There, there, Inherit, it’ll all be all right.  I’am happy to see that you ae so incensed by being called a racist. It supports the view that you are not completely evil.  You might reconsider your views on Arabs and Muslims in that light.

And try to distinguish, as best your poor fevered brain can, between marxism and post-marxism.  And read the schock doctrine which does not attack Zionism until the penultimate chapter, which you can skip.

Folktruther, October 19 at 5:14 pm #

And while its true that I am an idealogue, Inherit, I am an ideologue in search of a post-marxist ideology.  That is why I argue with commenters ignorant as doorknobs. I mention no names.
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I see. Because you can’t explain it yourself in intelligent terms you say I should read somebody else’s work.

Then, you call me a member of a KKK group--I sure as HELL know what a “klavern” is.  Because of that, which is a mortal insult and attack I will not respond to anymore of your vile, lying attacks. 

You don’t know me, you don’t know anything about me.  You call me a racist, yet you don’t know that my youngest is a completely different race than my wife and me. How many kids have YOU adopted, trans-racially or otherwise, Hypocrite?

Because I’m not a Marxist or a post-Marxist?  I hate Marxists like you because you are no different in your thinking than fascists.  There is only one way--your way, and everyone else isn’t worth the life they have.

I am done with you and your hate-filled insults.

Folktruther, October 19 at 9:23 am #

Since you are backing Obama, you are backing the neoliberalism of Friedman that Obama must pursue whether he wants to or not.  Try to pay attention.
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What the hell is “Neo-Liberalism”?  I’ve never even heard of it. And if you think that both Bush and Obama are the same under this same umbrella, your head is too deep in the sand to be able to read ANYTHING.

You also clearly show yet again you have NO idea of what you are talking about.  Friedman’s espoused philosophy has little in common with Obama’s except in your truly bizarre and surreal “logic”.  Friedman made damn clear he wanted to do away with ALL regulation and use solely monetary policy.  Where did you EVER get the idea that those are Obama’s policy.

I’m trying really hard to pay attention but your continual blathering of illogic supported by fantasy “facts” makes it really, really hard. 

You know the answers (you believe), then you seek out facts that can be twisted to fit the “answers” you already have.  Try to open your mind so that fact and logic dictate your analysis, rather than generating an “opinion” based on talking points.

No,no, Ihherit, I wasn’t suggesting that you consciously believed in neoliberalism, but that the Bushites do, and have locked it in so that Obama will have to operate largely within its constraints. As he did in the bailout swindle.

Since you are backing Obama, you are backing the neoliberalism of Friedman that Obama must pursue whether he wants to or not.  Try to pay attention.

I suggest to you, as I suggest to everyone, that you can’t understand the US and the world in the 21st century without reading THE SCHOCK DOCTRINE by Naomi Klein.  If that doens’t cure you of Friedmanism, I don’t know what will.
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Oh, c’mon! At least PRETEND you read my post and understood it!  I don’t need to be cured of “Friedmanism"--I know his flaws far better than you ever will because you are using the Dialectic as your analysis tool.  You might as well use Dianetics! 

I, OTOH, understand that Friedman tried to come up with a way to get around the implications of Keynes’s analysis and the use of both monetary AND fiscal policy.  Friedman insisted you had to abandon fiscal tools for managing the economy.  He was, simply wrong, not because modern economic analysis doesn’t work, but because it does. The details of the mathematics are a few years ago for me, but the implications aren’t.

Gee, Inherit, I wonder how many people have sore spots on their souls because they got a C+ or B instead of an A on their good truthpieces.  My daughter wrote a brilliant parady of Shakespeare a few months agoa and got a C on because she didn’t use all the words she was supposed to.  An honors class. In an Elite high school.

She has to get good grades because she is Jewish and, as you know, they kick you out of the religion if you don’t.  But we told her not to believe anything she learned for the examinations because the most important things they teach her are wrong.

There are good schools and bad schools but in addition to the specialist skills and truths one is taught in school, one is indoctrinated with the ideological truths that the Educated impose on the population to legitimate their power.  American ideology in particular is a tapestry of bullshit from beginning to end.  Especially linked to Zionism.

I suggest to you, as I suggest to everyone, that you can’t understand the US and the world in the 21st century without reading THE SCHOCK DOCTRINE by Naomi Klein.  If that doens’t cure you of Friedmanism, I don’t know what will.

Folktruther, October 18 at 7:04 am #

Well, Ms. S, it took several decades but I finally got that grade up to a B+.  That the arguments of Pascal ...are unconvincing....
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Finally something we can agree on! I always thought Pascal’s Wager was a coward’s argument. 

Faith is, by definition, anti-logic and anti-reason. 
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Your cultural expience in school was quite different than mine.  There weren’t a lot of museaums, serious music concerts and plays in Olover#1, and it was too dangerous to let us go down in the mine shaft.  So I became a high school dropout.
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Sometimes I wonder if bad schools do more damage than no schools.

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...

But I went to school when Milton Freedman and Leo Strauss were initially making their absurd and evil arguemts and did they get marked down because they were unconvincing?  No, they started neocon movements in the same way that Moses and St Augustine started theirs, but directed at people with money.
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The funny thing is that Milton Friedman didn’t really invent anything new.  He’s still using the old Keynesian means of analysis.  He simply argued that of the tools available to governments, only monetary policy should be used to affect the economy, not fiscal policy. In a way, he’s the first modern balanced budgeteer.  But you are right: On the whole, Friedman was wrong.  However, his main contribution (IMHO) is that he provided a strong and powerful antithesis to the standard concepts of macroeconomics, forcing a re-evaluation of those concepts.  Nothing wrong with that but when the politicians got hold of a few catch-phrases without understanding the underlying economic framework, they made a muddle.

