There is no way we are going to get a Republican President any time soon.

[Jim in CT]

Originally Posted by RIJIMMY

One group chanted, "No cuts, no fees. Education must be free," as they sat crossed-legged on the black-and-white tiled floor of the statehouse.

This is liberalism sumed up in one sentence, thusly...

"gimme, gimme, gimme..."

"Education must be free"...

Education will be free when teachers are unpaid volunteers. These protesters should go to the next Board of Education meeting in their towns, and watch what happens when they suggest that we don't spend a cent on education. I was on my town's board of education, and when I suggested that teachers switch from pensions to 401(k)s like the rest of the planet, they told me that clearly I hate children.

Obviously, these idiots don't mean that education should be "free" - they know that education costs money. They just don't feel like they themselves should bear any of that cost. Rather, others - preferably mean, white, male conservatives - should pick up the tab for them to go to college.

Gimme, gimme, gimme...

What a way to go through life. And here in my state of CT, I lose to these people every single year. The only question is the magnitude of the rout.

Education should be free. These same kooks are the ones who want to give teachers guaranteed jobs for life, ridiculously bloated pensions, and Cadillac healthcare benefits. That's what liberals want. Oh, and one more thing...THEY don't want to have to pay for it.

Calgon, take me away...RIJIMMY and ScottW, how exactly, do we lose to these people??

[justplugit]

Originally Posted by Jim in CT

This is liberalism sumed up in one sentence, thusly...

"gimme, gimme, gimme..."

True,and it all started with Franklin D Roosevelt's second Bill of Rights.

The Founding Fathers Bill of Rights included the following:

Right to equal freedom, independent of other human beings.
Right to aquire property.
Right to Relegion according to the dictates of conscience.
Right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Roosevelt's Second Bill of Rights in 1944 were:

Employment with a living wage.
Freedom from unfair competition and monopoly.
Housing
Medical care
Education
Social Security

So therefore we have this huge Government who conrols close to
50% of our economy and now THEY want Gimme -Gimme -Gimme.

[JohnnyD]

Originally Posted by justplugit

True,and it all started with Franklin D Roosevelt's second Bill of Rights.

FDR's "New Deal" was a nice idea, but was the beginning of the demise in this country. It helped create what I call the "Career Welfare" class - people on welfare that have no desire to get off.

[Jim in CT]

Originally Posted by JohnnyD

FDR's "New Deal" was a nice idea, but was the beginning of the demise in this country. It helped create what I call the "Career Welfare" class - people on welfare that have no desire to get off.

Agreed, to a point. I could be wrong, but from what I know, at least FDR wasn't in the habit of giving checks to people for doing nothing. Back in his day, in order to get government relief, able-bodied folks had to do something to earn that money, through things like the Civilian Conservation Corps.

No one (without extenuating circumstances) should get a check just for sitting on their couch. You should either have to be in school, or doing some work for somebody.

You're dead-on about crippling these people by making them addicted to welfare, which provides zero economic upward mobility. The ironic thing is that (in my opinion) a tea party-type economic plan (stimulating job growth by nurturing the free market) is exactly what these folks need to get on the path to prosperity, but they've become addicted to welfare, and Obama is now telling them that wealthy people are the reason they are poor...a despicable tactic. One person's wealth does not create someone else's poverty (except for criminals obviously).

[scottw]

Originally Posted by Jim in CT

Agreed, to a point. I could be wrong, but from what I know, at least FDR wasn't in the habit of giving checks to people for doing nothing. .

haven't you ever wondered how it was that FDR managed to get re-elected while presiding over a depression? do a little reading...notice that Obama is routinely announcing more and bigger government handouts and help...each day something new...this will accelerate, FDR engaged in massive government handouts to "buy" votes in order to get re-elected...Obama is doing and will continue to do the same....

