A collection of would-haves and should-haves is not basic math.

this is really very basic math , UCLA, not exactly a hotbed of conservatism, lays it out

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/FDR-s-Policies-Prolonged-Depression-5409.aspx

Sirota is to be faulted for his ignorance, pretended or real, about the opinions of economists about the effect of Roosevelt’s policies on the Depression.  However, there is no consensus among economists about the issue, as the last few messages appear to imply.  In spite of all the numbers and mathematical formulae, economics is full of vague suppositions and can be made to say what one wants, which is usually ideologically conditioned.

Henry09—I wasnt on “vacation”. I lived in a WorkCamp for almost a year. I also stayed on the continent, and traveled to at least 13 countries. I was treated for “illness” (sprained ankle—it was a Sports Camp, ran out of thyroid meds, etc) in Denmark, Norway, and Italy. That was awhile back, They had a higher standard of living then, and it is ALOT higher than ours now. Check statistics.

Better yet—visit! Every American should—-it will change your life..if youre young, apply for WS or exchange prog. More Americans need to do this.

The thing is, yes, we have a large group of extremely rich people at “the top” (upper 2-5%). But, we have people living in this country under Third World conditons—without housing, plumbing, utilities, no health care, little food, malnutrition——that kindve stuff just does not exist in Scandanaiva, although, I saw on another thread that the PM is trying to partially disamantle the social system, I hope to gawd he fails.(they did fall into some bad US investments—I am surprised to hear it) Scandanavia is well known to have one of the most classless societies in the world. (Iceland esp., but I never got here) On the other hand, Austria and Switzerland, are wealthy beyond compare (prob. like Saudi Arabia, et al is now—thanks to us—not everyone—just the royal family), and, I spent ONE night there. It is beautiful, but, if you do not have alot of cash—dont go…

The lack of tension is palpable. The uN surveys show Denmark and the Amazon rainforest (curious—but, maybe not?) to be the happiest societites in the world (I am leaving out detail, I would have to look them bakc up). {The “saddes” (dumb term) were in places like Chechnya and other places where there is constant violence and , probably, horrible strain.}

In the EU countries, people are not in constant competition with each other for unknown resources. People tend to consider each other as countrymen more, as opposed to fellow competitors. Now, maybe some people like the idea of a constant competition. I am not cut out for it, and, I do not like it. Some competiton is good. The flat out rat race we have here is making people die younger. Only the “worst in us” surives places like the stockmarket.

That is how I see it, and, that is why I am, bascially, a Socialist…

Thanks for your discussion.

KDelphi -

Yes, fair enough. But a few more things though…

America doesn’t have laissez-faire Capitalism. Hasn’t for a long time. If we did there would be no central bank, i.e. Federal Reserve.

Cronyism? Yeah, in some places. Mixed economy? Yes. Things that resemble fascism? Unfortunately yes. But none of it’s laissez-faire.

I won’t deny that some people in the US struggle, especially now. But despite all of the BS I don’t think that people here overall are “exploited” by “barbarism” as if the US is somehow the worlds most immoral country ever.

There are poor people in other countries that would love to be poor here, that’s how much better our standard of living is than many places.

Can America improve? Of course. But where you and I disagree the most is how should America improve and what is governments role in that exactly?

That said, I’m skeptical that the supposedly classless societies you’re describing really have “less tension” and a “higher standard of living”. That sounds way too Utopian and vague to me. Besides, vacation travel is almost always seductive.

Are some countries better at some things than us? Sure, I admit that’s probably true. All the more reason to trade with them.

Thanks for the discussion.

Jackpine The social sciences made themselves scientific so they, like the natural sciences, could develop truth and techniuqes to provide military, business and ideological weapons to the ruling classes that sponsored and subsidized them.

For example, they develop intelligence testing and the math behind it to help select persons for the military in WW2.  Game theory was used to formulate nuclear strategy.  Math economics…. etc.

Henry09—Fair enough.

I disagree that a society that cares for its citizens is a “herd mentality”. I think that laisse-farw capitslism , as practiced in the US, since Reagan, is barbaric. We have the greatest class inequality in the “free” world, the highest early death rate, the highest rate of unisured, the lowest rate of Union participation, etc..

People that believe that regulation and worker protections “put people out of business”, are either rich or fooled by the rich, into believing that it protects their “freedom” to have no child labor laws, no miniumum wage, no Unionization. I beg to differ, and, want my fellow citizens to have decent standards of living.

I believe that that is why the EU, and other “free” countries (Democratic Socialists or Social Democracies) have a higher standard of living, and ,no loss of freedom. I know people there, have family there, and have been there. Maybe I already said that. It just changed my outlook almost entirely..

I was just amazed by the “lack of tension” in these less class based societies. I thought that our “freedom” to “choose” was so important—until I saw how other free people kept their freedom, but, care for each other in a workeable society.

A soldier who was home from “fighting the war” in Iraq, was asked whether he believed in the “cause” there—he said, that, sure, he did. That they shoudl have the “freedom to go to McDonald’s without getting blown up, too”.

Maybe that is what US “freedom” is all about..free to die with your right to choose Burger King or McDonald’s. I agree that Dubya has , probably irrepairably, crapped on the Constitution, but, I think we need a new constitutional convention.

That just how i see it.

Thanks for response.

KDelphi -

The Schechter case - “Live Poultry Code” and how it mandated a “safe chicken” for consumption when the Schechter’s were hardly guilty of spreading disease or being negligent, that’s what I was referring to…  and in the view of many historians that was the basis for the case in the first place, workers rights being secondary.

I don’t know if Tugwell was a “christo-fascist” or not. I’m not a neocon or religious nut so I tend to ignore that kind of thing.

