this period while he was butchering his own people. FDR established relations with the Soviet Union in 1933, setting us up to become allies in the coming war with Hitler.
The Republicans were real Republicans in those days, and they did not want a war in Europe, nor did the American people. So FDR arranged a war with Japan by cutting off their oil, knowing they would be forced to retaliate and Hitler would be forced to declare war on us if war broke out between the US and Japan. Pearl Harbour, like 9/11- the New Pearl Harbour, was the trigger for the War, and FDR knew it was coming and stood aside and let it happen. Sounds familiar.
No one knows what would have happened if FDR survived WW II. But war was good to the Elite and our Empire, so we manufactured the Cold War against Communism, followed by the GWOT against Islamism, and our Empire is bigger than ever, soon to be merged as part of a One World Government with other unions. But the North American and European elite will continue on as the major powers in this global government, while the standard of living of the working class will be reduced to the global standard, somewhere between China and Mexico. You might even get universal health care when that happens.
One word on inflation discussed by some posts. The CPI numbers from the Clinton years onward are bogus. Inflation today is about 7% using the methodology in place before the Clinton years, the numbers continue to be massaged to an even greater extent today in order to keep the rate of entitlement increases lower. They lied to us about the Iraq war, you think they will be truthful about the state of the economy?
http://www.shadowstats.com/
Government usually works in big ways….ask New Orleans about FEMA…Now THAT was big….
MiMiCcS, you are RIGHT on the money. You have exposed FDR for the fraud that he is. FDR was an enemy of freedom and the common person. FDR worked tirelessly to increase the wealth of the rich and used the blood of the poor to achieve his goals. Liberals should be ASHAMED of FDR.
MiMiCcS - Wow, an excellent summary of the DARK heart of the beast! Your thorough analysis of the last 70 years is thought rendering and so much more plausible than anything I’ve ever read before.
Namaste
__ __ __ __ We must be the change
__ __ __ __ we wish to see in the world __ Gandhi
Mr. Bramsscher,
I can only tell you my experience as a civil engineer working for both private industry and now government.
In private insdutry, I was forced to sell me services (for lousy pay and benefits) to big suburban RE developers and corporate big boxes like Wal Mart. My life was strictly a tool for the corporations, and contrary to the spirit of the Engineering Cannon (our version of the hippocratic oath) my livlihood not helping the greater society. I didn’t know why I was unhappy until I read up a bit on it and realized I suffered from alieanation in the classic Marxian sense.
But then, more by accident than intention, I went to work for the US government. What an improvement! Not only was the pay, and especially the benefits and workplace culture better, but I was actually part of doing something beneficial to the greater society - first flood control, water management and river navigation, now improving the safety of workers in the mining industry. Yes, there is annoying bureucratic impediments, and industry influence on the policies that comes down on us from above, but it is still a vast improvement over working for industry itself.
On another point - if you are going to call the left-right dicotomy in politics and economics a “charade” than you are effectively throwing away vast body of philosophy, and an ongoing dialectic, dating back a few hundred years away. You may want to read up on Marx, Debs, Steinbeck, Upton Sinclair, and on up to Chomsky and Zinn; then, read the apologetics of Carnagie, Frick, Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, Greenspan, and the neocon gurus.
Then, you can decide that left and right are not valid concepts in our discourse.
PJD: I’ve read most all of those writers, and thought about this very — very — carefully over a period of about 20 years. And earning a double-BA Anthro & History, some grad. school, and a BS in CSci to lend some clarity of thinking:
There is the politics of grassroots/self-determination and the politics of plutocracy/autocracy. It is not left or right. It is top and down.
“Left” and “right” referred originally to physical seating arrangements in a French chamber — for or against a monarchy/dynasty — not very generalizable ideals which can be transported from context to context and retain their meaning. The further we move such metaphors outside of their original context, the more usless they become.
The very fact there is such an ongoing discussion underscores their useless semantic/platonic existence. It’s academic in the worst sense — the endless pursuit of label deconstruction. To nail the problem correctly, in some branches of the humanities, is absolutely verboten.