They didn’t get no stinking C+’s because their arguments were unconvincing.
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Friedman’s arguments were very convincing.  They just had holes in them.

Just as Inherit the Windy was formed by being humiliated by a camp counseler when he was 10 years old, fixating him emotionally at that level, so that grading experience on my God truthpience, I now see in retrospect, was instrumental in forming my entire Educational worldview.
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Actually, it was the camp director. Did it fixate me? I don’t think so.  It was a fact and inferences could be drawn.
1) Despite his politics being admirable, he was an asshole.
2) Despite anyone’s politics being the same or compatible with mine, they can STILL be an asshole.
3) Incompatible politics to mine don’t make someone an asshole, but they sure don’t prevent it, either!
4) Never trust arguments that belittle the arguer without destroying the argument as well. It’s an old trick. A 50-year old man using it on a 10 year old boy was immoral.
5) Trust your own arguments, not an “authority“‘s.  Why is the “authority” right and you wrong just because he’s an “authority”?  (I’d like to teach Judge Judy that!)
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That and the fact that all mainstream Education and Information is class-based, and imposed on the population by power structures to legitimate their power.
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It is? How do you figure that?  I just thought richer towns had better schools.  No conspiracy, just anarchy.

I had a similar teacher to yours when I was 13. I wrote a terrific creative essay and he gave me a B because I offended him. My whole family loved it, passed it around to their friends and offices.  But the little martinet gave it a B.  I knew damn well it deserved an A.  I spent the rest of the school year just trying to give him what he wanted.  No luck.

Truth be known, Folktruther, I would have given you the A as I always thought a B+ was like a slap when there was a choice between a B and an A and I was a proponent of encouraging students to think by rewarding them for their efforts at it.  We can easily see your reasoning has become even more excellent as evidenced in your arguments and seen in your having acquired an education about Moses, St. Augustine, and Dun Scotus.  In his book, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, Umberto Eco, one of my literary heroes, says St. Augustine was the most intelligent man ever lived.  So Eco gives him an A+ although from my non-religious perspective I don’t quite agree with all of St. Augustine’s conclusions, but I cannot argue that he was not a genius and i hardly think he was a loonie.  It doesn’t look like the U of C did you much harm but rather a lot of good.  I would just chock up the C+ as a defining moment.  The syllogism doesn’t provide that because there are pallid teachers, and that one crossed your path, that all teachers are insipid.  In a very mild way I’m glad you were propelled at some point in your life to seek higher education.  I may not have had the benefit of running into the electronic Folktruther here on TD.  I have enjoyed the interaction and learned much.  The teacher learns from the student.  I am resistant to your notion that mainstream education is class-based not seeing any convincing argument yet.  And now that you have added Information as well, I am now even more baffled.  There are too many legitimate ‘mavericks’ in education.  Those who do not march to the same drummer as other conservative academics.  To bring us back to the forum, I don’t think Scheer’s assessment rings true about McCain and Hoover.  Maybe he is more like Richard Nixon?

Well, Ms. S, it took several decades but I finally got that grade up to a B+.  That the arguments of Pascal and William James are unconvincing (and in fact absurd), as they are, I felt should have nothing to do with my relating them.  So are the arguments of Moses, St Augusstine and Duns Scotus, but philosophers and Educated religious loonies aren’t marked down for that reason.

Your cultural expience in school was quite different than mine.  There weren’t a lot of museaums, serious music concerts and plays in Olover#1, and it was too dangerous to let us go down in the mine shaft.  So I became a high school dropout.

The U of Chicago had an early entrance program and they gave me some money, which I needed, so I skipped the last year of high school.  It may be that everything I needed to know was right there. 

But I went to school when Milton Freedman and Leo Strauss were initially making their absurd and evil arguemts and did they get marked down because they were unconvincing?  No, they started neocon movements in the same way that Moses and St Augustine started theirs, but directed at people with money.

They didn’t get no stinking C+’s because their arguments were unconvincing. 

Just as Inherit the Windy was formed by being humiliated by a camp counseler when he was 10 years old, fixating him emotionally at that level, so that grading experience on my God truthpience, I now see in retrospect, was instrumental in forming my entire Educational worldview.

That and the fact that all mainstream Education and Information is class-based, and imposed on the population by power structures to legitimate their power.

Ah, school, Folktruther.  Seems like we had very different experiences and maybe that is why we might appear to be on different shores.  The lower grades schools were fairly much the same then as the ones I now visit here in No. Texas as a full-time sub which is what I select to do in my early retirement from the university. 

But when it comes to high school that was a whole different game.  Unlike what I see here in Texas where I see lethargic teachers, and I mainly teach high school, in yesteryear Pennsylvania I had very challenging teachers in art, history, science, math, and English literature.  All these teachers 9th-12 were brilliant at getting kids interested in learning.  I graduated with 3.97 GPA and was 6th in my graduating class of 125.  I don’t mean to be bragging, that is not my intent, but wanted only to indicate to how well a very poor girl with a very poor single mom was nurtured in school.  While mom gave me a love of learning, which was about all she had besides maternal love, it was plenty and I was indeed fortunate in that respect; my teachers took that love and encouraged me to develop the intrigue and push it further.  I never felt less than anybody intellectually nor economically, though the latter was fairly nonexistent.  I was offered a scholarship and the rest is history. 

