To Aslan

[AnIrishmannot2brite]

Please provide the public at large here with an example of a conservative state which has withstood the tests of time inside a democracy.

That's the key: INSIDE A DEMOCRACY!

We can find plenty of conservative states that have tyrants or clergy running the show. Just find ONE (1) where the general citizenry has endorsed a successful conservative state.

Examples of largely democratic states: Canada, UK, USA, France, Israel, Australia, Germany.

At this stage of the game if you can not find one democratically run conservative state? Well this is absolute proof that conservatism is and always has been a FAILURE.

So kindly put up or shut up.

Other truths:

Water seeks it's own level.

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Conservative states, by design flaw must always inevitably fail.

Again: Find us just one. Take as much time as you need. You'll need it.

Iceland doesn't count. While conservative their economy is beyond bankrupt.

[aslan]

Please provide the public at large here with an example of a conservative state which has withstood the tests of time inside a democracy.

That's the key: INSIDE A DEMOCRACY!

We can find plenty of conservative states that have tyrants or clergy running the show. Just find ONE (1) where the general citizenry has endorsed a successful conservative state.

Examples of largely democratic states: Canada, UK, USA, France, Israel, Australia, Germany.

At this stage of the game if you can not find one democratically run conservative state? Well this is absolute proof that conservatism is and always has been a FAILURE.

So kindly put up or shut up.

Other truths:

Water seeks it's own level.

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Conservative states, by design flaw must always inevitably fail.

Again: Find us just one. Take as much time as you need. You'll need it.

Iceland doesn't count. While conservative their economy is beyond bankrupt.

If it were not for periods of conservative leadership in this country, American democracy would have failed long ago.

FDR almost ruined us in the great depression, which was a simple depression everywhere else in the world, but an extreme depression here, due to the reckless spending and high taxes which are the earmark of the failed, over and over, Democratic philosophy.

We are headed for an extreme end of game showdown with the enormous social security and medicare shortfalls and now the accelerated national debt that are ours courtesy of stupid Democratic initiatives in the past, ans which will be augmented more in the present administration than ever before.

Now there are two kinds of Democrats, and many grades in between--there are the Democrats whose maternal instinct for the poor and disadvantaged throws caution to the winds in reckless abandon for a good cause, one that I too embrace, but reckless nevertheless in failing to work within the country's means, setting us on a course for economic destruction; and then there are the Democrats who "use" programs for the poor and disadvantaged, and even the well off but greedy of all classes, in order to buy votes with no thought but to line their own pockets under the guise of working for their numerous good causes and projects. The former I can understand, and even put in with them a bit, so long as they don't go overboard as they tend to. The latter are a despicable lot who work off the old Jimmy Hoffa mold, one for you, one for me. You make me rich and I'll look out for you, up to a point, that is. These are the Democrat gangsters who will say anything, do anything, to grab and maintain power. When push comes to shove, they could care less about your rights, your entitlements, your well being, or the welfare of the country, until and unless it endangers their power.

Conservatives, and not all Republicans are conservatives, are the most unfairly maligned group on earth. They believe is fiscal responsibility, which means they must often say no to peoples' wishes that the government spend, spend, spend, especially on them.

They believe in free trade and markets where prices are set by supply and demand and where hard work and ingenuity are amply rewarded. They are often characterized as being against all forms of regulation, but that simply is not true. They believe that certain limits must be placed on the business sector in the interest of the public good, such as laws that prohibit the forming of monopolies.

Conservatives are also for small government whenever possible, allowing people the latitude to solve their own problems, and detesting an intrusive form of government that tries to have a hand in every aspect of a person's life.

Conservatives stand for true liberty and independence.


Liberals stand for government control of one's life "for our own good," smothering one's impulse to stand up on one's own, forcing what they think is best on its citizenry. It is a misguided, and often abused, desire for harmony and a great society at the expense of the very people they seek to help.

