Arguably the most vital, enduring, and effective feature of FDR's New Deal was the creation of the FDIC (federal bank deposit insurance), which effectively ended the age of massive bank runs that was the key ingredient in every depression in U.S. history.
I was stunned to learn (after reading two biographies of FDR over Spring Break) that Roosevelt was VEHEMENTLY opposed to the creation of federal deposit insurance, and repeatedly threatened to veto any banking legislation that contained deposit insurance!
The creation of the FDIC was largely the work of a Senate Republican, Arthur Vandenburg, and a House Democrat, Congressman Steagall. As the result of crafty parliamentary maneuvering of FDR's vice-president, John Nance Garner (who believed fervently in deposit insurance but apparently no other government activities), Vandenburg's FDIC was tacked on as an amendment to larger banking legislation, which FDR reluctantly signed only when confronted with the likelihood that his veto would suffer an override.
The most successful aspect of the New Deal was in large measure the work of a Senate Republican, and was fiercely opposed by Dr. New Deal himself!
I was flabbergasted. I double-checked and triple-checked the story. It's true!! All this time I'd given FDR great credit for the far-seeing wisdom of his FDIC proposal, when it was never his proposal, and he kept threatening to strangle it in its cradle!
The things that history nerds find compelling...
FDR, patron saint of contemporary liberalism, was decidedly NOT sympathetic to the struggle of teachers.
In Jonathan Alter's eminently fair and fascinating biography of Roosevelt and his First Hundred Days in office, The Defining Moment, we come across this rather striking nugget...
"Shortly after the Inaugural, Josephus Daniels, FDR's old boss at the Navy Department, wrote him to urge that he join a campaign to prevent cutting teachers' salaries even further...Roosevelt's reply to Daniels was cool: ' The past decade has seen a very large increase in teachers' salaries, and even if all the teachers were cut 15 percent like government employees, they would still be getting relatively more than in 1914!' In April, five thousand unpaid Chicago teachers occupied banks and City Hall...The president was unmoved."
Interesting...
Evidently the Celtics have decided that the absence of KG from their playoff lineup is the cue to check out and pack it in for the summer...or in their case, spring. This morning's 105-103 sleepwalking loss to the Bulls at home in Boston should grievously offend all fans of what used to be the NBA's proudest franchise.
You're still getting paid millions (OK, maybe not you Marbury...), could you please exert some effort and show some skill to justify your exalted position?
I was more than a little incensed by an article in today's San Francisco Chronicle discussing the dispensation of federal budgetary largesse to buttress the battered finances of California public schools.
While state schools chief Jack O'Connell exulted over the arrival of $2.6 billion from Obamanon and the feds ("We're happy people...we jumped on it right away, and we're going to make it very easy for school districts to access these funds."), the article sounded a note of grim futility in subsequent paragraphs.
According to the Chronicle, "...though the federal money is specifically meant to help districts rescind layoffs, many school officials say they're hesitant to use the one-time money for ongoing costs like salaries at a time when state finances are so uncertain."
The article quotes an East Bay school district superintendent, Dick Nicoll, who said that if state voters refuse to approve the six ballot measures in the May 19th election, "the stimulus money will be of little help."
"...most districts are going ahead with their final layoff notices," Nicoll is quoted as saying in the article.
So what was the point of the stimulus check from D.C.? What WILL that one-time fed money be spent on, if not to retain teachers and stanch the bleeding employment stats for California?
The purpose of a Keynesian measure such as deficit spending is to reduce unemployment. That's why we're all supposed to grit our teeth and blithely accept the whopping increase in the national debt that accompanies this deficit spending. If we still get increased unemployment to go with our increased debt, what was the point of the exercise?
Maddening...
Government always finds a need for whatever money it gets.