We students were exposed to culture that is almost unheard of these days, with trips to the museums, plays, and serious music concerts and many in-class experiences of these arts where we learned to love the best things mankind can do within the scope of their culture.  We were also challenged in math and science classes and always had lively discussions.  If you were reading Williams James in high school, that is amazing and regardless of the C+ it undoubtedly has stayed with you.  Pascal’s Wager that it is the best bet to believe in God is no mean feat to use in an argument, and whether or not you argued persuasively, I probably would have given an A- or a least a B+ for a brave high school student who tackled that argument with a note saying why it wasn’t convincing, and as you now know there are a few reasons why it isn’t.

I prefer the school to the dump. 

By the way, an interesting book by Heather Rogers is Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage.  I’m afraid the city dumps are no longer like the ones in which we found adventure.  In those days it was to get rid of the garbage, burn it mainly, nowadays it is a huge business, an organized profit-motive corporation type business really.  That ugly snake rears its head once again.  Well I don’t know if that is a fair criticism.  Americans create more garbage than it can really deal with unless it is turned into a huge megalithic business.  And shuddering with that I think we can get back on the topic of this forum if there is any further interest.  It was a serendipitous fun trip down memory lane Folktruther and Big B.  Thanks.

Right, Shenonymous, the dumps of western Pa, where we spent our splendid leisure hours, bring back old memories.  Better than the schools.  Since there was nothing else to do and I didn’t like working ou cars, I read a lot.  This, and I suppose other things as well, made me unique among the minors children. 

Since there were no teachers like Big B’s Mr Nehlan, I did not find school interesting and read as much as possible while the teachers were droning away.  My daughter did the same thing when she was in elementrary school in Calif, to the chagrin of the school.  Amazing how these things are inherited. 

Not that I was estranged from my teachers, we would nod pleasantly if we ever met on the street.

I remember when I began high school I wanted to suck up to my teacher, who taught bible school, and wrote a long piece on whether there was a God.  I used Pascal’s Wager as discussed in William James’s the WILL TO BELIEVE.  These were not household names in Oliver# 1, but she gave me a C+ anyway.  She said she found the arguments unpersuasive.

I was outraged at the time, which possibly influenced my opinion of Education, but later concluded that she was right.  But, still, at the time, I preferred the dump to the school.  Still do.

Gee Folktruther, I remember walking over to the city dump as a kid with my cousins just to play and have fun. We’d all get whupped but we didn’t care.  What wonderful memories we have.

You have to understand, Big B, that my chilhood homeland, Oliver# 1, was a MINING PATCH.  It did not have the cosmopolitian ambience and fancy city ways of Uniontown, Monessen or McKessport.  Our entertainments, such as they were, did not smack all that much of the romantic.  On Saturday nights,for example, we’d spend our evening out going down to the city dump to shoot rats.  Possibly this later adversely affected my geo-stratigic and political worldview.  Possibly not.

Shenonymous,

Folktruther is right about Ojai, even if not about much else. Having similar living experiences, with both of us spending most of our lives in California and then naively doing the mindless Texass stints, I suspect that it might work, if you can get the hell out of there.

Ojai is right down the road from me, but considerably less costly. (of course ANY place is less costly than here) It seems acceptable enough, even though I’ve still gotta get over my claustrophia from living in Texass, and that makes the Ocean my security blanket. (it’s an escape route). I start getting anxious if I get too far from it. (like more than 2 miles in any direction). But Ojai is doable. See if you can bring your house with you. That’s what I should have done when I moved back.

Ms S, Big B, thank you for your company on a stoll down memory lane.  I was trying think if there was anything I missed about my childhood homeland and the only thing I could come up with were the wild walnut trees in the Apallacian mountains.  Not like the Sierras but quiet and beautiful.  Otherwise I can only regret that I didn’t run away from home when I learned to walk.

I can’t emphasize too strongly the importance of reading THE SHOCK DOCTRINE by Naomi Wolf.  It puts all the bizarre power happenings in perspective.

It seems that one of the major problems with US economic policy is that we did indeed export Friedman’s policies and ideas, and other nations, like China and Japan(and India, to a lesser extent) they ran the Friedman playbook, right down our throats.
I have always felt that the biggest fault of our system is that, instead of holding all the developing countries up to our standards, the standards of the western world, we (our big businesses) found it much easier to lower the bar for america instead.
It’s a similar problem with our education system. We don’t raise the bar for the average kids, we lower it for the smart kids(but then again, they won’t be able to afford college anyway)

Folktruther

Your memory is excellent, McKessport is indeed a shithole! it always reminded me of the bombed out town that joker and cowboy’s squad got pinned down in about 3/4 of the way thru “Full Metal Jacket”. Many of the old buildings have now been torn down, with vacant lots that are over grown with weeds and bottles. It’s like a white trash Norman Rockwell print!
If we are not careful, that could be the fate of many a large american city.

If not for WWII, the US would have taken years and years to climb out of the Great Depression.

Thanks to our manufacturing base, we were able to tool up and build the weapons of war, first for England, then Russia, then ourselves.

Luckily for Roosevelt, the Japs attacked Pearl Harbor.... after the US waged economic war against Japan in the Pacific and SE Asia.

Japan told Roosevelt to back off, what he was doing could be construed as acts of war, but Roosevelt kept on his merry way.

And that manufacturing base we used to climb out fo WWII?

Gone, shipped to China, Mexico and other slave wage countries, where 10 cents an hour isn’t uncommon.