I think of Tugwell as a socialist who experimented and used a bruised America as his lab.

As for your other notes on Tugwell, I’m not sure where you’re trying to go with it. I’m sure he did disagree with FDR on some things but remained an admirer of him, and he did reluctantly call Case Grande a failure.

I brought up Tugwell’s uncomfortable acceptance that CG was a failure to show that even one of FDR’s biggest supporters realized that not everything about the New Deal worked… contrary to the opinions often expressed on threads like this. 

I think a few of those letters at the Nation can be interpreted differently - and yes anyone can pick out content that fits with their preconceptions, the Nation included.

As for people arguing over chickens and your hypothesis that people are just “too selfish”... I think that’s why collectivization hasn’t worked and can’t work, it’s unnatural… people are individuals who sometimes voluntarily join a group, but they’re not a herd that can be managed with central planning.

If people want to voluntarily join a commune, that’s fine. I just don’t think other peoples tax dollars should pay for it and obviously nobody should be forced into it.

And examples like this also show the importance of property rights because if nobody clearly owns something like a farm - of if the government owns it - then it’s as if nobody owns it so you’ll have all sorts of petty disputes and it becomes inefficient.

I don’t think I’m exaggerating on Krugman. He’s very opinionated too and I read one of his syndicated op-ed pieces in The Oregonian last week where he romanticized FDR and called his government “clean”. I wasn’t exaggerating.

That said, I’m not just dreaming up opinions. The things I referenced also listed plenty of cases, facts, references, and yes… educated opinions. Are some of them biased? Sure. But so are many of the socialist to center/left opinions on this website.

But at the end of the day we take the books, articles, history lessons, etc… and we form our own thoughts on them.

So yes, we just disagree.

Aloha.

Henry09—Here they are: Schechter Poultry Corp (sounds really small, eh?) vs US (1934)

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=295&invol=495

The code fixes the number of hours for workdays. It provides that no employee, with certain exceptions, shall be permitted to work in excess of forty hours in any one week, and that no employees, save as stated, ‘shall be paid in any pay period less than at the rate of fifty (50) cents per hour.’ The article containing ‘general labor provisions’ prohibits the employment of any person under 16 years of age, and declares that employees shall have the right of ‘collective bargaining’ and freedom of choice with respect to labor organizations, in the terms of section 7(a) of the act (15 USCA 707(a). The minimum number of employees, who shall be employed by slaughterhouse operators, is fixed; the number being graduated according to the average volume of weekly sales…..

Whether you agree with it, it WAS about labor , in the opinion of many historians.

Here are some Tugwell links:(Nation Magazine—a neo-liberal mag. , that , I subscribe to as a gift from a friend—some of it is ok)
http://newdeal.feri.org/nation/na36106.htm

In 1933, Tugwell was appointed to work in Roosevelt’s administration, working in the United States Department of Agriculture…. became the head of the Resettlement Administration, a federal agency that relocated the urban poor to the suburbs and impoverished farmers to new rural communities. In 1937, when the RA came under political fire for being overly utopian and socialistic, he resigned from his position in the administration….

So, he seems to have had a problem with FDR, later, also. He disagreed with FDR. That would make him prone to a certain view.

http://www.worldmag.com/articles/13804 (Christian views)

Further—“WORLD: Your sympathy for Rex Tugwell comes through.

SHLAES: I liked Tugwell. Tugwell was a collectivist, so he was wrong. But he was an honest man, and he knew that his ideas weren’t working out. One of the best books that I discovered was Government Project, the study of a farm that Tugwell had caused to be created a collective farm, right down to the detail… The people didn’t want to share the chickens, they wanted their own chickens…. and says, “I like the idea of the collective chicken coop, but I always keep forgetting, which chicken is my chicken.” That’s the essential collective problem….Tugwell writes the intro: “Here’s the story of my collective farm, my animal farm. It is not a nice story.”

So he seems to have been a collectivist, but, decided against it. So, quite naturally, he disagreed with FDR. I would disagree with him, except that, yes, peeople do tend to be selfish, as in “MY chicken”!THAT, in my opinion, is the problem.

http://backwaterreport.com/ (Christian opinion.) This country is not a Judeo-Christian collective.

The point that I am trying to make, is that, just because YOU read it, doesnt make it any more true than if I read it. Perhaps you have some more flattering sources on Tugwell. Maybe you think that these statements are flattering. But, some of the allegations you made about FDR were presented as facts. They are not.

People are entitled to their own opinions, but , not their own facts.

Henry09—Krugman does NOT say that FDR was “peaches and cream”. You seem to be prone to exagerration. If you just wanted to say that he put them in camps you should have. Everyone knows that. There are plenty of criticisms of FDR—but the ones you listed just dont hold water to me. Except the camps—you are correct on that one. Horrible. And we continue the mistakes today.

I looked up the Poultry case—that is not the opinion of many historians. Your opinions are not facts.Why not give me some links or something? I saw the Tugwell stuff too. I read it all. YOu are just going by peoples’ opinions. (Well, not all,,,it was a little tough to get past the Hitler quotes)

I have criticism of FDR. I do not “go by one’s opinion”. I have many quotes, and facts, but, as I see none in your post, I do not feel obligated to reply with any. Further, you are making statements on a positive (fairly) article on FDR. If you are going to make such assertions, you have an obligation to back them up with facts, not opinions.

FDR preserved capitalism—that is my criticism of him. We might have been better off , NOW (not then) if he had let it fall on its ass, as it is now.

I do not totally support Krugman—but i have read his books. I am a Socialiat, and, proudly so. We just disagree. But, your references are sketchy, and wrought with opinion. YOu do not explain the sites I found that listed Tugwell as a Christo-Fascist (once again, opinion) People are as entitled to their opinion of Krugamn as you are. I would disagree with both—but you more.

