Free Republic

In two books, the man who calls President Barack Obama a “food-stamp president” praised the man whose administration created the first food stamp program. Snubbing 16 other presidents including Ronald Reagan, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich called Franklin D. Roosevelt “probably the greatest president of the twentieth century” in his 1995 book To Renew America. In a passage of the book in which Gingrich laid out examples of historical figures asking for God’s help for the nation, he praised Roosevelt for “openly appeal[ing] to the nation’s sense of faith and religion in summing the national will to the task” of...

Congressman Joe Walsh (IL-8) recently introduced the ‘Dairy Deregulation Act’ to phase out the government's milk price setting regime, called the "Federal Milk Marketing Orders (FMMO)". This program was established in pre-refrigeration 1937 to guarantee that there were no shortages of milk across the country. Today 74 years later, milk is the only major agricultural product with government-mandated prices that differ according to product use. Walsh stated: “Most taxpayers are unaware that they are paying for their milk twice. Currently American families are taxed to pay for a federal program that directly increases the cost of their milk. This is...

The conventional wisdom is that FDR ended the Great Depression, but more recent research indicates his policies may have prolonged and even deepened the it. They say those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. Here is a reminder of how some citizens at least saw the FDR administration…

It is an ideological milestone that the emerging Republican front-runner is as skeptical of the New Deal as anyone in his position since the New Deal. During the 1936 election, Republican nominee Alf Landon called Social Security "unjust, unworkable, stupidly drafted and wastefully financed." Now, according to Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Social Security is a "Ponzi scheme" that tells young workers a "monstrous lie." It is a "failure" that "we have been forced to accept for more than 70 years now." It is true that Barry Goldwater, during the 1964 campaign, said, "I think Social Security ought to be voluntary."...

The Great Depression dominated the 1930s, in large part because President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs failed to create jobs. In May 1939, shortly after learning that unemployment stood at 20.7%, Henry Morgenthau, the secretary of the Treasury, exploded: “We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work.” Morgenthau concluded, “I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started. . . . And an enormous debt to boot!” Why did Roosevelt’s New Deal fail so miserably? The larger problem...

President Obama outlined what he called a framework for deficit reduction Wednesday. It was a tacit admission that his 2012 budget submission did not go far enough. That shows Republicans succeeded in seizing the initiative with their own comprehensive, pro-growth proposal to restore America’s solvency. Mr. Obama’s flimsy “me, too” smacks of desperation. The White House describes its latest plan as “comprehensive” and “pro-growth” but that’s deceptive. The GOP used the phrases to describe House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s package of discretionary spending cuts, entitlement reforms and tax relief. Mr. Obama hijacked the words to describe a combination of...

In the latest issue of The Chronicle Review, a professor from Adelphi University shows why it is dangerous to avoid the advice of conservative author and activist David Horowitz. Horowitz usually points out the danger of professors speaking on subjects that they are not credentialed in. “Capitalism has been around for so many generations now, proving its vitality by displacing or absorbing all other social systems around the globe, that it seems a part of nature, irreplaceable,” Paul Mattick points out in The Chronicle Review. “But its historical limits are visible in its inability to meet the ecological challenges it...

Little Boy Blue, come blow your horn, A government agent is counting your corn, Another a lecturing old mother Pig On birth control, so she’s dancing a jig. Pa’s gone to town, to see what’s what About planting potatoes on the old meadow lot. Ma’s at the radio, hearing ‘em tell How, under the New Deal, there ain’t no hell. Aunt Mamie is in Washington, drawing big pay Eating frankfurters, and pushing AAA. A lecturing folks, on the old Townsend racket. Grandpa’s gone out in his new leather jacket Says he’ll never work, no, never more, 200 a month will...

For more than half a century, biographers have treated Franklin Delano Roosevelt with Rushmore-like reverence, celebrating the nation's 32nd president as a colossus who eased the agony of the Great Depression and saved democracy from Nazi Germany. Which never sat right with historian Burton Folsom Jr. Growing up in Nebraska, Folsom remembers, his dad, a savings and loan executive, griped about high taxes and Roosevelt's voracious ambition. FDR was dead, but his legacy — deficit spending, an activist federal government, an expansive social safety net — lived on. About 15 years ago, Folsom read another of those historical surveys, this...