Thank gawd for Clinton and the Bushes!!!

Wonder what’s just around the corner?

Folktruther - Why am I not surprised to learn this?  The US invaded to get him for reasons other than liberating the Iraqi people!  Which is why we are still there even though he has been dead now for a long time!  And I wholly believe there is living hell there because of the US invasion.  I have a very hard time believing though that there will ever be harmony within a single Iraq state.  I believe a tripartite Iraq would work.  I am also thinking the same thing about Israel and Palestine.  A two state system would work for such disparate religious groups.  If a two state program was possible, could they keep their hands off each other even in that situation?  The enmity goes back thousands of years.

McKeesport was a dirty, ugly town when I stayed with my relatives there when I was boy.  A distant reletive who was from there who I didn’t know was killed at Kent State later, walking to class.

It’s quite true, Ms S, that there is incredible traffic in the LA area, but if you can live anywhere, think about Ojai, a beautiful little town near Ventura.  We wanted to live there but it was too far away for us.

If you want to know about economics, which it is the function of liberal economics to disguise in both words and numbers, I suggest Naomi Kein’s THE SHOCK DOCTRINE.  It focuses entirely on the power implications of the modern American economics which was pioneered by Hyak and Milton Friedman, may he roast in hell, and influences the entire discipline, spreading all over the world like a plague.

You really can’t understand America in the 21st century without understanding her thesis.  A hugely informative book and gives a brief and accurate holistic overview of modern American economic history.  Among much else.

Thanks Mr. Scheer, I have been troubled and puzzled by the deafening silence of Dems on the subject of FDR and the analogous nature of 1932 to 2008. Slightly less mystifying is the failure of any Dem to point out how very right Pres. Carter was on energy policy. He was probably the most politically inept Democratic president of the 20th century, but his strategic judgement was prescient to say the least.

Pardon me while I amend [slightly] my previous comments.

“Well I’ve got news for McCain. He is the cold wet noodle.”

A more accurate description would be a large white flounder, gasping for air and “flopping” about on the deck of the good ship change, that caught and hauled him in last night. At least that’s how he looked to me. It was almost sad. I actually felt a twinge of pity, almost, and wondered if the feeling of embarrassment is as foreign to ultra-uber-conservative philosophy as truth.

As far as the radical wing-nuts who adore Palin are concerned. I do not dismiss their behavior with the word fear. I think STUPID is much more appropriate.

Another post here on truthdig identify’s a womens outrage at Obama calling her trash. Since Obama has NEVER called ANYONE trash, that comment must be a reflection of her own view of herself. And that speaks volumes. For one thing, it points out that “trash” is exactly what her precious repub candidates think of her, else they wouldn’t know the key words that would trigger her outrage, which brings us back to that STUPID thing.

I really don’t want to get into finances or trade or any of that stuff, ‘cause I’m the first to admit I don’t understand the mechenations of the so-called financial minds who keep sinking us. I just know they do. As Reagans reign wound down, I watched 600 retail outlets on the main street where I lived at the time close, following the worst Christmas sales in history.

I found a good job on the other side of the country and moved. Then as the shorter but equally painful reign of Bush the elder wound down, I watched friends of mine lose their jobs when the largest commercial mortgage bank in the world [in Manhattan] locked their doors, with a sign on the door that said, “Closed until further notice, unable to meet payroll.”

Eventually, my job evaporated and I moved back to the other side of the country, where I found a good job. ‘Course it helped that Clinton was in charge and the economy began to limp back to life.

I need not bore you with what happened as the reign of Bush the younger [and dumber] wound down. Duh ... We are there! This one takes the all-time record for PROVING the very worst of the worst that republican policy ALWAYS guarantees!

The biggest difference for me is, I retired somewhere along the way. But retiring does not mean financial security, so I continue[d] to free-lance from home and now that is evaporating.

Oh well. The dems will replace the repubs. We will have a short moment of glorious recovery and then the STUPID will spring back into action and give the throne back to another criminal republican.

So the way I see it is, we need to pass a law making it ILLEGAL to be STUPID! That would pretty well put the repubs out of business.

OK, I know.

It’s just a shame that from Charleroi to Mon City to McKeesport, there are very few left to see it. Big B, that fact alone might be enough to help me make my decision.  Have you been to California lately?  It is freaking nuts!  At least from Long Beach to Irvine!  I had palpitations driving on the freeway last July.  Stuck in traffic no crap for 20 minutes!  I was stunned and wanted to get out of the car and walk.  Well, that would have been dumb since I had a rented car and didn’t want to have to wind up buying it!  Good thing KPFK was on and I could listen to Democracy Now.  Dismal but at least intelligent. 

Don’t you think, or anybody else for that matter, that this money crisis will get healed and if, as Obama said in the debate, it is handled right the people will get the money back?  Is it so f**king pessimistic that the world is going to hell in a handbasket?  At least the problem is out in the open and not kept festering until we were all buried in the pus of financial ruin.  There is still some signs of life.  The Europeans seem to be solving the problem for us and Paulson is even if weakly seeing the guiding light.  Nader, for all his faults, does seem to have a solution to those problems.  I wish somebody else who understands these things would watch that interview and give their assessment of his ideas.  I don’t want to hear any crap about his campaign for presidency because i think that is a piss in the wind, again.  But that doesn’t mean his ideas are crap.  Or at least that is how it sounded to this economic ignoramous.  His helping would go a long way towards redeeming him in the eyes of the public and even get him somewhere politically.  You know the vinegar honey and flies analogy.