I have an old pc—let me give you the links to the poultry case, Tugwell, etc. Maybe you have a better explanation. I cannot do it while I am posting here. I will have to put it in a second post.

There is no need to take such offense. We just disagree.

KDelphi -

Correction to my last reply: I meant Rex Tugwell, not Roger.

KDelphi -

Of course FDR put “people to work” when building the Japanese internment camps. Who do you think built those camps? Someone had to build them and who better than government contractors who were previously unemployed.

That said, who cares “who” exactly built the camps… FDR put Japanese-Americans in camps, no? I’m making the point that not everything FDR’s administration did was peaches and cream, contrary to the views of someone like Krugman who recently called his government “clean”.

I agree on GITMO… a travesty and I won’t miss Bush. But that doesn’t excuse FDR for the internment camps.

The Smoot-Hawley Tariff was widely considered to be what made the economic crisis much worse… Hoover idiotically signed it… See, I don’t blame FDR for everything! FDR could’ve repealed it soon after his inauguration though, but didn’t.

Schechter had nothing to do with “workers rights”. And it wasn’t a “big business” but a small Jewish family owned business in Brooklyn.

The NRA and it’s elite lawyers went after a Jewish family who sold Kosher poulty… all for doing something that had been legal forever, until the FDR administration just decided it wasn’t… and all over one bad chicken.

The Schechter’s won the case, but you missed my point…

How is trying to put a small family business out of business supposed to aid economic recovery? How is making the family spend a lot of money in the courts - rather than on their business - supposed to aid recovery?

Because it wasn’t about workers rights or economic recovery… it was about social experimentation and they decided to pick on a small Jewish owned business because they figured it would be an easy propaganda victory.

Besides the article here was about how FDR supposedly rescued the country from depression, not workers rights.

And why did Wilkie “lose his ass” (your words) to FDR? Because the government strong armed him out of the way with TVA. What crime had Wilkie committed… delivering power to people in the south?

Wilkie only possibly “became an ally” of FDR once the war started - for the good of the country. Until then, he was an opponent of the New Deal for good reason - he had his business stolen from him! Maybe you don’t think that’s a big deal… but if you ever have your own business I hope you might then understand.

Tugwell - I was referring to Roger Tugwell. One of FDR’s early advisers who ran what was then called the Resettlement Administration. Tugwell wanted to use the RA to resettle people from rural areas on to planned communities like suburbs and so-called “homesteader” farms, like Case Grande. He admitted later in life, albeit reluctantly, that Case Grande was a failure.

I’m not asking you “denounce FDR” completely - he did end Prohibition so I don’t denounce him completely either.

But I’m asking you to think the next time someone says something vague like “FDR rescued us from the Depression” and with a lot less reference than what I just gave you… or when someone says we need a “New New Deal” because it’s at the very least debatable that FDR really did end the depression and there is much to criticize about the New Deal.

Progressives seem to naively think of FDR the same way conservatives naively think of Reagan, like the man was a superhero and infallible. Myth, legend, and political celebrity should not be the basis of policy ideas… especially now.

As for someone like Krugman, he won his Nobel Prize for trade theory not monetary policy. So I take his theorizing on spending with a grain of salt. I don’t accept his pretense of knowledge just because he runs in elite circles.

I respectfully suggest that you read around a little more - certainly more than just clicking through Google for a few minutes or wherever you did your Tugwell search - before you completely hand your volition over to people like Krugman.

Aloha.

Henry09—“don’t think I need to cite much in regards to the Japanese internment camps… that’s well documented history.”

Yes, but that is not what you said. You said that FDR “put people to work” building the camps.

I dont know who built GITMO. 

“Same can be said for Smoot-Hawley”—what the hell is that?

I looked up your “poultry” case—it seems that FDR “killed profits” by extending workers rights to a poultry plant. Poor big business owner…

Wilkie may have said that because he lost his ass to FDR. (Although he later became a supposed ally)

Tugwell draws some wierd stuff! The “Christian-Zionist” type sites?? Is that what they are?? Hitler, McCain, Tugwell(is that who that is??).

I dunno , bud., I couldnt find your 1934 reference at all..

I would need more than that to denounce FDR completely…I think I will trust Hedges, Krugman, etc.

kdelphi -

I don’t think I need to cite much in regards to the Japanese internment camps… that’s well documented history.

Same can be said for Smoot-Hawley.

As for the other stuff…

Schechter Poultry Corp v. United States (1934)

“Government Project” by Edward C. Banfield (1961) - details on Casa Grande.

You can also read the memoirs and letters of people like Rex Tugwell, FDR, Eleanor Roosevelt, Wendell Willkie, Irita van Doren, Paul Douglas, Roger Baldwin and others who were major influences in the 1930’s… some, like Tugwell, were FDR advisers… These are available at FDR’s Presidential Library, the Library of Congress, and other college libraries. You can probably find some of it online if you wanted to dig into it further.

Henry09—would you mind providing some support for your allegations?

Is this the same FDR who “put people to work” building the Japanese-American internment camps?

Is this the same New Deal that ordered orange crops burned - knowing that people were starving - under the false premise that destroying crops would make prices go up?

Is this the same New Deal that went after small poultry companies and tried to put them out of business over one “bad chicken”?

Is this the same New Deal that fired workers at Casa Grande simply because they suggested that hand milking cows wasn’t the most efficient thing to do?

I fail to see how these types of policies aided economic recovery in any way.