There is the politics of local ownership of land, ability of people to have REAL voice and impact in the way they live their lives. And there is the politics of absentee ownership, top-down control of resources, real estate, and people’s raw time.
It has been my own research (ancient Egypt and Asia, Europe since the Middle Ages, and elsewhere) that power exists nearly universally as a public/private hybrid since the dawn of agriculture. The powers which control/modify resources/currency are synonymous with the powers that control government. There is no clean historical example of a country or empire to the contrary.
What’s the left answer? The right answer?
Who the hell knows?
I can speak in terms of up and down, though. I can pick a quantified figure, for instance the interests of various percentiles of wealth, and discuss the factors that limit their freedom, economic self-determination, pursuit of happiness, etc. That’s the basis of an honest analysis of the top and down.
“Left” and “right” are smoke blown from the same pipe.
A few more comments here in evolution to a real story.
Your comments are very nice to hear but like the Congress you also come down beside the point as most politicians do. Like most comments from the present Congress and in the blogs avoid reality and don’t really deal with the issue head on. Most are still looking for the magic technological bullet that will save all and we can continue on the way we are going with ever more growth and ever more and greater GDP as the bankers advise.
But there really there isn’t any quick fix. I am a filmmaker and have worked on the environmental change issues since 1978 so I have a fair amount of experience to speak. While LED lightbulbs is good and 40 MPG for cars is better it is not the at least the 80MPG that is necessary and refits for all existing cars rather than exporting them to the developing world which is presently being done and will pick up speed as restrictions rise in the western world. We continue to export the problem from the USA to other countries as if we don’t share this world with other people. And while Jesse jackson talks of the black people of the world, his particular crusade its the people of the entire world at issue.
It was GE that killed the electric car not long ago who in Congress complained about that? Whether health care, big business, environment, energy alternatives, toxicity in the environment or any and all of these it comes down to who has the courage to talk about all of them rather than focusing on the head of a pin the one important issue. You want to hear about health care? The advance of environmentally based health problems by a toxic environment and air related pandemics is what we are looking at in the next few years with rising temperatures. The candidates are discussing universal health care? Try that on for the globe and all the sicknesses the policies of the USA have caused, three percent of the world’s population the USA produces seventy three percent of global toxicity.You wonder where cancer comes from?
The people of the USA have been so ill informed as to what a change would really do and mean to this country and the change in leadership, they have forgotten that no one could be worse than George Bush. . . No one not even the dog catcher, at least the dog catcher has compassion for animals!
The real problem is not Kucinich as president, the problem is that he puts his emphasis on the wrong problem at the wrong time. The problem is getting him to address a credible platform of ideas. I say to him while impeachment is necessary, it is unlikely. There is not enough time and the issues most pressing are again avoided, like the environment and those really important issues before the congress now like kids health care! The issue of this election will affect the environment, economy and the future of the USA as no others. Yet if more than 50% of eligible voters cast their votes it will be a miracle because of regressive US election laws. It is compulsory for every one to vote in Australia. None of the candidates are really talking on the major points of the environment in association with the economy or health care and reform laws for elections.
The environmental news coming out is not new but it is very grave and keeps being pushed to more urgency as new research comes to light. If any one reading this comment cares to look at the website of NASA, the research papers of James Hansen in particular that were published long before Gore was on the scene and many since, they would understand that we really can not deal with much more than one degree to two and half degrees Fahrenheit of warming at its maximum to ward off the most serious effects of industrial societies pollution and to offset this growing catastrophe.
At about two and half degrees warming which is presently in the pipeline we will be dealing with about 550 ppm of carbon in the atmosphere, a rate actually above the tipping point of one and half degrees warming. This is the absolute figure to avoid the major positive feedback loops that are starting and scheduled to kick in by 2020 or earlier if nothing is done quickly. Positive feedback are starting now with Methane now being released on the tundra into the atmosphere a four times addition to greenhouse gasses and causing the poles and glaciers to melt more rapidly, or has no one noticed?