I mean, I have a Jewish friend who would not even listen to a word Nader says, just because of his views on Palestine, but that is just plain reactive and stupid racist stuff.  Yeah, Jews can be racists too!  And I believe Palestine is entitled to a country as well as Israel.  One state, two states? I don’t know enough. I don’t think most Americans do.  We need to be able to get past that kind of SH*T.  Yes, whomever, wasn’t it Hemi* (probably a few of you) who said we do need to turn the corner if the world is ever going to save itself.

Shenonymous,

The now clean Mon river is as stunning as it has been in probably 100 years. It’s just a shame that from Charleroi to Mon City to McKeesport, there are very few left to see it.

The people I feel worst for now are my sons generation.(he’s 21) Most of us over the age of 45 have experienced some bad times first hand, from vietnam thru the first gulf war. But for the last nearly 20 years now we have borrowed and borrowed, hoping beyond hope that all that speculation would eventually germinate into some huge national financial boom that would propel us all into the upper middle class suburbs. It didn’t happen.
Now we have backed ourselves into a corner. we are all collectivley in debt up to our eyeballs. We have no savings. We have overspeculated and refinanced our homes beyond their worth. The only solution anyone in the know has suggested is print more money, go into even more debt, and hope the credit markets loosen up so we can try once again to borrow our way out of a debt crisis. Now, we not only started out in crushing debt, we add onto it, and hope that we can finance some future prosperity that will not only pay our debt from before, but pay our previous debt and the accumulated interest from it.

If we had a loan shark at this point, he would just laugh at us, tie us to a cinder block, and drop us off a bridge. He would take everything we think we own, and try to cut his losses by selling it to China.(oh, wait! that’s what’s happening now)

The next couple of generations will need the guile to deal with a potentially Orwellian world of haves and have nots. Of a changing enviroment, and wars for what’s left of the resources.
I fear that computer games and 6 hours of TV a day may prove to be poor preparations for the coming tide.

I had to laugh Folktruther.  I was one of those unstable elements that migrated to California and lived there most of my life, raised my family there.  Then for some regretful moment of irrationality that included a dream of home ownership and for other familial reasons, moved to what I call the mindless state of Texass.  It is now my personal vendetta to be some kind of corrupting element here for having been fooled into thinking it was a civilized place and am optimistic I will not be here much longer.  Democrats are only safe if found in groups of large numbers.  I did find a wonderful home though, but still the place is not my cup of rooiboos tea.  My good sense will now lead me out of this pisshole.  It might be back to the ex-coal fields of Pennsylvania.  I like their politics and their culture, if not their economic depravity.  I don’t really have to worry about that though.  Or I will return to the sane malls of California.  We will see where the winds for Shenonymous blows.  Nothing is ever certain except for interludes of decisions rash or sane.  I retain however very very fond memories of the beautiful Monongahela River and the lazy but hospitable thinking of the citizenry.  It does beckon.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading your reminiscence Louise.  Isn’t it nice we have good memories.  Sometimes I think about those who do not because the vicissitudes took them down a horrid path of poverty and destitution.  I am sure that is why I am a social Democrat.

The mining towns were also populated by East Europeans, Big B, well before they began dominating world tennis.  Not only did the coal give out, but the iron ore mine at the Mesabi range is now just a huge hole in the ground.  You can get a hoge house in neigboring Deluth for sixty grand, or could a few years ago.  No jobs; its worse than Pittsburg.

When you left Western Pa, Shenonymous, why on earth did you go to north Texas.  All the more unstable elements went to Calif.  You see where good sense leads you.

It is true, Jackpine, that Hoover helped countries work together.  He distributed the funds that were intended for the starving at the end of WW1 to the counter revolutionaries invading Russia, after the Soviet revolution. 

Three hundred thousand troops from 15 countries
supported the Whites in the civil war, causing casualties of nearly 14 million.  This action, which was later excluded from the learned and mass media, began the War on Communism, and the continuous suspicion of the Soviets of capitalist encirclement.

In this expidition, many troops revolted, shot their officers, and joined the Red side.  The Oxford military history passes over this military episode with sketchy silence.  The worthy Hoover played a role in this disaster.

Love all the comments. Particularly the strolls down memory lane. I grew up in the country, which by the time I was grown, had become the suberbs. When I returned home to visit a few years later, the pond in the field where we skated in the winter had become a mall, and the miles of farms had become miles of neat little houses.

Eventually the neat little houses were replaced with neat little McMansions. Then, through the years the McMansions morphed into full-blown mansions and manor houses. Last summers visit found a lot of multimillion dollar mansions and manor houses sitting empty, or going into foreclosure. Killer deal if someone has a few million laying around they don’t know what to do with.

Taking the “tour” over the river and through what use to be the woods, I kept asking myself ... whatever were these people thinking?

I wonder ... how much does it cost to convert a manor house into low cost housing? Hmmm ... probably cheaper to tear it down. How sad is that? And what about the newer, simpler 2 or 3 thousand square foot homes scattered here and there? Still occupied by owners who paid perhaps 5 or 6 hundred thousand for them. Much more than they were actually ever worth. What are those homes worth now? The whole thing is very sad.

As I recall, the dream of having a garage, and eventually a car in it, was well on the way to happening for a lot of folks before we entered WWII. I still remember the day my dad brought home our new car. Only the garage was still a chicken coup. If my memory serves, we didn’t have food rations until AFTER the war had started. And the need to stand in line to get a clothing ration to allow a shot at the new “genuine patent leather” shoes was post, not pre-war. Perhaps we tend to muddle the two things together because the time-line is so close. Perhaps the experience of people pulling together to build the Great Society following the Great Depression was key to being able to pull the people together to build the war machine following Pearl Harbor.