That said, if massive deficit spending were the key to prosperity like Krugman and Bernanke say then poverty would’ve been eliminated a long time ago…

Krugman seems to reaching a bit because unemployment was still very high by ‘37 - ‘38, around 17%... and I’m not sure where that Berkeley economist is getting his 9 -10% growth figures… unemployment was 23% in ‘33, 21% in ‘34, back to 23% in ‘34, 21% in ‘35 and down to “only” 15% in ‘36/‘37… so FDR’s first term can hardly be called a spectacular success in that regard.

With that all said, a lot of the blame also can be pinned on Hoover. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff was a disaster for the economy and he should have vetoed it. 

But that doesn’t give a free pass to FDR and the New Deal. If anything, FDR is certainly not above criticism because the New Deal was anything but utopian… and failing to recognize the mistakes of the New Deal and being honest about what didn’t work, or just ignoring those facts because it doesn’t fit your preconceptions… all the while demonizing business and calling for a “New New Deal” is unlikely to really achieve anything.

jackpine savage—well, I sure as hell am not! LOL! I mean, I cried all thorough statistics—it was one of only three “math” related courses i had to take in my graduate work. The others, “Tests and Measurements” ,and, “Geometry” ( I chose—for a reason!), I rather enjoyed.

If my father hadnt previously taught Statistics, I would have failed it. It was my only “B”.I actually cried and ran out of the final, and called a friend, who told me to get my ass back in there, get out my calculator and FINISH IT!...

I am still crap at calulating—but, I did enjoy the “gist” of statictics…and one principal is, look at a bar or pie chart—-look further. Look at a small sample—same. I also liked statistical significance—but not calculating it! I went to a hillbilly grade school and never “got” math…maybe ADD???

Another concept that seems to get lost on very well educated people is, “margin of error”—or perhaps it is written so small that they dont see it—there is a reason for that. I looked at some surveys for the MOE in the polls this election and l had to laugh my ass off.

Lou Dobbs is almost worth a watch just to see it—“95% of Amerkins say that illegal aliens are the cause of all of the problems…” LOL!

But my “calculating” sucks. AND—I hate it…

But, I guess I was saying that “numbers” can only “approach” accuracy, or, even, statistical significance. They cannot be “exact”.

KDelphi,

Agreed, but i was thinking more along the lines of calculus than statistics.

As i see it, the social sciences attempted to make the fields within them more “scientific” because science began to be held in higher esteem than “philosophy”.  Statistics were/are the means for that.  And they are regularly skewed to produce a desired result.

Maybe calculus can be skewed too…i’m hardly a math guy.

And tax cuts are the big 40% answer AGAIN?!

Yeah, clash, you raise good points.  The central problem seems to be the one that Anarcissie raised, that people simply don’t want to supervise their firms or power strutures.

Somehow we have got to get people to supervise their powerful or the same old thing will happen over and over, the leaders will unite to promote their own interests under the guise of promoting those of the general population.

Of course if earthpeople were taught in school from childhood what has happened when a calss-based power structure rules, than the possiblity exists that they would be more attentive.  But this can only happen if the population is in power in the first place, because the power structure controls the truth organs.

I don’t have an answer, Clash,  which puts me in the majority.  The only thing to do, I guess, is to keep raising the question in a variety of ways historically until some kind of useful consensus emerges.  The power question may be the key to our historial survival.

Folkftruther; 

The economic power structure seems to control both the, political and social power structures at this moment as it has historically. Will progressive liberalism be enough to overcome and redistribute this power?  Will gaining power in one of the other structures allow for gains in the first? So far the control of economic power has been absolute and by the few. Even if the power is redistributed won’t there still be those that will chose control over free will?

The severity of repressive “law’s” enacted in the past 20 years have split liberalism from radicalism, does one rely on the other?  These structures seem to change only when force is applied and then the change seems to not to be long lasting, as soon as the most powerful structure aligns its self with one of the other structures it becomes dominant again. (So far the economic structure has come out on top each time.)

Folktruther - boy are you right about ‘funny’ numbers.  For the last 5 years:  Unemployment was 8 percent, not 5; inflation 5 percent, not 2;  average annual growth 1 percent, not 3-4.

My favorite is a gimmick called the hedonic adjustment (to keep the CPI computation low.)  It’s an ‘adjustment’ by which additional quality is attributed to a product or service which makes it more ‘expensive’ than its price reflects.

Your right, KDelphi, power lies in both words and numbers.  The major numbers of the GDP, unemployment, growth and inflation are total fabrications, the latter two statistics cooked under the Clinton administration.

What FDR’s plans did was to prolong capitalism—it was his intention. If people want to save it now, they have to throw the poor some more crumbs….

jackpine savage—“You may not be able to prove anything, beyond the shadow of a doubt, in the hard sciences…but mathematics is a much more precise form of communication than words” Agree with everything, except this…statistical analysis can be skewed almost anyway you like. I am not certain that that is what you are referring to—but, I have had people try to tell me that “numbers dont lie”—they sure do! Well, at least people can manipulate them to make them tell any lie they want.

Why dont we look at what CAUSED the Great Depression—and is causing it again!

But Anarcissie-political and social structures will always exist outside the market, and will regulate it.  It can never be free of power relations.  Money is a power commondity as well as an economic commodity.

The only question is how power is to be distributed.  Power is the fundamental question, not freedom. Give the people power and they will attain their own freedom.

felicity—There are two problems with considering whether communism or laissez-faire capitalism work: one is that neither has ever existed on a large scale, and the other is that the meaning of work—to produce a desired result—depends on who’s doing the observing and who’s doing the desiring.

In any case, capitalism should not be confused with markets.  They are two different things.  Capitalism is the ownership and control of the means of production by a private elite, and implies the exploitation of the labor power (and consuming power) of a working class.  No market is required.  Markets are arenas in which people, not necessarily capitalists, exchange stuff they value less for stuff they value more.  To the extent that people are forced into a market (because they are, say, operating in the role of employees and need wages) the market isn’t actually free.  Nor is it free if any of the parties have a monopoly position.  However, that is not because of the market, it’s because of social structures and forces which exist outside the market.

