A Quote to Start Your Day
Henry Morgenthau, Roosevelt’s Treasury Secretary:
We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong . . . somebody else can have my job. 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.
Via Mona Charen.
But, but…FDR’s massive spending helped save the US economy. After all, that’s what I’ve always heard from my textbooks, the MSM, my local paper, blah, blah, blah.
Dmac (49b16c) — 3/2/2009 @ 7:41 amThis has all happened before …
And, it will happen again.
JayC (092ee8) — 3/2/2009 @ 7:42 amWhy…why, that’s un-American!!! Why does Morgenthau want FDR to fail?
Pablo (99243e) — 3/2/2009 @ 7:51 amAnd besides, that was then. History is bunk! We are the ones we have been waiting for (well, the Democratic Ones, anyway). And besides, Amerikka is racist and imperialist.
Morganthau and his ilk were not as smooth and intelligent and clean and President Obama and his appointees.
They know best, not some white person from ancient history.
Hope and change!
Eric Blair (8d54e0) — 3/2/2009 @ 8:01 amTry to find that, or any similar sentiment, in an American history course today. My daughter was taught that the frontier settlers survived only because they learned to live like Indians although Plains Indians never had agriculture or the wheel. Eric was assured by a student recently that Indians “always” had horses. History is too precious to be taught. It must be surrounded by a wall of lies (apologies to Churchill).
Mike K (2cf494) — 3/2/2009 @ 8:14 amAnd this is probably the only area where I disagreed with Reagan (and don’t get me started on that Nobel Prize winning professor of Economics at U of C, may he rest in peace). Wealth flows up, from productive labor. Not trickling down from either a capitalist’s profit or a government’s skim.
nk (502275) — 3/2/2009 @ 8:17 amRacists!
daleyrocks (5d22c0) — 3/2/2009 @ 8:38 amdaley, I denounce you for stealing JD’s line!
Eric Blair (8d54e0) — 3/2/2009 @ 8:41 amEric, I denounce you for denouncing Daley when he stole JD’s line. Stealing is apparently a good thing with the current crowd in the
GM Roper (85dcd7) — 3/2/2009 @ 9:11 amWhiteHouse of Color on 1600 Penn. Ave.The “trickle down economics” thing was a canard by the press just like McCain not being able to use a computer and other assorted themes. What you state is the Marxist theory of value in which the labor involved determines the value of anything. Obviously, as production becomes more efficient and less labor is included, the less anything is worth. An integrated circuit board that is manufactured by robots is obviously worthless.
Personally, I believe in capitalism but it seems to be a disappearing belief. My daughter had a NY Times story on agriculture to report on for her college class. Naturally, an analysis of agriculture was written by a Journalism professor.
Here it is.
This will get you started:
After cars, the food system uses more fossil fuel than any other sector of the economy — 19 percent. And while the experts disagree about the exact amount, the way we feed ourselves contributes more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than anything else we do — as much as 37 percent, according to one study. Whenever farmers clear land for crops and till the soil, large quantities of carbon are released into the air. But the 20th-century industrialization of agriculture has increased the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by the food system by an order of magnitude; chemical fertilizers (made from natural gas), pesticides (made from petroleum), farm machinery, modern food processing and packaging and transportation have together transformed a system that in 1940 produced 2.3 calories of food energy for every calorie of fossil-fuel energy it used into one that now takes 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy to produce a single calorie of modern supermarket food. Put another way, when we eat from the industrial-food system, we are eating oil and spewing greenhouse gases. This state of affairs appears all the more absurd when you recall that every calorie we eat is ultimately the product of photosynthesis — a process based on making food energy from sunshine. There is hope and possibility in that simple fact.
Brilliant. Fortunately, bullshit is an excellent fertilizer.
Mike K (2cf494) — 3/2/2009 @ 9:15 amI read this quote in Amity Shlaes’ book, The Forgotten Man. She wrote it before The One was elected, but the parallels in style and substance between the two men and eras is unsettling. I personally believe that Obama knows all about FDR’s methods, and he is following them by the letter–but not to rescue America, to socialize it once and for all.
