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"1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them."

Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

You didn't catch the immature sarcasm? 'bestest' and the ''

Social Security is a ponzi scheme.

Specifics? My grandfather sold his farm and a purchased another. The deal on the sale closed of Friday and the money was deposited in a bank to be transferred as payment for the other property on Monday. Over the weekend FDR closed the banks and they could not access the money. They lost it all and never saw a single dime of the money again. FDR's closure of the banks cost many all they had even though the majority of banks that were closed were not in financial trouble. My grandfather ended up taking a job over two hundred miles from where his family lived as a barber and they never recovered from the loss they suffered. My mother remembers those days when she went from living in a middle class farming family to instant poverty living with relatives because of FDR. My mother does not like FDR and has personal reasons for it.

Of course this is just one personal account of loss suffered because of FDR and you can shine it on if you choose but there were many others that suffered under FDR. As noted, for every person that benefited under FDR someone else paid the bill.

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Soldiers swear to protect and defend the Constitution with their lives.

Politicians swear to protect and defend the Constitution with someone else's life.

I was expecting gratitude.

Shiva, it's not quite a Ponzi scheme (the system is viable so long as all rates remain constant), but I understand the argument.

I won't gloss over the bank closures except to say that it was a necessary to prevent bank runs, which could have caused far more harm to far more people, as did happen.

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And if a frog had wings it wouldn't bust it's buns when it jumped. The very fact that all factors do not remain the same (e.g. the number of workers to retirees) and that the Congress has repeatedly broken the promises made to the People when they were forced to sign up for Social Security reveal the flaw in the argument that Social Security isn't a Ponzi Scheme.

Like today as we see with the mortgage meltdown the vast majority of banks were in excellent financial shape. Those that were "at risk" were overwhelmingly the wealthy that had huge deposits in New York banks and it was the wealthy and not the middle class or poor that FDR bailed out with his bank closures. We see exactly the same thing today where hundreds of billions of dollars are being pumped into a small percentage of investment banks (not commercial banks) which don't even have any commercial depositors. Your average credit union or local bank is not in trouble and has never been in trouble because they have always operated on solid banking principles.

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Soldiers swear to protect and defend the Constitution with their lives.

Politicians swear to protect and defend the Constitution with someone else's life.

I don't particularly like history's fascination with turning bad Presidents into Godly Presidents (FDR, Lincoln and Reagan).

Which is exactly why Raum Emanuel got the job.

This President is looking back at the lessons of history. He's looking at FDR and Lincoln and others who faced monumental challenges and persevered. What an incredibly refreshing and comforting notion.

We already understand that he's enlisting the best and the brightest regardless of their political loyalties.

It would appear from his reaction to the Lieberman situation that he's willing to forgo petty political gamesmanship so he can focus on the big picture.

This, too me, shows that he's already learned some of those historical lessons and is implementing the principles that he thinks will be effective.

Folks - he's not yet in the job and he's surpassed his predecessor in terms of intelligence and effectiveness.

[quote=catawba;975192][color="Navy"]
One of the most popular presidents in history!


You say that like it is a good thing...

http://www.libertyforlife.com/eye-op...-new-deal.html

There's no doubt that Roosevelt changed the character of the American government--for the worse. Many of the reforms of the 1930s remain embedded in policy today: acreage allotments, price supports and marketing controls in agriculture, extensive regulation of private securities, federal intrusion into union-management relations, government lending and insurance activities, the minimum wage, national unemployment insurance, Social Security and welfare payments, production and sale of electrical power by the federal government, fiat money--the list goes on.

Roosevelt's revolution began with his inaugural address, which left no doubt about his intentions to seize the moment and harness it to his purposes. Best remembered for its patently false line that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself," it also called for extraordinary emergency governmental powers.

The day after FDR took the oath of office, he issued a proclamation calling Congress into a special session. Before it met, he proclaimed a national banking holiday--an action he had refused to endorse when Hoover suggested it three days earlier.