Folktruther - some times it’s in one’s best interest to save his neck and to hell with his brilliant theory.

(Galileo, after he had capitulated before the court trying him, was heard to remark under his breath as he left the courtroom, “But it (the earth) still moves.”)

Jackpine, Anarcissie—Anarcissie’s quote of Hobbes, that the geometry books would be burnt if euclcidan geomtry were found to subvert the powerful,  is not quite correct, as Jackpine suggested.  Non-euclidian geometry, one version of which includes Hobbes assertion,  WAS IDEOLOGICALLY REPRESSED for centuries, in my opinion for the same reason that the heloicentric theory was ideologically repressed. 

Gauss,for example, a math Hall of Famer, did not publish his non-euclidian researches for fear of what his colleagues would say.  Cantor, for example, was assailed as a ‘charleton’ for considering infinity as whole instead of a developing process.

So it was not necessary to burn the books. The Educated censored themselves.  But what happened historically, is OUTSIDE THE RECOGNIZED SYSTEM an army officer Bolyai and a Russian, Lobachevsky, formulated it anyway.  And then Gausse’s student, Riemann, legitimated it in the West.

Uou have to understand that this was all Educated ideology that repressed it,  not specialist mathematics.  If Archemedes, another math Hall of Famer, when he was drawing his lines in the sand in the -3rd century, would have conceived one drawn to, say, China, following the earth’s surface, it would be obvious that the shortest distance between two points is not a straight line, but an idealized arc of a great circle.

So Hobbes was wrong.  It is not mecessary to burn the books if one can ideologically miseducate the writers of them.

You do have to wonder about the intelligence of anyone who believes a compulsive liar like Limbaugh or O’Reilly.

anarcissie and jackpine - and I’ll add that in theory, theory and practice are the same thing but in practice they’re not, especially when the human animal is involved and especially in the latter.

Pure communism, in theory, mirrors a kind of utopia.  Free-market, laissez-faire capitalism, in theory, does also.  And we know how well they work and worked in practice.

You may not be able to prove anything, beyond the shadow of a doubt, in the hard sciences…but mathematics is a much more precise form of communication than words.  And i’m not sure that Hobbes was entirely correct.  The men of power had a vested interest in keeping the earth at the center of the solar system/universe.

Words are slippery, hence serious philosophical writing exerts a great deal of effort just to define words within the context of the writing.  And the variables inherent in the social sciences are not easily separated in order that they may be experimentally tested. And then, of course, there’s emotion…

But the higher/deeper hard science goes, the more it finds that the world it’s exploring is not so cut and dried.  Is it a wave or is it a particle?  “We’ll just have to look and see…oh shit, it’s only one or the other because we looked.”

That situation is present in the social sciences from the beginning.

Felicity,

It’s so funny that you mentioned this:

“That said, right-wingers are beginning to sound even more deranged than usual.  According to Limbaugh, Hannity and Kurtz, Democrats ‘forced’ banks to make bad loans (sub-prime mortgages) to people who couldn’t afford them - omitting the fact that the ‘victimized’ banks made astronomical sums of money in the process. Makes me positively weep for them…”

Well, not really ‘funny’ as in ha-ha, because of how outrageously deranged it is..but, I was reading this very same tripe right here on Truthdig (posters of course) back when the latest crash and bail was all the talk. (despite the fact that we’d already been in a DEPRESSION for a year)

In fact, that’s been ‘all the rage’ from the likes of those you mentioned, but I wouldn’t have known it, since I never listen to them. Nope. I was reading that same stuff right here. It’s all the fault of these ‘deadbeats’ that the Democrats FORCED the BANKS to finance, and they even quote a fair lending practice citation as the proof of it.

In other words, the very acts that were FINALLY enacted in a *few* places, to allow people historically discriminated against, (ie, people of color) to obtain mortgages, is now being twisted (via multiple implications) into being some sort of ‘equal opportunity’ law that FORCED the banks to provide loans to those they wouldn’t otherwise lend to.

That is EXACTLY what they are implying, and of course it’s the ‘democrats’ fault. There was a time, (at least in Texas and a few other states of their ‘persuasion’) when the banking industry had a rather detailed ‘coding’ system for screening applications. Various and sundry ways to indicate to the person up or down the chain of command, that the applicant was a person of color. (NO! I’m not making this up). In fact, I was clueless myself for years, and then I had to do some self-directed research (nobody will tell you anything there) on an unrelated matter, only to find this whole complex system of Modern Jim Crow. It about knocked me right off my feet! I felt so naive!! Not that there was ever any reason that I thought I should know it, since I wasn’t in the ‘banking industry’. (Thank God!!) This was all behind the scenes stuff.

Eventually, a few friends helped me research it in depth. It’s enough to make a grown woman cry, seeing as how this is still going on as we speak. And that’s with everything from mortgages to insurance to health care, to just about every service that an allegedly ‘civil’ and modern society has. Just thinking about it makes me depressed, and I didn’t have too far to go to get there, because of all this INSANITY.

In fact, REALLY depressed…after reading through all of the comments, because you all are mostly so on the mark with the horrors of the reality. NOT that I didn’t know them myself, but just look at the difference between ‘then’ (2000) and ‘now’.  It’s like something out of some Stephen King novel.  I swear I was starting to feel like some of the persecuted population of so many other countries. (It doesn’t help that I’m homeless either).  So when I talk about a grown woman crying, it wasn’t the same ‘weeping’ that you have for those banks who literally ROBBED so many people.