-Ronald Reagan
Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
-Ronald Reagan
Much has already been written and said about the unlikely Scottish sensation that is The Legend of Lothian, Susan Boyle, and I doubt that I can add to the sheer tonnage of eloquence and analysis that has flowed forth in the wake of her fateful audition in Glasgow last Saturday. I sheepishly confess that I've probably watched the Youtube clip about ten times in the past five or six days, and it's only in the last twenty-fours that I can get through it without getting misty-eyed and choked up.
It is the most transcendently inspiring thing that I've seen this year (I know that we're all supposed to say Obamanon's inauguration was the most moving moment of 2009 , but no, for me it's Boyle...), and for that matter, it's the most genuinely, thrillingly, inspiring thing that I've seen in years.
When I first watched the clip I was cringing for this poor woman who I was sure was about to crash and burn before an openly jeering audience and visibly contemptuous judges, her meager dignity and self-esteem splattered all over Her Majesty's Telly...
And then, she opened her mouth...and in approximately four seconds she had knocked the entire jaded lot of them on their ass...a crowd that could not have been more vicious when she first walked on stage abruptly erupting in adulation before the onslaught of her thermonuclear talent...the facial expressions of each of the judges in that moment, stunned, then rapturous, utterly priceless...
What followed is the stuff of folklore, only this time there is celluloid evidence...
What resonates with me about The Boyle Moment, the reason that it grabbed me by the throat, is that it represents the triumph of true, undeniable ABILITY in the face of staggering preconceptions and prejudices...The most sturdy SUBSTANCE prevailing over meretricious style...with a vengance. The victory of raw, unadulterated, ungroomed, untutored TALENT over the most cruel doubt and dismissal. Susan Boyle may have a face for radio, but she has the voice of an archangel, and if there is divine intervention in human affairs, her performance on a silly British TV show was the Almighty reaching down and backhanding a culture besotted with the superficial and ultimately irrelevant.
Many have remarked in the past few days that Boyle is The Cat Lady made good...On the contrary, she reminds me of somebody who would have been calming frightened children in a bomb shelter during The Blitz...But then again, we are a world comfortably removed from such testing times...
It is supremely heartening to know that in a world as image-obsessed as ours, we still possess the capacity to recognize and be awed by the appearance of true ability, regardless of the appearance of the vessel containing that talent. Perhaps that is why in spite of my loathing for Andrew Lloyd Webber and Simon Cowell I find The Boyle Moment to be so truly momentous...
According to a Rasmussen poll of the Lone Star State just released today, 75% of Texans would vote to stay in the Union. 31% of those Texans polled said that Texas has the right to secede...which indicates some glaring chasms in the Texas school system...or some psychiatric medical needs among the Texas population...
Lest my pronouncements come off like snobbery, let me hasten to add that I shudder to think of what the percentages would be if those same questions were put to Californians...
People!...There is no right to secede!!...Secession is the essence of treason and anarchy!!!...The Civil War settled this issue for all time!!!!...Read a damn history book!
Celtics great Danny Ainge had a mild heart attack today. He didn't even know KG was out of the playoffs. Perhaps the coronary was an omen. He is reported to be recovering.
As a member of the best starting five in the history of basketball (Isiah Thomas' assessment, but mine as well), Ainge was a three point threat second only to Larry Legend himself. Hope he's better soon.
Losing DJ was sad enough...
Doc Rivers finally came clean and admitted what I suspected weeks ago...KG is done for the year...no playoffs...
Celts maybe make the Conference Finals, whereupon they are thumped by Cleveland.
Garnett has had fourteen great seasons, an MVP award, and a world championship...and his career is over...
It is always regrettable when my predictions prove accurate.
Perhaps my response to Governor Rick Perry's secessionist remarks was so heated because after three years of avid viewing of "Friday Night Lights" I have come to worship the Lone Star State from afar...so much so that I might contemplate actually getting on a plane (I detest flight) to go visit the place...as long as they're still part of the Union...
Texas deserves better!