Reporting from Dunwoody, Ga. — For more than half a century, biographers have treated Franklin Delano Roosevelt with Rushmore-like reverence, celebrating the nation's 32nd president as a colossus who eased the agony of the Great Depression and saved democracy from Nazi Germany. Which never sat right with historian Burton Folsom Jr. Growing up in Nebraska, Folsom remembers, his dad, a savings and loan executive, griped about high taxes and Roosevelt's voracious ambition. FDR was dead, but his legacy — deficit spending, an activist federal government, an expansive social safety net — lived on.

The unemployment numbers around the United States are not getting better. Businesses are not creating jobs, and unemployment benefits are running out for many. How do we maintain an economy when the 15.1 million run out of unemployment and still can't find jobs? That will mean billions of dollars no longer circulating in the economy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9d3Lg7pJD8 Inspired by the cartoon plummeting death reform by Bolshevik cartoonist Mark Fiore. It shows what happened when we DID PULL THE RIPCORD OF SOCIALISM AND TYRANNY! We could have supported ground softening corporations instead! ^_^

It is hard to come up with gifts for people who already seem to have everything. But there are few -- if any -- people who can keep up with the flood of books coming off the presses. Books can be good gifts for such people. Among the books I read this year, the one that made the biggest impact on me was "New Deal or Raw Deal" ($10.20; 32% OFF) by Burton Folsom, Jr., a professor at Hillsdale College. It was that rare kind of book, one thoroughly researched by a scholar and yet written in plain language, readily...

It's hard to disagree. Robust economic growth solves a lot of fiscal and other problems. But Obama's fellow Democrats, to whom he explicitly directed these comments, can be forgiven for being puzzled. The whole thrust of his first two years -- the stimulus package, the health care legislation, the vast increases in government spending -- has been to put programs in place that have done little or nothing to stimulate economic growth. That's not accidental. The template for the Obama Democrats' policies, the New Deal of the 1930s, was not designed to stimulate economic growth, but to freeze in place...

Drawing striking similarities between the current financial situation and that of the 1930s, Amity Shlaes gave a lecture at Hillsdale College in February 2010 detailing forgotten yet important lessons to be learned from the Great Depression. Shlaes is a senior fellow in economic history at the Council on Foreign Relations, a graduate of Yale University, a member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board, author of two bestselling books, and recipient of many prestigious awards in Economics and Journalism. Shlaes begins by establishing the familiar narrative of the Great Depression that every American child is taught in school. A common...

On May 9, 1939, these words scolding the failure of FDR’s New Deal echoed the room of the House Ways and Means Committee: We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started. … And an enormous debt to boot!...

I just bought a Kindal and and was reconnected to the written word, after our local book store went South and I ain't driving 40 miles when I get a word lust. I have been interested in the overthrow of the Constitution during the FDR Dictatorship, my Grandfathers discription, but Amazon is difficult to search most of what I find is FDR butt lickers. I have read a number of LS type economists but the list is rather short on the site, need help.

A heart gripping video on the Obama depresion, the failure of Democrats, The stimulus and the downfall of Middle America. Sung to the Tune of "Brother can you spare a dime?" By Al Jolson.

Is the recession's great irony that government spending killed Keynesianism? With economists, bankers and investors perplexed over the economy's continued funk, we cannot be blamed for looking in odd places for answers. Could it possibly be that continuously increasing spending over eight decades has left little ability for government spending to affect the economy? How could increased overall government spending have priced stimulative spending out of the market? To understand what has happened, we must look back to the 1930s. The New Deal was a concerted effort for government to take up the economy's slack. In 1930, federal government spending...

Comes a HorsemanFrom the Sep. 20, 2010, issue of NR. Franklin Roosevelt’s clash with the Supreme Court is one of history’s greatest legal dramas, but it has generated an unfair and misleading mythology. In this legend, the Court greeted the New Deal with a blast of reactionary decisions in 1935 and 1936 — invalidating, among other things, the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) and the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) — to which Roosevelt retaliated by threatening to pack the Court with a new, more loyal majority of justices. The judiciary avoided the embarrassment of an expanded, politically neutered Court when...