But then, I read down even further, and came to this from nrobi:

By nrobi, January 2 at 7:39 am #
•  “The “Revisionist History Syndrome,”  also known as, “right hand syndrome,”  is the Far Right Wing Nuts way of masturbating themselves into oblivion.”

And, I howled with laughter. Thanks nrobi. This (along with the rest of your post) says it all.
My only question is: WHEN will they finally make it to OBLIVION?? Is there ANYTHING we can do to help them?

You can’t prove anything in the mathematical sense in the physical sciences, either.  What you can do is show that a theory explains or predicts phenomena with a higher degree of precision than any other comparable theory.  Less precision is available in the soft sciences, but the same general principle exists.  The problem with the soft sciences is that so many people have an interest in distorting and obfuscating the evidence and the conclusions the evidence may lead to.  As Hobbes noted, if men of power had an interest in the sum of the interior angles of a triangle being other than 180 degrees, the books of geometry would be burned.

Foltruther,

Thanks, though all i really did was expand on Anarcissie’s original wording.

The problem is that religion (which i have a high regard for, philosophically) tends towards delusion*...which is the fundamental problem, is it not? 

The question becomes how to throw a social science revolution on par with the the scientific revolution that you compared it to.  Difficulty arises from the other fundamental problem of politics/social “science”: you can’t really prove anything within the field.

Or perhaps making everyone who treats these matters religiously prove their beliefs rigorously would do the trick.  But my guess is that it would only lead to more offended religiosity; snakes like this have a large appetite for their own tails.

*It’s not always delusional, not for the ones who have the individualized religious experience; the actual, mystical insight is a wisdom forming event.  But those who believe in the event rather than experience it tend towards the delusional…and they greatly outnumber actual mystics.

The “Great Depression” ended when the millions of debtors were eliminated. The power structure financed both sides in WWII , a look into the Bush family is very revealing. Many other corporation’s and elite families also were involved; these ties are easily searched out and have been well documented.

So then the solution should be simple eliminate the debtors and money won’t have to grow on trees. Those to go first should be those most in debt.

That’s an interesting and useful thought, Jackpine, that the political has descended ideologically to the religious.  In feudal polities, which were primarily agricultural, religious delusions were used to legitimate Divine and earthly power.

But in modern capitalist power systems, this is largely being done by the mainstream poltical rhetoric and analysis.  Political deludions have replaced religious delusions, and political perverted values have replace religious perverted values.

Just as their were scientific revolutions in the history of the natural sciences to subvert the religious preconceptions and presuppostions underlying the conception of physical and biological reality, a conceptual revolution in social science must subvert the political delusions imposed on the population by the Educated classes to legitimate their power.

I congratulate you on your insight.
This would change our political and social worldviews of reality, as revolutions in the natural sciences transformed our physical and biological worldviews.

Whether FDR’s economic measures ‘cured’ or ‘prolonged’ the Depression, hundreds of thousands of Americans were going hungry, many to the point of starvation. His programs at least kept them alive, restored their dignity by giving them jobs, kept them from having to beg on the streets.  But to the capitalist?  So what.

That said, right-wingers are beginning to sound even more deranged than usual.  According to Limbaugh, Hannity and Kurtz, Democrats ‘forced’ banks to make bad loans (sub-prime mortgages) to people who couldn’t afford them - omitting the fact that the ‘victimized’ banks made astronomical sums of money in the process. Makes me positively weep for them.

By fuelcellboy, January 2 at 2:07 pm

How much pork is your congressional sending your way? How much is earmarked for you? Have you got your ‘private’ corporation to perform public service and what is it and what does it do? Something like those honest and patriotic ‘private contractors’ KBR or blackwater or a host of others the have performed so ‘brilliantly’ in the middle east wars at the expense of the taxpayers.
You and most every other milton friedman fuck boy salivating for the ‘unfettered market’ system just somehow conveniently forget that with no regulations and oversight and prosecutions, the crooks come out like maggots to bloody meat as has been demonstrated by recent history and the current state of the economic affairs to date. And that will leave the few, which you seem to crave to be one of or are one, that will have the money and the others that don’t. You and most everybody else don’t see the real problem and never will because the reality of it goes so far against the grain of what the ‘oldtimers’ and other have been hoodwinked into believing, even by that most venerable of institutions, organized religion, that the real path to a functioning society is too horrific to give it a thought. But for a very quick peek, over populated and over organized. That should sound familiar.

Anarcissie,

I got the same feeling from Sirota’s piece: offended religiosity.  When what we need is a serious discussion about the roots of the problem and possible solutions to it.  We aren’t going to get either of those so long as both sides keep elevating politics to the level of belief…actually it is the descent of politics to religiosity, but offending the gatekeepers of political discussion never gets one anywhere.

Any dunce should know that spending on infrastructure is an investment which makes the economy more productive, providing middle class jobs that can’t be exported, and over time underwriting conversion to a clean-energy economy. Each dollar spent yields some $3.50 in economic stimulus via the multiplier.

We need public investment of some $1 trillion per year to turn things around. Already loss of jobs and production is taking billions out of our economy.

Mitch McConnell is the typical neocon who would rather continue to divide our country in the spirit of the Bush crime family than help economic recovery for all.

jackpine savage:
’... The question that never seems to be asked by either the left or the right is, “Where will this money come from?”  Are we growing it on trees?

And what will it be used to stimulate?  Financial services and consumer spending account for something like 80% (maybe more) of US GDP.  We got into this mess by borrowing in order to spend.  Will doing the same thing correct the problem? ...’

Those are valid points, and you will not find anyone answering them.  It has been said that generals are always ready to fight the last war, but it seems that everyone else is, too.  The discussion of Iraq has been overshadowed by the War in Vietnam, although the events differ profoundly.  And now, the present financial and economic crisis is being overshadowed by the Great Depression, even though it differs signficantly from the Great Depression.  But I wanted to slag Sirota out for his offended religiosity about the New Deal without bringing up these distractions.