The field that was the strawberry farm that was owned by the Japanese family who always called us over on our way home from school, to give us a free basket of strawberries [before they disappeard, never to be seen again] is gone. Now there are simply streets with huge houses ... and an occasional stray high-bred dog. [That is a dog isn’t it?] I couldn’t find the little house I grew up in. Just a three story sprawling, monolith looking structure, where it once stood. But it was somebody’s house. I could tell ‘cause there were his and hers Humvies in the driveway.

Strangest of all, all across this landscape of mansions and manor houses, no stores, no malls, [the one that was in my pond got torn down, long ago] no gas stations. Not even a WalMart. It’s as if this place ... this soon to crumble place was plunked down to function as the suberbs for the rich, or wannabee rich. Able to commute to far distant places to satisfy their real world needs, yet safely distanced from rubbing up against the “working class.” Maybe those folks in still occupied, smaller houses are the “workers.” Will be interesting to see how this pocket of uber-broke and wondering what to do society will vote.

In any case, I’m glad I’m not there anymore.

jackpine savage, October 16 at 3:39 am #

It should also be noted that many of the public works projects that Roosevelt is famous for were actually initiated under Hoover, who understood the idea of putting people to work towards the long-term, common good.
*******************

While I agree that Hoover gets a really unfair rap--the Crash came just 6 months after he took office and was the result of Harding’s and Coolidge’s policies, a minor correction is in order.

Hoover WAS the first to realize that the Fed was the only actor big enough to affect the economy. His plans set the precedent for FDR’s alphabet agencies and projects.

HOWEVER, Hoover’s plans failed for 2 reasons:
1) They weren’t nearly big enough.
2) They were all “trickle-down” based.

But he was one of the smartest men ever to be President, certainly since the Civil War, along with Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton.

Shenonymous,

It’s always good to hear from another “yun-ser”
I still travel to the mon valley once every couple of weeks(it is unfortunatly, still one of the most depressing areas to visit in western pa. And yes folktruther, I am afraid that the whorehouses are the only feature left of Monessen. There are however some fine antique shoppes from the Hopewood area, thru Jumonville and towards Markleysburg.)

The Pittsburgh area is a perfect example of over half of the US. We have never recovered from the 1970’s recession, and Reaganomics was the kiss of to this already sick area. We who were kids in the 1960’s and 70’s around here remember when the streets were filthy, the air was thick, and the rivers copper colored. But we also remember the 3PM whistle, knowing that Dad would be home soon after. We knew the clacking of railroad cars going down the tracks near Chartiers creek. There was a certain pride and swagger to every man and woman in this area, because they knew that as Pittsburgh goes, so goes the nation. Well, the rivers are cleaner now. You can breath a little easier. But the sound of the shift whistle and background noise of our lives, the railroads, have been silenced. As the children of those proud “Hunkeys” left this area in droves in the 1980’s, they took some of that sense of pride with them as they were forced to look for lives somewhere out side the rustbelt. The only thing that is left in this burned out ‘berg is a bloated university health system, and some new tech companys, too small to make a blip on the radar. If your not employed by the service sector here, or the government, you’re probably not working. When the last of our old Hunkey’s die, they will take with them the pride of our 19th and 20th century legacy of being the builders of this, and other great nations.
I realize change is integral to the survival of any species. But this nation has proven to be wholly unprepared for the changes brought about by the last 40 years. The longer we wait, the harder it will be. And we will never have successful change without remembering the work ethic and commitment to excellence that those mill Hunkeys showed us for over 100 years in cities from Pittsburgh, to Cincinnati, Memphis to St.Louis to Birmingham.
We were a great nation because american steel, american goods, built not only this nation, but the infrastructure of the 20th century.
It is the reason we are no longer a great nation.
We need to start from scratch, and rebuild our infrastucture, not just the roads, but everything. Only by doing that can we ever hope to once again take our place as a world leader. We need to look inward again and fix our own problems, or be discarded to the dustbin of history.

Sorry for bringing everybody down on a thursday morning.

Wed Oct 15, 2008 at 10:05:44 PM PDT

Joe the Plumber, the star of tonight’s debate, may have a very interesting connection to John McCain. In fact, Joe the Plumber (Joe Wurzelbacher) of Cincinnati, Ohio may be related to one Robert Wurzelbacher of Cincinnati, Ohio, who happens to be Charles Keating’s son-in-law.

Robert Wurzelbacher was implicated in the Keating 5 scandal, and sentenced to 40 months in prison in 1993.

Wurzelbacher is also a huge Republican donor.

So, let’s find out a bit about Joe Wurzelbacher.

BlueGA’s diary :: ::
First, he seems to own a few companies:

#1: Joseph Wurzelbacher (Joseph Wurzelbacher Cnstr Co)
12172 Stone Mill Rd, Cincinnati, OH 45251-4134

#2: JCC INVESTMENTS INC in the Investors, N.E.C. industry in CINCINNATI, OH. This company currently has approximately 1 to 5 employees and annual sales of Under $500,000.
12172 STONE MILL RD
CINCINNATI, OH 45251

#3: Wurzelbacher Painting
12148 Stone Mill Rd, Cincinnati, OH 45251-4134

#4: Wurzelbacher Brothers
(513) 385-6666
11260 Colerain Avenue,
Cincinnati, OH 45252
REPAIR OF SEPTIC TANKS
Phone: (513) 385-5264

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/10/16/02217/845

The shaved head was a nice touch. Sammy Davis Jr.?