You're probably weary of this topic, and perhaps you're thinking that my wrath is disproportionate to the offense...but here's the thing...I spend an inordinate amount of time attempting to drill some basic historical concepts and precepts into the heads of otherwise distracted teenagers...So when I hear allegedly well-educated politicians spouting pure guano that is wholly bereft of historical or legal validity, I get exercised...It's as if they're deliberately promulgating ignorance and know-nothingism...
So here's the last word on secession...
U.S. Supreme Court ruling, 1869, Texas v. White. Supremes held that Texas had remained a state of the United States ever since it first joined the Union, despite its joining the Confederacy.
FURTHERMORE...it held that the Constitution did not permit the states to secede from the United States...
Here endeth the lesson Governor Perry...
Texas Governor Rick Perry, apparent champion of nullification and secession, as well as an ostensible Republican, would do well to consider another Republican president's views on nullification and secession...in fact, the very FIRST Republican president...
"In contemplation of universal law, and of the Constitution, the union of these States is
perpetual...It follows...that no State, upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of
the Union; that resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally void; and that acts of
violence, within any State or States, against the authority of the United States, are
insurrectionary or revolutionary."
"The States have their status in the Union, and they have no other legal status. If they
break from this they can only do so against the law and by revolution."
"Plainly, the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy."
"The principle of secession itself is one of disintegration, upon which no government can
possibly endure."
"The distinct issue, 'immediate dissolution or blood'...embraces more than a fate of these
United States. It presents to the whole family of man the question of whether a
constitutional republic or democracy--a government of the people, by the same people--
can or cannot maintain its territorial integrity against its own domestic foes. It presents
the question whether the discontented individuals--too few in numbers to control the
administration,...can...break upthe government and thus practically put an end to free
government upon the earth. It forces us to ask: 'Is there, in all republics, this inherent
and fatal weakness? Must a government, of necessity, be too strong for the liberties of
its own people, or too weak to maintain its own existence?"
-Abraham Lincoln
150 years ago, another governor of Texas weighed in on the general subject of secession and the specific topic of Texas leaving the Union...Rick Perry apparently missed this day in class...along with Chuck Norris...and Glenn Beck...Here now, the original Texas statesman's thoughts on secession...
No other political idea has contributed to the death of more Americans than secession and its evil sibling, nullification...over 620,000, give or take...more than all of the other combat fatalities in all of America's wars put together...
The Republican governor of Texas, one Rick Perry, declared today to a cheering throng of Lone Star teabaggers and other assorted nimrods that Texas has the right to leave the Union. He strongly implied that if the current oppression from D.C. persisted, Texas might well opt to revert to its pre-1845 status...
There's a lot of opportunity for cheap sarcasm here, but I'm not really in the mood, what with the lackluster performance of the Celtics and the presence of the Gilmore Girls on my TV screen...
Let's just cut to the chase...Rick Perry is a horse's ass. Sorry to use such clinical terminology, but nothing else is really appropriate. Quick history lesson for the dreamy, craggily handsome talking hairdo who passes for Texas' Chief Executive...
YOUR PARTY FOUGHT AND WON THE CIVIL WAR TO PERMANENTLY STAMP OUT THE VERY IDEA OF SECESSION!!!!!!!!!!!
So there's that modest morsel of idiocy...furthermore, Rick Perry is undoubtedly engaged in this bit of of posturing as part of a bid for the White House in 2012...never mind that the country may have had enough of Texas governors in the Oval Office in the near future...Governor Perry, why do you want to be president of a country that you would destroy with secessionitis and your revival of nullification? The very oath of the presidency (of which you're probably oblivious) requires you to uphold the Constitution, which precludes guano such as the nullification which you espoused today...
By opening his mouth today and trying to reincarnate himself as a cross between the Marlboro Man and John C. Calhoun, Rick Perry permanently disqualified himself from serious consideration for the presidency of anything...go join Sarah Palin on the sidelines Rick...