Current events must really be maddening for the Neo Cons…and they will do anything, tell any lie possible to prevent the loss of their political power…

to manipulate, and misdirect the public is job number one..

they really have no desire to learn from history, but rather only the desire to use it to twist things, in favor of their so called free market agenda…..

Of course they want to stop reform, because it means and end to their economic reign of terror..

God forbid maybee someone at justice department will decide to start enforcing the Sherman Anti Trust act again…

If the Reforms work, it won’t belong until they start talking about the need to privatise social security, and undo the safety net yet again…

Conservatism, is a religion, not based on fact,  but soley on belief…

and conservatives will never let the facts interfer, with their view of things…never…

they will take their delusions to their grave without ever recanting, you can bet on it…

Because the media gives credence to the lies of far right spokespeople, this is an encouragement of the continuation of lying.

Abject lying has never been part of a free society because the media were more watchdogs of truth and more representative of the people.

Now the corporations dictate news content because of their balance sheet.

That is why neocons so boldly lie to achieve their anti-people agenda.

Look where we are as a result of the failure of the fourth estate: we got 8 years of a would-be dictator who is totally deluded and incompetent; if not for the economy we could have gotten a Bush with lipstick as VP and an angry old unprincipled man; we got a failed global economy, and a plutocratic country.

The times that led up to the “New Deal” and today’s times are mirrors in that both were represented by unparalleled avarice, and no over-site or regulations on big money run amok!  Did the “New Deal” work, yes, why because money was put into the hands of the “average American”!  Now back in those days the “average American”, didn’t have the massive amount of debt that today’s American does!  And I’m hopeful that as Americans see monetary increases, they will pay down those debts, and not try to get themselves back into more debt!  But as Americans that have watched the prices of everything except their paychecks rise, it is about time that the “average American” get a foothold going up! 

The Republicans have not other choice but to sing the same worn out refrain, because they have no alternatives to suggest!  Fear that is the only song they know, and since it worked so well in the past especially for their narrow minded, hypocritical, moral authoritarian base they can only continue!  Progressives can only continue to spread the truth, and not succomb to perversions/reversions of history to which the right kneel in prayer!

Japan, in its recent severe downturn, made the same mistake as FDR when he listened to conservatives.  Japan pulled back, and its economy resumed going downhill.

If you are like me you found PULP FICTION to be a fascist film which treated the accidental murder of an African-American youth in the back of a car as a humorous incident.

If you are like me you’ve heard the reasoned arguement that Roosevelt didn’t end the depression until he deceived the American people into WW2.

If you are like me you consider Sirota a sell-out truther who fakes combating the gibberish of the right to deceive the people of the left.  No doubt to legitimate Obama.

It may well be true that the vast majority of the American people think Roosevelt cured the depression.  They have been systeamtically misinformed by schoolbook history and truthers like Sirota.  If you are like me you would agree with Anarcissie’s commnent and read outside sources excluded by the mainstream truth. Including the mainstream progressive truth.

Purplewolf: I thought you were kidding about FOX and Lincoln leaving office… You weren’t! Baier must be related to Sarah Palin! And the other talking head just listens to his drivel! Just when I thought I had heard everything!

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/01/25/bush-lincoln-fox/

Keynesian economics did indeed end the Great Depression.  World War II was the biggest public works program in history.

This FDR Democrat (me) says Keynsian “deficit spending” will not work. The problem we face is deeply structural and, indeed, cannot be resolved by the U.S. alone.

Furthering this thought, take a closer look at the Reconstruction Finance Corporation of the 1930s and 40s. This agency effectively functioned as a national bank, issuing credit for much needed projects and economic stabilization. See also HR 3400 for a modern-day implementation.

Forget about Fox News. Those who did nothing but prop up the now-bankrupt arrangement have no solutions to offer. And their resistance ought better be framed in language implicating treason to the principle upon which the United States is founded (eloquently spoken in the single-sentence Preamble to the U.S. Constitution).

My suggestion is you ask those who claim “the New Deal prolonged the Great Depression” whether the investments made in the national economy were instrumental in defeating fascism in Europe and imperialism in Asia? The answer could only be “Yes.” Therefore, the benchmarks by which mouthpieces of the moneychangers (like Fox) measure the Depression’s longevity might need broadening. In fact, considering matters of principle, I am sure of it. You might cause a little “deer-in-the-headlights” in return, saying such things on national TV.

This matter of principle is no quaint relic. Before our very eyes we see the nature of tyranny against which this nation rebelled. It is time truth about this got out. The adversary to liberty is EXTRAORDINARILY weak and vulnerable. Attack!

All of it is beside the crucial point.  The United States was not terribly indebted when it borrowed its way out of the Great Depression (whether it worked or not).

The question that never seems to be asked by either the left or the right is, “Where will this money come from?”  Are we growing it on trees?

And what will it be used to stimulate?  Financial services and consumer spending account for something like 80% (maybe more) of US GDP.  We got into this mess by borrowing in order to spend.  Will doing the same thing correct the problem?

I don’t care if the New Deal alleviated or contributed to the Great Depression, because the situation then and the situation now are more different than they are alike.  Beating a dead horse to make a political point isn’t going to do us a lick of good one way or the other.

The problem with pointing out the revisionist history of the far right to pundits like Faux News is that thier version of history has nothing to do with truth or facts. Neocons do not require truth and facts. They have something that supersedes such things… Belief.

If they believe something strong enough, facts are simply an impediment to their idea of “truth.” Basically, anything that supports their twisted ideology is the “truth.” Facts are simply dismissed as “liberal media bias.”