Clearly aimed at the elderly, who tend to vote in large numbers.

You don’t want one of them in office

You know what those people are like

When they’re not picking your pocket, they’ll be tossing watermelon rinds and chicken bones on the WH lawn.

VOTE McCain, I’ll protect you from those dusky skinned hordes

Well done, ODar, Hoover was most certainly not the evil, stupid villain that history has painted him to be.

Another fact about him is that he was selected to oversee the refugee program in Europe after WWI. He got multiple nations to work together, directed the funding, etc.. And by all accounts did a marvelous job. And if i’m remembering this right, he didn’t even want to be President.

It should also be noted that many of the public works projects that Roosevelt is famous for were actually initiated under Hoover, who understood the idea of putting people to work towards the long-term, common good.

What is the likelihood that three denizens here are from the same Mon Valley area?  She was born and raised there and find it amazing to have run into a couple of interesting gents from her own stomping grounds.  WOW!  My ejumacashun there was peritty darn good.

There are antique stores in Uniontown, Big B?  They’ve gnetrified Uniontown?  I would have thought it impossible.  Next, neon lights on the whorehouses in Monnessen.

My complements to Mr Nehlan, should he still be with us.  That’s the way to teach history and all social science, against the text.  James Loewen suggests doing so in his excellent LIES MY TEACHER TOLD ME. Mainstream history is not merely the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind as Gibbon avers, it is the lies about them by the truth managers and truth agents of power. 

It is heartening that unknown to most of us, there are teachers like Nehlan trying to impart the reality based truth to the young.  And I would never know about Mr Nehlan without you Big B, no doubt one of his outstanding students, spreading the good word.

Thank you O Dar for bringing us back to sobriety about Hoover.  I always thought the old guy took a bad rap.  From what I read of history, your tale is closer to the trooth.

re: O Dar

Herbert Hoover was the first millionaire President. He did not accept a salary but rather donated it to charity.

“It’s McCain who is the Herbert Hoover in this presidential race.”

Woah, woah, WOAH!

MAJOR SLAM on Pres.Hoover!

There is absolutely nothing at all to unite these two men, aside from “party” affiliation (though Hoover’s GOP is a different party from today’s GOP; his being less rural and Southern-oriented, and more populist; Hoover’s VP was part Native American, unlikely in today’s covert-racist GOP).

Whatever mistakes Hoover did with trying to deal with the Great Depression were not deliberate, but due to a misunderstanding of its causes and what it’s about, Back then people didn’t expect or fully understand it.

Not so today where the causes and possible solutions are better understood, so a politican who proposes something harmfull is doing so delibrately.

Secondly, Hoover was a peraceful and kind man who helped save lives. He actually pulled American troops out of Latin America and went on a goodwill tour there. In fact, he may have been out last peace President ever, never having used agression against anyone. All subsequent Presidents have been the opposite.

There is no need to write about McCain in this area, as he’s a borderline war-mongering psycho.

So I must repectfully disagree, there is nothing in common between these two men. ONe is a noble and peaceful man, and the other a nut.

Further, I personally would love to have Hoover be our President today. He’d be wiser in the economic domain, and he’d end these wars and pull all troops back here.

Folktruther,

I credit an excellent history prof(mr Nehlen) with my facination and understanding of history. He used to read from the book, and then sit us down and tell us the back story of how’s and why’s instead of just the dates.

Funny that history prof was at Frostburg State College, just a short drive down old rt 40 from Uniontown. My wife and I still make an annual pilgramage the length of rt 40, from West Alexander PA to Cumberland MD after thanksgiving every year to hit all the antique shops from Uniontown, to Flat Rock, Confluence, and Grantsville.
(I also remember taking quite an ass whooping from the uniontown “fab five” back in a 1980 playoff game.)
All history, I suppose.

The often said stipulation that Roosevelt saved the capitalist system from itself is quite true, if you accept the reality that capitalism totally unbridled leads to that other system, held by many others in high regard: fascism.
Isn’t this the gist of the matter? American corporate finance, in their zeal to crunch numbers even further, have driven the bus right off the cliff. Of course government intervention will not work, at least not for the non-moneyed ones, but this bailout was never about us in the first place.
Is it not strange that Lazie faire capitalism, as far as the monopolized capitalists are concerned, only means to leave them alone when it comes to paying taxes on their profits. But when the foolish start playing with matches, the very same people go running to the government (or Mama, as Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur so aptly put it) to send out some firefighters.
It seems to me that the real question here is whether we are citizens of this nation or not. When I say nation, I mean the people who live in this land, not the government creations of manipulation, designed to feed undisclosed, venal interests.
So who ever is put in for the next government, it is really up to the citizens to make these bastards understand that it is the citizens’ interests that comes first. In all legislative matters, the first question should be: does this help my fellow citizen or not?

Folktruther, October 15 at 12:33 pm #

I didn’t know that you knew reality-bsed history, BIG B, as opposed to Inherited’s maainstream deceptive brand.

“maainstream deceptive brand” (sic)

Translation: Fact-based history (as opposed to Marxist dogmatic drivel--don’t need facts when you got The Dialectic!)

I didn’t know that you knew reality-bsed history, BIG B, as opposed to Inherited’s maainstream deceptive brand. You must have imbibed it from the sooty air that used to be Pittsburg’s. 