Patricia (419c68) — 3/2/2009 @ 9:18 amOkay, GM. I stole your denouncement.
So denounce that, you racist!
Eric Blair (8d54e0) — 3/2/2009 @ 9:24 amPatricia, I beg to differ. BHO does know all about FDR’s methods but, as a liberal/socialist, he believes that FDR’s ideas worked. As Reagan said ” I do not worry about what liberals don’t know. I worry about what they do know that is not so.” Another quote that is appropriate is “to repeat the same act over and over again while expecting different results is one version of insane behavior.”
Longwalker (4e0dda) — 3/2/2009 @ 9:25 amPessimists! 🙂
Emperor7 (1b037c) — 3/2/2009 @ 9:28 amLovey – Enjoy the Putney Swope Presidency.
daleyrocks (5d22c0) — 3/2/2009 @ 9:39 amBut Roosevelt created or saved 100M jobs a year. That means he created or saved almost a billion jobs during his first 2 terms.
How can anyone say the New Deal failed when it created or saved 1B jobs?
Daryl Herbert (b65640) — 3/2/2009 @ 10:00 amComment by Eric Blair — 3/2/2009 @ 8:01 am
EB, are you on a diet?
Just wondering why you’re a “k” short in “Amerikkka”?
Comment by Daryl Herbert — 3/2/2009 @ 10:00 am
Well, Yes!
AD - RtR/OS (3120b9) — 3/2/2009 @ 10:08 amSince it didn’t create/save 1B jobs …
It Failed!
Increase spending and raise taxes to counter the effect of a recession?
What could POSSIBLY go wrong?
irongrampa (8332bb) — 3/2/2009 @ 10:19 amAD, I was just spelling according to the Perceptive Troll Technique.
Eric Blair (8d54e0) — 3/2/2009 @ 10:20 amI denounce myself!
pst314 (672ba2) — 3/2/2009 @ 10:30 amTrolls are perceptive?
I thought the proper description was “deceptive”?
BTW, what kind of bait do you use to troll for trolls?
AD - RtR/OS (3120b9) — 3/2/2009 @ 10:32 amSwatstikas, of course.
Eric Blair (8d54e0) — 3/2/2009 @ 10:34 amAre those “barbed” statstikas, or are you using a “barbless” version for catch-and-release?
AD - RtR/OS (3120b9) — 3/2/2009 @ 10:37 amWell, they usually don’t “get” the barbs.
Eric Blair (8d54e0) — 3/2/2009 @ 10:38 amOopps….Swatstikas…where did that da.. “t” come from?
AD - RtR/OS (3120b9) — 3/2/2009 @ 10:38 amComment by Eric Blair — 3/2/2009 @ 10:38 am
AD - RtR/OS (3120b9) — 3/2/2009 @ 10:40 amNeed to use some Von-Helsing gear…
Small wooden stakes are quite effective.
It takes effort to use the PTT, AD.
Just go to your Troll collection of extra consonants. Add to the collection or remove as needed. Same thing with punctuation marks, I’d wager.
Eric Blair (8d54e0) — 3/2/2009 @ 10:40 amDJIA @ 6847…Will it go to 5000 (1995 level)?
AD - RtR/OS (3120b9) — 3/2/2009 @ 11:03 amHope and Change never looked so good!
//sarc
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.
Emperor7 (1b037c) — 3/2/2009 @ 11:03 amSounds like he is talking about George Bush’s eight years. Scary.
We cannot miss you if you do not stay gone, Lovie.
JD (2d2bfc) — 3/2/2009 @ 11:14 amEmperor7, but in fact, he’s talking about FDR’s. The difference is that there actually was a Depression going on then. Sheesh.
SPQR (72771e) — 3/2/2009 @ 11:15 amExcept, the unemployment rate was 15% + in 1939, and was 7% at the end of 2008.
However, both FDR and GWB increased the National Debt by approx. 80% in their respective two terms.
AD - RtR/OS (3120b9) — 3/2/2009 @ 11:16 amAs an aside, during WWII FDR allowed Morganthau to float Morganthau’s idea to raze Germany to an agricultural economy. This probably extended the war against Germany by several months and many thousands of lives as it encouraged Germany to fight to the last man thinking that the US would destroy their nation.