Conservative commentator Glenn Beck compares the amount of new agencies created during FDR's "New Deal" to President Obama's.

Before my spirited exchange with my esteemed friend Amity Shlaes about the New Deal reaches the point of diminishing returns, it should be possible to agree on some points that may be applicable to current economic questions. I think we agree that Obamanomics has not succeeded, beyond a tentative stabilization, easily shaken by lack of public confidence in the regime and the absence of any serious deficit-reduction plan. We seem also to agree that unfocused fiscal profligacy on the scale of the $800 billion stimulus bill has not led to significant reductions in unemployment, that more of the same will...

In the 1930s, the Schechter brothers ran a chicken business in Brooklyn. The name Schechter is derived from the Yiddish word for "butcher," and this is what the brothers did: they slaughtered chickens and sold them to shops. The brothers seemed to be typical immigrants, at once struggling and succeeding. But in 1934, they became famous thanks to Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States. Only months after Franklin Roosevelt had signed a code regulating the chicken business, the brothers were accused of violating it. Prosecutors said they had sold an unfit chicken, one with an egg lodged inside it, and...

Group Rights Without Responsibilities Malcolm A. Kline, June 29, 2010 Academics rarely try to explain why the human condition has not improved while they are busily trying to archive the U. S. Constitution and introduce us to a panoply of “rights.” Take any barometer you care to—the trend line in out-of-wedlock births, divorce rates or homicides. Add in more recent phenomenon such as drive-by shootings and serial killings to say nothing of the poverty rate before and after such spasms of government activity as the New Deal and the Great Society. “These new group rights were conspicuously not attached to...

Since the administration is in the process of trying to "jump-start" the economy with deficit spending, it is useful to review how the policies of FDR actually worked out in terms of economic performance in the 1930s.  The New Deal was not specifically a "Keynesian" program, in part because Keynes' magnum opus, The General Theory, was not published until 1936. However, the New Deal is regarded by Keynesians as the ur-program of government stimulus of the economy. This chart shows what happened to GNP during the New Deal.  Its time scale, as is true for all the charts in this...

IN PRESIDENT Obama, conservatives face the most formidable liberal politician in at least a generation. In 2008, he won the presidency with a majority of the popular vote—something a Democrat had not done since Jimmy Carter's squeaker in 1976—and handily increased the Democrats' control of both houses of Congress. Measured against roughly two centuries worth of presidential victories by Democratic non-incumbents, his win as a percentage of the popular vote comes in third behind FDR's in 1932 and Andrew Jackson's in 1828.

IN PRESIDENT Obama, conservatives face the most formidable liberal politician in at least a generation. In 2008, he won the presidency with a majority of the popular vote—something a Democrat had not done since Jimmy Carter's squeaker in 1976—and handily increased the Democrats' control of both houses of Congress. Measured against roughly two centuries worth of presidential victories by Democratic non-incumbents, his win as a percentage of the popular vote comes in third behind FDR's in 1932 and Andrew Jackson's in 1828. More importantly, Obama won election not as a status quo liberal, but as an ambitious reformer. Far from...

Democrat President Barack Obama’s economic programs can be best called “The Inside Deal.” There is a long history of ‘deals’ in our nation, where the government expands unconstitutionally into areas where it is not supposed to be and crowds out human freedom and industry. These deals all have cool names- Square Deal, New Deal, Fair Deal, Great Society- and as Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress have jammed through considerable changes in our nation over the last year, it is appropriate that we give a name to Obama’s economic policies. I hereby submit to the world that we call...

Roosevelt had another advantage over Obama, a small one. Newspaper publishers were hostile to FDR, but the White House press corps liked him. He controlled what they wrote by insisting his remarks at twice-weekly sessions with reporters be off-the-record. He decided what they could quote. The reporting tended to emphasize FDR’s intentions, not what might result from his policies. Obama, too, had a lovefest with the press until recently. But he dislikes being held accountable and has stopped holding full-fledged press conferences. Presidential historian Fred I. Greenstein described FDR as “endlessly inspiring” in his book The Presidential Difference (rev. ed....

