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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.

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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.