The below scenario excerpted from the climate articles here on commondreams tell us clearly without rapid change runaway climate change and their feedback loops are in reach within 10 to 30 years if nothing is done rapidly. The positive feedback loops will melt the remainder of the glaciers and perhaps dump Greenland into the sea as well. Also, the melting of additional ice-shelf’s at the poles. That means perhaps a 3 to 30 foot ocean rise by the end of this century, but the process is beginning now and in 20 years or less without rapid change in economic direction the human race will reach a point of no return. The so called news and other media continue to bend the information toward the global economic agenda thus minimizing its importance. India for example is less concerned about climate change than they are about economic production thanks to the G8, although their neighbor Bangladesh is slipping into the sea . Still in India, there are several moves in the direction of smaller is better concepts of reality.
There will be sufficient human displacement of people on this planet to bring American citizens into a nightmare scenario that makes the present Mexican border problem a walk in the park. What about the transfer of health risks as a result of this problem? Not to mention water and food related issues and the economy, always the economy.
Yet is seems the political discussion rests on the complete list of talking points in isolation, such as Clinton’s health package and its cost, rather than what is really at stake which is human survival. These folks on the stage wanting to be president rarely talk to the complete interrelated package of all these issues and more. The media reduces the public debate to its most simplistic level and all here are arguing about one issue or another rather than the entire package which a true leader must address. The media keeps the public dumbed down for obvious reasons they represent the money people. As a result we become unable to talk about moving radically to deal with climate change the first and major issue which affects all other issues and is completely related to economic change.
The world does not have (much later) before a more aggressive approach to all the issues beginning with climate change now! Remember New Orleans? Within next 10 to 20 years is where it all hangs. If nothing is done very soon it will mark the beginning of the end for the human race. Those appear to be the facts and no technology will stop runaway climate change once it begins, indeed if we look at the melting poles the worst case is much more apparent than formerly believed . . .it has already begun!!
Perhaps it might be too late now, according to James Lovelock, in his view it has begun. James Hansen at NASA makes a very compelling case for the time frame for action within the time in office of the next president of the USA and so does the UN. I think anyone who really wishes to be informed should go to the websites of these people mentioned here or the IPCC. It is technical information but worth taking the time to inform yourself. The answer is to start working quickly for change and vote for those candidates who speak of change and another direction and who represent ideas rather than special interests. For example the best work would be to defeat the pro-business Clintons and elect Kucinich or Obama or possibly a joint ticket while we know they have an outside chance they are the best possibility for change.
But we all know business interests will prevail with Clinton capturing the vote and a pro-business vote is a vote against the environment. No one running on the democratic side could be worse than Bush. But anyone who can think understands that the business interests control the environmental agenda and most candidates. The republicans will continue the work of burying the planet as will pro-business democratic candidates most of whom have been bought, whether by health interests or anything else concerning big money.
The facts concerning climate science is what is important. What the environmental facts really suggest is economic depression in the West in the near term. But if we are really serious about saving the planet (no one wants to hear that if they are connected to big money) it means voting for economic and environmental legislation limiting pollution and green house gasses. . .in any event that is change!
But the environment, water, energy production these are the real issues of this election campaign but no one would dare mention them in association with change in economic direction for fear of defeat. A redirection and a retooling of the global economy and of America is in order and that is not a popular issue on Wall street or people invested in Wall street. . .most everyone in one way or another.
We have to change rapidly and move to a none-stop production of environmental invention and energy alternatives for the western world and developing nations rapidly. It also means rapid technology transfer for the developing world without delay, this may save us some time. A cut of 80% of the carbon emissions within the next 10 years is in order and it must be done beginning now and well on the way before 2012 the next date for Kyoto. Kyoto is a western world fabrication to tell us we can keep polluting while where figuring a way to deal with this crisis economically.
A change of the present direction of economic production and fast move in a different direction economically is required by anyone that can think and put simple figures in context of this crisis. The world is waiting for this move by the Americans and watch the dollar rise rapidly against other currencies once this plan would be announced if ever. This is why this upcoming election is so critical and the results of it will determine whether the human race survives. . . . It is that critical!