Buying Votes

In this madness, the New Dealers had a method. Despite its economic illogic and incoherence, the New Deal served as a massive vote-buying scheme. Coming into power at a time of widespread destitution, high unemployment, and business failures, the Roosevelt administration recognized that the president and his Democratic allies in Congress could appropriate unprecedented sums of money and channel them into the hands of recipients who would respond by giving political support to their benefactors. As John T. Flynn said of FDR, “it was always easy to interest him in a plan which would confer some special benefit upon some special class in the population in exchange for their votes,” and eventually “no political boss could compete with him in any county in America in the distribution of money and jobs.”

In buying votes, the relief programs for the unemployed, especially the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the Civilian Conservation Corps, and the Works Progress Administration, loomed largest, though many other programs promoted the same end. Farm subsidies, price supports, credit programs, and related measures won over much of the rural middle class. The labor provisions of the National Industrial Recovery Act and later the National Labor Relations Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act purchased support from the burgeoning ranks of the labor unions. Homeowners supported the New Deal out of gratitude for the government’s refinancing of their mortgages and its provision of home-loan guarantees. Even blacks, loyal to the Republican Party ever since the Civil War, abandoned the GOP in exchange for the pittances of relief payments and the tag ends of employment in the federal work-relief programs. Put it all together and you have what political scientists call the New Deal Coalition—a potent political force that remained intact until the 1970s.


creepy huh?

[justplugit]

Originally Posted by JohnnyD

FDR's "New Deal" was a nice idea, but was the beginning of the demise in this country. It helped create what I call the "Career Welfare" class - people on welfare that have no desire to get off.

Bingo JD, the "Nice to Have" has now become "the expected" and "I'm entitled."

I am all for helping the truly needy, as I think most American's are,
but we are now at a point with the spending and borrowing we will eventually
all be needy and looking for the Gov't to bail us out.
There will be nothing left except the burden of it all on our kids to try and survive.
The American Mind used to want the American Dream, to leave a better life for our children.
Now it looks like the Dream is done and there's very little left of the American Mind.

[zimmy]

Originally Posted by JohnnyD

FDR's "New Deal" was a nice idea, but was the beginning of the demise in this country.

Yeah, you are right. I would have much preferred the standard of living before the new deal.

[RIJIMMY]

Originally Posted by zimmy

Yeah, you are right. I would have much preferred the standard of living before the new deal.

During FDRs terms every single center of industry and technology across the entire globe was destroyed except one. The United States. The new deal didnt raise the standard of living, having the US as the only country that could produce anything was.

[JohnnyD]

Originally Posted by zimmy

Yeah, you are right. I would have much preferred the standard of living before the new deal.

Correlation does not imply causation.

Originally Posted by RIJIMMY

During FDRs terms every single center of industry and technology across the entire globe was destroyed except one. The United States. The new deal didnt raise the standard of living, having the US as the only country that could produce anything was.

Beat me to it. The US was a manufacturing powerhouse.

[detbuch]

Originally Posted by zimmy

Yeah, you are right. I would have much preferred the standard of living before the new deal.

Actually, the standard of living before The New Deal was better than during the heyday of The New Deal before FDR's death. Just about all his policies failed to rectify the depression, prolonging it well beyond those of the past. Not only were his policies counter-productive, they were punitive toward business and created the uncertainty that dissuaded investors and kept business from expanding. And prices were intentionally and artificially raised, making it even more difficult for consumers. FDR's passing and the beginning of a rollback of some New Deal policies and the friendlier face of new administrations toward business was the ticket to renewed prosperity, as well as the fact that, as RIJimmy and JohnnyD said, our infrastructure and manufacturing facilities had not been destroyed by the War as they had been in the rest of the advanced world. There have been a few new books on FDR and The New Deal which have revised perspectives from a more objective view than the panegyrics of historians such as Schlesinger, Commager, Morris, and Leucthtenburg.

I've just finished reading NEW DEAL OR RAW DEAL, by Burton Folsom, Jr. It's an easy, very interesting and very informative read. I highly reccommend it for an alternative insight to the accepted orthodoxy. And it has parallels to our current economy and to some of the administration's solutions and methods. It is also interesting to note that FDR was the main facilitator and creator of our current "fourth branch of government," the massive, bureaucratic, administrative State which essentially replaces the Consitution as the process by which we are governed.