When Andy Stern announced his retirement as head of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the “Change to Win” federation, he took a generous retirement package with him, and left his union $85 million in debt, having spent $61 million to elect President Obama and a Democratic Congress. A good case can be made that he earned every penny of that package, and has left Big Labor stronger than ever. Organized labor is engaged in its most audacious offensive since the New Deal. And Andy Stern has put it in an advantageous position because he learned the age-old lesson...

There are those who still think they are holding the pass against a revolution that may be coming up the road. But they are gazing in the wrong direction. The revolution is behind them. It went by in the Night of Depression, singing songs to freedom. There are those who have never ceased to say very earnestly, "Something is going to happen to the American form of government if we don't watch out." These were the innocent disarmers. Their trust was in words. They had forgotten their Aristotle. More than 2,000 years ago he wrote of what can happen within...

Two critical things happened in American history today: the first is that today marks the 149th anniversary of the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter, SC, which began the Civil War in 1861. Seven states had already seceded and four others were about to go as well, leading to the largest trauma in our nation’s history. The other is the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945. Long regarded as one of the best presidents in our history, a sober look at his record shows that Roosevelt caused much harm to this country. At best he was an able and...

'He got us out of the Great Depression." That's probably the most frequent comment made about President Franklin Roosevelt, who died 65 years ago today. Every Democratic president from Truman to Obama has believed it, and each has used FDR's New Deal as a model for expanding the government. It's a myth. FDR did not get us out of the Great Depression—not during the 1930s, and only in a limited sense during World War II.

It can be done. Repeal, replace, reload.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-17VjNUrohA Check it out! Rate and comment and enjoy before it gets flagged and ban by the libtards. Also check out MY CHANNEL MAINESTATEGOP ON YOUTUBE For more fun amazing videos!

Barack Obama famously promised -- and is now delivering -- "fundamental change" to America by expanding the role of the federal government more than any president since FDR. Like Rahm Emanuel, FDR never let a crisis go to waste, using the Depression to accomplish a restructuring of the political economy. He knew how ambitious was his program. From his 1934 State of the Union speech: It is to the eternal credit of the American people that this tremendous readjustment of our national life is being accomplished peacefully. The revolution overcame America, and it passed without the typical bullets and blood...

WASHINGTON -- The spirit of Christmas seems to have escaped Congress, maybe even the country. Have you ever encountered such mean spiritedness and political conniving as are now on display on Capitol Hill? In the past, we have had great philosophical divisions in the struggle for civil rights, especially when southern legislators ran the show. In praise of democracy, fortunately they lost. And of course there also was the "red scare" fomented by Sen. Joe McCarthy, R-Wis., in the 1950s when he led the commie-hunting movement that ended up victimizing government officials, academia and Hollywood. We recovered from that, too....

In 1941, the Roosevelt administration commissioned a radio special, “We Hold these Truths,” to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Bill of Rights. Listen to it here. The producer and writer was Norman Corwin (an ardent New Dealer who is still going strong at age 99). It featured an all-star cast including Orson Welles, James Stewart, Walter Brennan, and Edward G. Robinson, and closed with a speech by Roosevelt. Broadcast only a week after Pearl Harbor, it still holds the ratings record for any dramatic show. About half the American population tuned in. The actors, especially Stewart and Welles, give...

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt became President in 1933, he pledged a "new deal for the nation." During his famous first 100 days, he passed a flurry of legislation and created agencies to get the ball rolling. 1933 Emergency Banking Act FDR imposed a four-day bank holiday while he put together a plan to stabilize the nation's banks. He held his first radio "fireside chat" to announce the reopening of the banks, and when they did, they were stable. 1933 Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) To combat the immediate results of the depression, FDR gave $500 million to the states for...

One of the great frustrations of the libertarian-minded right is how Republicans got stuck being "the party of big business." The quotation marks around the term are at least somewhat necessary, because in many respects, it's not true. The notion that big business is "right wing" has always been more sloppy agitprop than serious analysis. It's true that historically, big business is against socialism and communism -- and understandably so. Socialism and communism were once close to synonymous with expropriation of wealth and the nationalization of industry. What businessman or industrialist wouldn't be against that? But many of those same...

The trouble with the current administration is that they believe their ideas are the solution to our problems; what they fail to realize is that the American people are the solution.After years of solutions from the left, too many Americans have lost the grit and determination of past generations. They have become a collection of "have nots". Some no longer feel the sting associated with dependency in adulthood and easily buy into the hope and change fraud of government solutions to their predicaments. Our recent financial woes have made productive people, the "haves", weary and worried about a future with...