The economic change in direction could possibly reemploy a lot of people who have lost their work in the polluting industries. This is the challenge to America to remake itself after eight years of the Bush/Cheney regime. It is equivalent to a fight for survival that required the retooling of America at the outbreak of WW 2. It requires change in the so-called war on terror, a Bush fabrication advanced by the media which is a money centered mind conditioning creation and finally, it means leaving Iraq, and using those resources to fight the real enemy to survival, the western consumer, hydro carbon based, societies of the western world.
Who knows that might mean less of an investment in China and more of an investment the western world for a healthier environment? And the Chinese might follow that example as well.
Which candidate will say this to America? Which candidate will really tell the truth? If they did they wouldn’t have a chance in this election because Americans don’t want to hear that! Any one having the courage to really tell the truth would find themselves on the next train to Siberia; they would be shouted down by the crowds of people on the stump and many on this blog. saying what the hell do you know anyway? “This is too scary for me!”
But the economy is the issues and that is determined by the war in Iraq. The illegal Bush-war that Kucinich wants to impeach Bush/Chenney for creating but takes us into another direction and one not well thought out. He is focused on the lies of Bush rather than the future of the world.
The production of alternative energy will soak up the idle job market, indeed it is doing so now! With a shift to the priority of economic production and development directed at saving this world and its equilibrium, means in simple terms a crash economic change which is vitally necessary, without that we are done. If any one thinks that we can continue with an oil economy and business as usual with a consumer based society, they are living in the world of denial which so much of the western world occupies. The below is a light message compared with what the truth really is: from UN sources of information!
“The world needs to spend 1.6 percent of global economic output annually through 2030 to stabilize the carbon stock and meet the 3.6-degree Fahrenheit temperature target. Rich countries, the biggest carbon emitters, should lead the way and cut emissions at least 30 percent by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050. Developing nations should cut emissions 20 percent by 2050, the UNDP says.”
The above is letting you down lightly is really not what the actual projections are. The world crisis will crash in on its regional global populations is what the information below is saying. There really is no place in this discussion for a 5.4 to 7.2 Fahrenheit degree rise in temperature. . . .this scenario painted with the these numbers below is a different planet closer to Mars not Earth. The news media play with numbers like the lottery. We can tolerate one degree and perhaps two and half degrees warming at the outside, . . .in the next 50 to 90 years. . .that’s it!!!!! An additional 3 degrees to four degrees Fahrenheit is three more degrees greater than this climate and its creatures can sustain or endure without collapse!! This quoted from the recent UN assertions here in commondreams and from the real information by scientists not political organization:
“a temperature rise of between 5.4 and 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit (3 and 4 degrees Celsius) would displace 340 million people through flooding, droughts would diminish farm output, and retreating glaciers would cut off drinking water from as many as 1.8 billion people, the report says.” this is an understatement and conservative.
The above report is economically associated and conservative as well as misleading!!! Forget this idea of 5.4 to 7.2 Fahrenheit of warming that is the Martian landscape because it allows for the runaway positive feedbacks to take hold. Whomever believes this world can sustain this degree of warming is either working for the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank or is gathering this information from the laboratory at XXON/Mobile or its publiscists!!??????
Meanwhile the group here is discussing who will give us better health care on a dying planet and impeachment of Bush a good way to avoid dealing with the truth. We can be suspect of anyone who says they have the truth. The need for understanding this current cast of characters wanting to be president is important. None of this group has the faintest idea of what we are really dealing with in terms of global warming numbers concerning the environment, and if they did they would not tell the public. They know it’s bad and their advisers are telling them they can’t deal with this issue to get elected by the masses.
The masses? Unless you have not heard, these are the people above who are worrying where their next bag of groceries comes from and the money to pay the rent! They really don’t give a damn about the environmental issues. . And have no time for thinking about 10 to 20 years from today that has no realty attached to it for most Americans or the rest of the four and half billion people on this Earth in the same situation. . . .
Or, for the rest of the population working for and controlled by big business and big money. . .that is what this election is really about and if one thinks about the complexity of all these interrelated issues we know that we can not beat the odds business will win. That means the future for humanity is limited even for the one percent that has everything.
Sure elect Edwards, Obama, or Kucinich or any combination of most of the Democrats that are not funded by big business for this election. This is the reality of this time we still live on this, still beautiful planet.