Allan, haven’t you heard who was selected for the latest blame for the depression? It is all Obama’s fault according to the spin from the very crowd that caused it. And Obama is not even in office yet.

Fox news, the same network where one of their talking heads made the statement that President Lincoln was not as popular in his second term in office and left it in shame. They failed to realize or correct their lie that Lincoln was assassinated and that is how he left office. At least they were called out to the truth on a rival network.

Just because conservatives decide to re-write history/proven fact to what they want it to be, does not make it true or reality, no matter how hard they try.

Republican neocons spend their days on ridiculous revisionist history, in order to screw democracy and the America people. Thank heaven that Bush/Cheney and their thugs will be out of office in 18 days, hurray!! Three to eight trillion taxpayer dollars given to financial institutions, that are run by crooks, is fine by them, but any stimulus money going directly to the people is verboten.

Actually, the conservative, monetarist approach is being tried in the current crisis—and is failing.  The money supply is being dramatically increased, but things are not improving.

The conservative approach does not work in an extremely bad downturn because you cannot get interest rates much lower than they are now—around zero percent.  And lenders will not take the risk of lending money for little or no return.  And investors will not invest in the real economy when it is declining.

It is the conservative approach that has failed.

The proposition that Roosevelt’s programs actually prolonged the Great Depression is hardly new or shocking, and a proper response to it is not a profession of religious faith or an appeal to authorities as in Sirota’s article but a reasoned argument from the facts.  Possibly the author may need to spend some time reading stuff he doesn’t already agree with for a change.

Straight from the lips of the hypocritical, drug addict, Rush Limbaugh! I suppose Bill Clinton caused the depression, right Rush?

Only in America, can a worthless turd like you find an audience! Good thing there are enough homophobic racists, still fighting the civil war or your dumb ass would be out of a job!

Overall, I think Roosevelt’s terms as president were good for the country and some good things were done to bring the economy back but his pretending not to know the japanese were on the way to attack pearl harbor so it would seemingly put the US in the right to join in WWII shows how devious this politician was, if this is true as documentation has shown. But his family connections with big banking interests are a bit vague to me as at that time the petered out economy needed help and fdr had to have dealt with that most evil and criminal of institutions the federal reserve to ‘borrow’ the money and get us in a war for those elite that benefit so much from our economic demands of our country and the acts of war that feed their coffers. Just makes me wonder how much of our republic has had any legitimacy from its beginning. The accumulative that has brought us to the here and now and just how are we to take control as a country that appeared in the beginning as being able to do so. Do things like we did at the beginning as shut down several central banks that wanted possession of the control of our money which the founding fathers knew were NOT for the good of a strong nation. This is a major ‘house of cards’ that if our elected persons ever got a set of balls and shut down the fed, stopped the world bank and the IMF from doing business here, then this country may have a chance of regaining a strong economy.

The “Revisionist History Syndrome,”  also known as, “right hand syndrome,”  is the Far Right Wing Nuts way of masturbating themselves into oblivion. This way they do not have to face the truth that the policies of the neo-conservative punidts and thinkers are absolute and utter nonsense.
Much like the story, Alice In Wonderland, by Lewis Carrol, the neo-conservative way of thinking and acting has its roots in the magic mushrooms and topsy-turvy world that Alice inhabited in her quest for the dream world that was, “through the looking glass.”
In a world where the neo-cons believe white is black and black is white, the outsourcing of jobs is good for the economy, giving tax breaks to the wealthiest of Americans is the right thing to do, while taxing the poorest ? has benefits for those who pay not a single dime in taxes.
Another thing that scares me is the fact that the Far
Right Wing Nuts, can at will on their mouthpiece, Faux News Channel, change the historical facts as they have appeared for the last 100 years, believing that whatever they say, whether truth or not is complete and utter fact. And this without anyone to rebut and show the truth as it really is.
We, the people, must needs be armed with the true historical records, so that in the case of the historical revisionism that is the Right Hand Syndrome of the neo-cons, we can rebut these utterly absolute nonsensical revisionist assumptions with the truth.
I am ashamed that people actually go onto this network thinking they are going to win an argument or shed the light of truth to the vast minority of Far Right Wing Nuts. No such thing ever happens! These shows have built into them the strategy of lying and revisionist history, so that only one viewpoint is actually heard and nothing else matters.
It is high time that the progressives among us boycott this mouthpiece for the Far Right Wing Nuts and refuse to play their game. We have the bat and the ball, let them try to play without us and it will
truly be the pundits and critics of the truth preaching to the choir about how the American people are “being fooled,” by the progressive element in our
society.

David, you on Fox no-news? Silly man. Have you not figured out that Fox revisionist history pundits are liars? Every history book that is a text proclaims as you said, the ” New Deal” was the saving of America, and General Smedley Butler’s memoirs show how dangerous the economy was. You are again right on when you stated, Roosevelt was scared and backed off the progressive movement and the economy started to tank, again. The conservative just don’t get it or better yet don’t want to get it.

The Rouse is Up boys & girls…Americans have been oversatiated with your perpetual spin.
‘Truth speak’ (double Speak) has run it’s course, Now there is the inevitable Backlash.
What could be a silver lining is the fact that many americans Now no longer rely on the mouthpieces to explain ANYTHING. We go back an ‘google’ Shit they claim, or just REMEMBER the truth.
The more they Proclaim their ‘insight’ the more Americans consider them suspect…Call US Jaded, Or Engaged.
The more they Talk the faster their Demise.
Just as McCain failed to realize that Video records his Words & actions, The Right Wingers have failed to realize the vast numbers who use ‘google’ as their Reference Library. Keep talking you are helping US lefites prove our point about your doctrines.