I emerged from a little mining town in wesern Pa around Uniontown, called Oliver#1. It bordered Oliver#2 and Oliver#3.  As you may have heard, the mineshaft at Oliver#4 was washed out, aborting the mining patch.

As is obvious, Mr Oliver who owned the mines was a raving megalomaniac, not unlike our present leaders.  that was only one reason that this was a good place to be from, and I left as quickly as possible. But it’s good to contact perceptive truthers from the auld sod.  Homeboy!

Re By Inherit The Wind, October 15 at 10:58 am

Re by Folktruther

As usual, you are wrong about everything.  Must be tough, always being wrong.  Think how Bush must feel--he’s always wrong, too!
----------------------------------------------------

ITW, thanks for refuting folktruther’s BS. He puts so much of it out there it requires the labors of Hercules to clean it up. I guess I’ll take the next shift…

Let me just add, as to “the learned droppings of H.G Franfort in his trenchant philosophical treatise- ON BULLSHIT”, it is indeed more bullshit, Princetonian philosophical bullshit at its finest. It says nothing in such a complex way that it convinces people trying to follow it that it must be profound.

There are here many aptly “diagnostic” observations about the condition theamericanpeoples’ condition is in.  And those political and corporate “agents” of the mess are fingered accurately enough.  Blueboy1938 is onto something, though, when he includes their own consumerist obsessions in the “rogues gallery” of proximate causes of “ordinary” americans’ predicament.

Looking to “leaders” thrown-up by the politic/economic system for salvation from “financial armageddon,” as seductive a notion as that might be these days, is as foolhardy as it will prove futile.  A U.S. president, as contemplated in the governing structure that remains essentially in-place, despite attempts to alter its fundamentals, is only an administrator....the “chief magistrate,” charged with “faithfully executing” the laws. 

Under the prevailing socio-political arrangement, it is in fact only “the people,” as the institutors of “the constitution of the United States,” who have any real institutional capacity at all for “leadership.” That this prerogative (along with much else) has been hijacked by vested economic interests is certainly among the misfortunes being visited (with a vengeance?) upon theamericanpeople these days.  Constitutionally (and inherently) unable to actually exercise “leadership,” however, the “money power” is usually content to let the function simply languish....thus creating the well-known (and abhorent) “vacuum” we hear so much about.

Unless and until theamericanpeople OWN their own fair and full share in the creation of the problems besetting them, they haven’t a chance of getting into a “stance” that might give them some “leverage” of their own to begin addressing those problems.  What’s more, voting-in someone as surrogate “leader” will be just one more exercise in F-U-tility.

If americans want to recover some measure of organic integrity in their institutions, they will first have to start practicing it in their own lives.  Having effectively “led” themselves and one another down this now obviously dead-end road of “Comfort (and Convenience) uber alles,” by default and otherwise, theamericanpeople will look elsewhere for “leadership” away from it in-vain.

One more thing, while we’re on the subject....us surviving free wild natural Human Beings have learned “the hard way” that the only true and abiding kind of leadership is BY EXAMPLE.  Preaching and policing are false forms which’ve been so effectively instrumental in mis-leading people into trouble.

HokaHey!

Earlier this year, I had a letter published in The Progressive Populist which addressed the isssues covered in this column.  The relevant portion of the letter follows:
As it happens, there is one, and only one way around this unfortunate state of affairs.  It seems likely that we are in for a recession at best, or another Great Depression, at worst.  Those who have studied history know that during the 1930’s Franklin D. Roosevelt, almost single-handedly, did what had to be done to save us from catastrophe.

The word “single-handedly” is the key to solving our current dilemma.  It would be one of the great ironies of history if we elected a charismatic, eloquent leader like Obama, and if he then took a cue from both FDR and Bush Jr. and used an “Imperial Presidency” to ramrod through the changes he is now espousing, whether Congress or the Supreme Court like it or not!

Roosevelt used his “Fireside Chats’” to galvanize the American people by saying, in effect, “You and I know what needs to be done.  We have to work together to get it done.” If Obama were willing to use the much more effective media now available like Roosevelt used the radio, there is at least a chance that real change might be possible.  Waiting for Congress is futile.

Folktruther speaks the truth.

While it would have been interesting to see the new deal come to fruition, FDR eventually took the low road in solving the nations economic problems, war.
(a good read is the book “sacrifice at pearl harbor")
When you look at it, the new deal really didn’t end until the completion of the american highway system by the eisenhower administration. But back to FDR..
His economic disaster did have an added twist that ours doesn’t, vast unemployment. While the true US umenployment rate is thought by many economists to be closer to 15%, the great depression’s was more like 30%. Jobs were the biggest obsticle facing FDR, and that problem was indeed ultimatly settled by our willing entry into WWII.(I wonder how many people are aware that Hitler actually delayed the invasion of Britain after conquering most of Europe because he had hoped that fellow Anglos, like the British and Americans, would come to share his vision of an Anglo dominated world, little did he know, that was also our plan!) Our subsequent reconstuction of Europe and Japan are what led to our emergence as the worlds economic power.

But we are not that power anymore. The longer good ‘ol boy republicans and flag sucking democrats keep thinking we are the greatest nation in the world, the longer it will be before we re-invent america in a 21st century world economy, driven not only by free markets, but responsible corporate citizenship, and government regulation assuring the public good.

But until then, we are still that drunk that thinks he doesn’t have a problem.

Folktruther, October 15 at 9:41 am #