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Posted on 06/08/2018 5:56:20 PM PDT by ProgressingAmerica
The more I research progressivism to discover ways to use their history against them, the more I understand why nobody's ever really done this before. Nobody actually wants the answer to the question because it always leads back to Theodore Roosevelt.
In today's episode of erased history, or how American progressive historians have turned TR's legacy into the American version of a picture missing Nikolai Yezhov, we examine how price controls, contrary to popular belief, was not first implemented by Nixon, or Franklin Roosevelt, or even Woodrow Wilson as a part of the effort for World War I. But it was, naturally, the offspring of authoritarian progressivism. The first progressive is the one who gave us this nonsense. These progressives, they just couldn't wait to take control of everything.
You see, price controls were first implemented in the mix of Theodore Roosevelt's anti-capitalist efforts. Specifically, the war on railroads. The year was 1906. The act was the Hepburn Act. Judge Napolitano, a brave man for taking on TR's legacy and doing the job that most mainstream historians just do not want to do, describes it thusly:
The Hepburn Act gave the Interstate Commerce Commission(ICC) the power to set maximum rates for railroads
In other words, price controls. Which have never worked btw. Price controls are a guaranteed 100% failure of a policy and it was also a failure for TR. In the end, the railroad companies were so damaged by the totality of Hepburn that it gave rise to the modern trucking industry as we know it today.(I wrote about this about a year and a half ago, here) The FTC is quite proud of this legacy of price fixing, as they write here in a suspicious little footnote: (p. 19)
Most significantly, the 1906 Hepburn Act (different from the 1908 Hepburn Bill, discussed infra) empowered the ICC to replace existing rates, upon complaint, with “reasonable” maxima
Yeah right. If you like your railroad rates, you can keep your railroad rates. We know what the progressives consider to be "reasonable" and its never reasonable. But notice their play on words. To "replace existing rates". They could have just said price controls. Theodore Roosevelt even wrote in his own Autobiography, the following:
I have always believed that it would also be necessary to give the National Government complete power over the organization and capitalization of all business concerns engaged in inter-State commerce.
Go ahead and show me any big time TR historian who has collected this information and presented the big-government progressive side of our 26th president. I've never seen it. The world has never seen this. We have been lied to on a grand scale by progressives.
As far as the progressive historians are concerned, Theodore Roosevelt was just a great guy. He was just an outdoorsman. Isn't that great? He was just almost assassinated, but nothing more. He even kept speaking! Wasn't he great? Strenuous lifestyle! Strenuous lifestyle! Strenuous lifestyle! In no way shape or form should you ever examine his substantive political record, in no way should you ever examine big government. Shame on you.
Well, shame on me anyways. And it's a shame I proudly wear. Sunlight is the best disinfectant and we've got ourselves a century's old outbreak of progressive bacteria to cleanse. You don't just mow a stubborn garden weed and then hope it goes away. You have to destroy the roots.
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TR= totalitarian republican.
Judge Napolitano, a brave man.”
Wrong a leftist mole at Fox.
To be fair, we know now what a disaster price controls and progressivism is. Teddy R is a mixed bag what was bad was really bad.
Regulating RR rates long predates Teddy Roosevelt. You need to read up on the Granger Laws than began as early as the 1860s. And the ICC itself was created in 1887.
But RRs were hardly abused innocents in the late 1800s. Fisk, Gould, Vanderbilt and their pals were the richest men in the country and routinely put politicians on their boards of directors. They were the most powerful companies in the country, if not the world, and many of them had gotten that way through government largesse. Gov’ts gave them free land. That happens when you pay off politicians.
The push for progressive era regulation owes a lot to the business practices of the RRS and their collaboration with Standard Oil under JD Rockefeller and Henry Flagler. It wasn’t something dreamt up by Teddy, Taft, and Wilson.
A fortunate fatal heart attack at age 60 saved us from a likely second TR presidency in 1920
A fortunate fatal heart attack at age 60 saved us from a likely second TR presidency in 1920
Whoever was last needs to be THE last.
Call Glenn I’m sure he wants to chat
I know price controls predate TR. However, I missed the part where President Granger signed the historic bill on the lawn of the White House.
It’s likely that price controls go back to the Romans and the Greeks and probably Hammurabi and the Pharaohs. I didn’t claim that the progressives invented price controls. I just want to expose who was the first President to implement them.
Whether or not the railroads were innocent or not is absolutely no excuse for the exponential growth of government. One thing we can all agree on, is that the progressives will never state that if we like our Constitution, we can keep our Constitution.
And as for the push for progressive era regulation? Sorry, no deal. The real reason for the push for progressive era regulation was the progressives power lust and demand for total government control over all of our lives. Railroads and gay weddings and making the world safe for democracy and conservation of the natural resources and medicare and social security - they are all smoke screens. Every last one of them. Nothing matters to progressives except power. That’s it. The ends justifies the means.
And their history proves it. That by far is the best part. That’s the fun part. The early progressives wrote it all down for us, we just have to go get it and use it. The later progressives too. We can read Saul Alinsky and guess what - there it is again. We just have to go and get it and use it.
I apologize if I am a little flippant, but I will probably go to my grave being half surprised and half frustrated to see conservatives on a conservative forum/gathering giving progressives a benefit of the doubt that is unearned. They have earned total suspicion and nothing more. Well, they’ve earned scorn too. Distrust. Contempt. I’m going to stop here.
I was aware that Wilson was trying to regulate almost everything
Which in today,s sick governmental universe, includes any and every business concern, since the Supreme Court absurdly keeps ruling that simply making an interstate telephone call related to any aspect of a business from any telephone in the world, transforms the action into "interstate commerce."
Wickard v Filburn needs to go.
Permanently
L
Yep. And good points on your follow up comments here.
For a solid glimpse into TR’s descent into progressivism, read his message to Congress Jan. 1906:
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=29547
It's impossible to conclude that, absent this apparent "collusion" of the rich, the powerful and government, we might have never made use of the transcontinental network of railroads which played a crucial part in the rapid transportation system in the U.S., the envy of the world, which made victory possible in two world wars.
The Great Northern Railway built its transcontinental railroad using nothing but private investment. No federal subsidies of any sort. The only line to do so but showing that it could be done.
You just wouldn’t have had lines built out as quickly without, ahem, corporate welfare.
Using taxpayer money to build infrastructure, even privately owned infrastructure, was the old Whig Party agenda, the Whigs becoming the Republican Party, and Lincoln and succeeding Republican administrations did exactly that. It’s always amusing to see the Republican party venerated as the balanced budget, small gov’t party because it sure didn’t start out that way.
The bad part is that it leads to cronyism and all sorts of looting of the Treasury. Voters just have to decide if they are willing to let that happen. The railroad barons were among the great rich of that time, so imagine giving Bill Gates and Zuckerburg and pals a ton of taxpayer money to play with.
I don’t know who was first. But I do know that when NIXON implemented WAGE & PRICE controls, the unions went beserk!
They demanded some other form of compensation to replace Wage increases. Corporations were pressured to start paying for Healthcare. Initially it was a certain percentage. Subsequent demands eventually led to full payment by the corporation.
In 1959 when I was discharged from the Navy and was hired by AT&T, I had to pay for my own healthcare 100%. There were two options: FAMILY PLAN and INDIVIDUAL.
In my mind, that change was a major factor in creating the mess we have today. Time is really the toughest test for public policy!
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