IKE
I don’t know if you will read this.
This seems to be a semantical discussion. Isn’t the politics of plutocracy/autocracy referred to throughout the world as the “right”? And, isn’t the politics of grassroots/ self determination (i.e. workers themselves deciding the economic conditions of their workplace and communities) commonly referred to as the “left”?
Also, local ownership and control, by itself, isn’t enough. The monstrous Henry Clay Frick lived in Pittsburgh and owned and ran the steel mills and oppressed the workers and knowingly operated a dangerous local dam that burst and killed 2200 people in Johnstown. But he was a local of humble roots and he ran as local and homespun an enterprise as any.
I think your equation of government with oligarchy and your prescription for some kind of small bioregional city states or something seems awfully absolute. Someone from Norway or other more progressive place would be rather perplexed by this attitude.
Also, you can talk all you want about government regulation being compromised by corporate influence, but do you thing things would be better if the EPA, FDA, FTC, FCC, OSHA, MSHA, NLRB, had never existed at all?
You seem to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
PJD,
Let’s say what I’m referring to (grassroots/self-determination) is “left” in your eyes. In some people’s eyes “left” is dictatorship of the state, all of the freedoms that the current gang of thugs strip away from us economically — but simply under a different hat, a different gang of thugs. Why bother using left and right as monikers? Why not just “self-determination”? There’s no need to defend that. Everyone’s on board with the term, it’s self-evident, goes without saying. To deviate from it is to walk, suicidally, on thin ice.
Let’s analyze this anthropologically, as sheer power dynamics. It is the concentrated nexus of unchecked power, regardless of its label, which exerts the most control over common people — to increase the profit of the powerful few at the expense of the many. You can call this a corporation today. Or you can call it a “state” in other contexts. I see them as generally hybridized. It is the nexus of unchecked power, arrogance, reptilian intelligence with no wisdom, archaic authoritarian types who kept most Europeans in a status little better than slaves for a thousand years.
Local control/ownership. It’s a scoping issue, and I mean this in a computer science/variable sense. There are variables “seen” at the function/method level, the object level, the application/global level, and so on. Power works that way. In the Frick example you give above, let’s draw a scope around Frick. Is his “scope” of power derived from grassroots upward-deterministic levels underneath? Or was it derived from top-down graph direction? In the example you provide, the power vector is top-down. The solution isn’t some still higher power which, ostensibly for some reason, is immune to the autocratic/dictatorial tendencies that put Frick where he was at. The solution is always a bottom-up exerting/expression of power. If Frick’s scale of power ruined his underlings, why should we assume even more power is not corruptible?
I’m a great fan of power checks. The greatest powers need to be checked the greatest amount, since their potential to wreak widespread and lasting damage is greatest. I’m unsure the agencies you mention can be salvaged from their current rubberstamp capacity. We may need to reincarnate them.
There are two sorts of “public” sphere. Most people think of government as the only one, but in the digital age there is the sphere of the Wikipedia, SourceForge, the free and open source software movement. It’s far more egalitarian and public than the authoritarian (ultimately non-public) so-called “public” arena.
There is a reason that these efforts exist from the spontaneous acts of volunteers worldwide and, for the most part, are not government subsidized. I’ve programmed open source software in a large public institution and have met resistance for much of the past 7 years. They typically cling to their authority, and reject their constituents in favor of it.
The old co-opted/authoritarian model is dying of its own accord. Old age, I think.
Fick derived his power from the capitalist relations of production. Frick through shewdness and power-lust, owned the means of production and everyone else owned nothing except their phyiscal bodies which they had to sell to Frick in order to feed and clothe themselves. Frick was all for local self-determination too - with a vengence.
As someone involved in community activism, all our biggest enemies are local - local RE developers, local poverty-pimps, local anti-union/anti-worker chambers-of-commerce, a local restaurant association opposing a drink tax for public transit.
I believe your attempt to say that there is something inherently undemocratic about large organizations is way off base.
And, can you please explain how you are so categoricaal in your opinion that government regulatory agencies are just rubber stamps? Have you ever worked for one?
PDJ & PAUL: Excellent conversation, very evocative!