Invoking the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917, Roosevelt declared that "all banking transactions shall be suspended." Banks were permitted to reopen only after case-by-case inspection and approval by the government, a procedure that dragged on for months. This action heightened the public's sense of crisis and allowed him to ignore traditional restraints on the power of the central government.

In their understanding of the Depression, Roosevelt and his economic advisers had cause and effect reversed. They did not recognize that prices had fallen because of the Depression. They believed that the Depression prevailed because prices had fallen. The obvious remedy, then, was to raise prices, which they decided to do by creating artificial shortages. Hence arose a collection of crackpot policies designed to cure the Depression by cutting back on production. The scheme was so patently self-defeating that it's hard to believe anyone seriously believed it would work.

The goofiest application of the theory had to do with the price of gold. Starting with the bank holiday and proceeding through a massive gold-buying program, Roosevelt abandoned the gold standard, the bedrock restraint on inflation and government growth. He nationalized the monetary gold stock, forbade the private ownership of gold (except for jewelry, scientific or industrial uses, and foreign payments), and nullified all contractual promises--whether public or private, past or future--to pay in gold.

Besides being theft, gold confiscation didn't work. The price of gold was increased from $20.67 to $35.00 per ounce, a 69% increase, but the domestic price level increased only 7% between 1933 and 1934, and over rest of the decade it hardly increased at all. FDR's devaluation provoked retaliation by other countries, further strangling international trade and throwing the world's economies further into depression.

Having hobbled the banking system and destroyed the gold standard, he turned next to agriculture. Working with the politically influential Farm Bureau and the Bernard Baruch gang, Roosevelt pushed through the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933. It provided for acreage and production controls, restrictive marketing agreements, and regulatory licensing of processors and dealers "to eliminate unfair practices and charges." It authorized new lending, taxed processors of agricultural commodities, and rewarded farmers who cut back production.

The objective was to raise farm commodity prices until they reached a much higher "parity" level. The millions who could hardly feed and clothe their families can be forgiven for questioning the nobility of a program designed to make food and fiber more expensive. Though this was called an "emergency" measure, no President since has seen fit to declare the emergency over.

Industry was virtually nationalized under Roosevelt's National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933. Like most New Deal legislation, this resulted from a compromise of special interests: businessmen seeking higher prices and barriers to competition, labor unionists seeking governmental sponsorship and protection, social workers wanting to control working conditions and forbid child labor, and the proponents of massive spending on public works.

The legislation allowed the President to license businesses or control imports to achieve the vaguely identified objectives of the act. Every industry had to have a code of fair competition. The codes contained provisions setting minimum wages, maximum hours, and "decent" working conditions. The policy rested on the dubious notion that what the country needed most was cartelized business, higher prices, less work, and steep labor costs.

To administer the act, Roosevelt established the National Recovery Administration and named General Hugh Johnson, a crony of Baruch's and a former draft administrator, as head. Johnson adopted the famous Blue Eagle emblem and forced businesses to display it and abide by NRA codes. There were parades, billboards, posters, buttons, and radio ads, all designed to silence those who questioned the policy. Not since the First World War had there been anything like the outpouring of hoopla and coercion. Cutting prices became "chiseling" and the equivalent of treason. The policy was enforced by a vast system of agents and informers.

Eventually the NRA approved 557 basic and 189 supplementary codes, covering about 95% of all industrial employees. Big businessmen dominated the writing and implementing of the documents. They generally aimed to suppress competition. Figuring prominently in this effort were minimum prices, open price schedules, standardization of products and services, and advance notice of intent to change prices. Having gained the government's commitment to stilling competition, the tycoons looked forward to profitable repose.

(continued at link provided)

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"...I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no
pretense of loving liberty -- to Russia, for instance, where despotism
can be taken pure, and without the base alloy hypocrisy."

Abraham Lincoln

So has my daughters goldfish.

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"We The People" aren't the first words of the Constitution, and written so Huge and Fancy by mistake."

Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
Benjamin Franklin

Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote. Benjamin Franklin