SPQR (72771e) — 3/2/2009 @ 11:31 amComment by SPQR — 3/2/2009 @ 11:31 am
He just let Uncle Joe do it in his absence.
AD - RtR/OS (3120b9) — 3/2/2009 @ 11:35 amNow there you go again, AD, trying to use history. I promise you that most voters don’t have the slightest idea to what you are referring.
Santayana’s quote seems pretty appropriate.
Eric Blair (8d54e0) — 3/2/2009 @ 11:36 amOh, SPQR, I didn’t mean to leave you out of the denouncement. Again, just ask some average voters….
Eric Blair (8d54e0) — 3/2/2009 @ 11:38 amAverage Voter…
AD - RtR/OS (3120b9) — 3/2/2009 @ 11:40 amShould I use a list from ACORN for that?
Santayana’s quote seems pretty appropriate.
Yes, but if he was so smart, how did he lose Texas?
AD - RtR/OS (3120b9) — 3/2/2009 @ 11:41 amUnder the keen and superior judgment of Barakkk’s leadership, the DOW is heading to zero in about 60 days.
Perfect Sense (0922fa) — 3/2/2009 @ 11:42 amEric, I will consider myself denounced by proxy…
SPQR (72771e) — 3/2/2009 @ 11:43 amThere is an easy way to identify average voters,
interview them.
MIke K (f89cb3) — 3/2/2009 @ 11:58 amAnd after all of President Roosevelt’s domestic spending — which, as a percentage of GDP, was still much smaller than President Obama’s — he still had to be bailed out by Hideki Tojo and Adolf Hitler.
The historian Dana (3e4784) — 3/2/2009 @ 12:42 pmI think you mean swatstukas.
steve miller (0fb51f) — 3/2/2009 @ 2:32 pmEric, ur humore obveosly xceeds myne, speciously cince I kant spell swatstika or Amerikka enugh to satizfi the liburls in here. I bow befur the mastir. 😀
And I denounce myself for even trying. 🙂
GM Roper (85dcd7) — 3/2/2009 @ 2:36 pmI denounce myself also for lowering the quality of comment on this blog in general and in this particular thread in particular. 🙁
GM Roper (85dcd7) — 3/2/2009 @ 2:37 pmVery good message discipline. When talking about the depression, it is important to compare 1933 to peak unemployment during the recovery. Don’t talk about the 1937 policies, and definitely don’t start going into 1942 or 43.
imdw (de7003) — 3/2/2009 @ 4:14 pmWhich recovery?
AD - RtR/OS (3120b9) — 3/2/2009 @ 4:38 pmThere was a brief one in 34-35, then the wheels came off again in 37-38, and resulted in Morgenthau’s lament.
“There was a brief one in 34-35, then the wheels came off again in 37-38, and resulted in Morgenthau’s lament”
The ‘brief one’ nearly halved the unemployment rate. And then they decided to cut spending…
imdw (de7003) — 3/2/2009 @ 5:24 pmNo, they decided to raise taxes to cut the deficit, and proceeded to chase capital back into the mattresses again.
AD - RtR/OS (3120b9) — 3/2/2009 @ 5:36 pmHalved the unemployment rate…
Yeh, they got it down from 25% to 15% by having some guys digging holes, and other guys filling them up.
“Yeh, they got it down from 25% to 15% by having some guys digging holes, and other guys filling them up.”
You got it! And what did we get? Skyline drive. Buncha bullshit.
imdw (c70387) — 3/2/2009 @ 5:55 pm“Yeh, they got it down from 25% to 15% by having some guys digging holes, and other guys filling them up.”
And all we got to show for it is the appalachian trail.
imdw (41b4a1) — 3/2/2009 @ 6:32 pmimdw, this stuff is all basics but you still can’t get it right. How droll.
SPQR (26be8b) — 3/2/2009 @ 7:58 pmWhen Bush said something like this right after 9/11 he was ridiculed.
I guess we see the double standards yet again.
SPQR (72771e) — 3/3/2009 @ 2:04 pm