Toward the end of a mostly sympathetic profile of the great journalist and critic H. L. Mencken, Christopher Hitchens once claimed that Mencken’s only “brilliance and verve” occurred during “the period between 1910 and the end of Prohibition.” Which is to say, before Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal came along. It’s an all too common refrain. Biographer Terry Teachout characterized Mencken as “blinded partly by his hatred of Roosevelt.” Mencken scholar Charles A. Fecher—whom you’d expect to know better—declared Mencken’s opinion of Roosevelt to be “maniacal—there is no other word to use.” Although it’s true that Mencken ended the 1930s as...

A year after the financial bubble burst, recovery still struggles against the political meddling that caused the recession in the first place. But the G-20 meeting of government leaders in Pittsburgh offers more of the contradictory promises made in April, offering bailouts and subsidies while condemning protectionism. We would all be better off if the Western economic powers had simply let the recession work itself out. The financial crisis was not caused by bankers. Bankers have been doing their business for centuries. They did not simply get together and agree that suddenly they would take huge risks and get really...

One of the biggest myths about the great depression is that FDR's NEW Deal and the related government intervention and public works projects got us out of the Great Depression. The truth is that the New Deal did not work. Instead of creating growth in the private sector, it created government growth that squeezed out the private sector. Of course, the number one public golf course in the country Bethpage Black (where the US Open played this year) was a was a New Deal Federal works project, but that only cures MY depression, it did little for the country. As...

Obviously, you’ll want to split the business community: the problem makers should get nothing but grief; the problem solvers should get plenty of support. Right now the problem makers — the warmongers, the polluters, the clear-cutters, the incarcerators — get all the support they need from the government. The problem solvers — the solar engineers and the people who are growing local and organic produce — get very little support from any level of government. We want to lure the government away from the problem makers and put it back on the side of the problem solvers: give them the...

Burt Folsom takse a look at the future of the economy, as some say it is showing signs of improvement. He also discusses his book, “New Deal or Raw Deal: How FDR’s Economic Legacy has Damaged America,” and his speech today at the Young America Foundation’s conference.

I am currently planning an essay and a youtube presentation about FDR's new deal. I want to refute claims that it brought an end to the Great Depresion and show that it actually made the depresion worse. I've been getting a lot of moonbats on Youtube and my blog claiming that Obama's stimulus package will save America the way FDRs new Deal did. :ROLLS EYES: I need some help refuting them. Articles, graphs, you could reference would be appreciated. Thanks.

At times Barack Obama has compared himself and his policies to that of FDR, the President during the Great Depression.That is turning out to be a very valid and frightening comparison. The traditional social studies text book view is that Herbert Hoover turned a recession into the great depression, by sitting on his hind quarters doing nothing. Actually that is a result of political propaganda of Roosevelt and his administration. The Truth is that both Herbert Hoover and then FDR turned the recession into a depression by OVER-tinkering with the economy. They were like the Tim Allen character on Home...

New Deal Nostalgia Deconstructed by: Alana Goodman, June 09, 2009 With the U.S. unemployment rate hitting a 25-year record high of 9.4 percent in May, economists have expressed pessimism about the future of the economy, but were quick to draw distinctions between the current recession and the Great Depression. Speaking at the Cato Institute’s “Lessons from the New Deal and Great Depression” seminar, Economics Professor Harold Cole of the University of Pennsylvania told the audience, “You want to be careful about comparing the current [recession] with the Great Depression…The Great Depression was much worse.” Cole explained that during the Great...

New Deal Reality Check by: Malcolm A. Kline, June 02, 2009 As self-proclaimed intellectuals get embarassingly excited over the prospect of a new, New Deal, the rest of us would do well to take every opportunity to examine how the first one turned out. For one thing, it didn’t start under Roosevelt. In The Politically Incorrect Guide To The Great Depression And The New Deal, economist Robert P. Murphy, Ph. D., gives us a very useful comparison of what happened in another recession that occurred in the 1920s when so-called laissez-faire economics was practiced and the more famous economic collapse...