Don't tell me about what form of government is best. Liberal ideas are best left in academia, along with plans for communist states and other platonic fantasies, and conservative ideas and philosophies should govern with their down to earth, common sense approach and their pragmatic and workable solutions. Europe is a disaster, and now you insane liberals are trying to shape this country in the mold of their abject failure. I welcome the Obama era. It will give America such an overdose of what your left wing nuts want to do to this country that America will finally have a reason to rise up and reject the entire insane thought that we can have, and are entitled to, something for nothing. The nausea is already beginning to form in the pits of our stomachs--as the sickness spreads and worsens, we will either find the strength to resist and throw it off, or we will die, just another victim of liberal insanity. I'm betting that America will throw off this sickness that promises everyone everything, a veritable garden of eden, and pick themselves up and work it out by the sweat of their brows with good old-fashioned conservative principles. Crawl, crawl, crawl away on your belly, oh wily serpent, AnIrishmannot2brite!

[aslan]

PS'--We don't have a democracy, we have a Republic.

[shadroch]

Do you even believe your lies?
Lets look in the way back machine and see what was going on in the rest of the world during our great depression, shall we?
Lets swing by Berlin. see that man pushing a wheelbarrow down the street? look,it's loaded with money. Huge bills. He must be a business owner on his way to the bank. See how he stops off at the market,and emerges with a loaf of bread? How can this be? Germany isn't nearly suffering from a great Depression, only that silly USofA with its liberal President.
Where to next? Rome, with its valiant great Leader, the Mu Man himself? How about Vienna, where they were forced off the gold standard. Or Paris, the city of lights? Canada? Moscow? Mejico City? Rio?

There were two countries whose economy did fairly well during the depression. Nazi Germany, after Hitler overthrew the Republic, became a dictator and siezed the wealth of the Jews and Imperial Japan who thrived by raping their nearby neighbors.

[aslan]

Do you even believe your lies?
Lets look in the way back machine and see what was going on in the rest of the world during our great depression, shall we?
Lets swing by Berlin. see that man pushing a wheelbarrow down the street? look,it's loaded with money. Huge bills. He must be a business owner on his way to the bank. See how he stops off at the market,and emerges with a loaf of bread? How can this be? Germany isn't nearly suffering from a great Depression, only that silly USofA with its liberal President.
Where to next? Rome, with its valiant great Leader, the Mu Man himself? How about Vienna, where they were forced off the gold standard. Or Paris, the city of lights? Canada? Moscow? Mejico City? Rio?

There were two countries whose economy did fairly well during the depression. Nazi Germany, after Hitler overthrew the Republic, became a dictator and siezed the wealth of the Jews and Imperial Japan who thrived by raping their nearby neighbors.

Yes, I believe the US suffered more from the great depression than any other nation, and that was due to the fact that FDR prolonged it by his spending money and raising taxes. It was WWII that finally brought us out of the depression.

[aslan]

FDR's Raw Deal Exposed
Chicago Sun-Times ^ | 9.30.03 | Thomas Roeser
Posted on Saturday, August 30, 2003 2:59:46 PM by Cathryn Crawford
FDR's Raw Deal Exposed
August 30, 2003
BY THOMAS ROESER
For 70 years there has been a holy creed--spread by academia until accepted by media and most Americans--that Franklin D. Roosevelt cured the Great Depression. That belief spurred the growth of modern liberalism; conservatives are still on the defensive where modern historians are concerned.

Not so anymore when the facts are considered. Now a scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute has demonstrated that (a) not only did Roosevelt not end the Depression, but (b) by incompetent measures, he prolonged it. But FDR's myth has sold. Roosevelt, the master of the fireside chat, was powerful. His style has been equaled but not excelled.

Throughout the New Deal period, median unemployment was 17.2 percent. Joblessness never dipped below 14 percent, writes Jim Powell in a preview of his soon-to-be-published (by Crown Forum) FDR's Folly: How Franklin Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression. Powell argues that the major cause of the Depression was not stock market abuses but the Federal Reserve, which contracted the money supply by a third between 1929 and 1933. Then, the New Deal made it more expensive to hire people, adding to unemployment by concocting the National Industrial Recovery Act, which created some 700 cartels with codes mandating above-market wages. It made things worse, ''by doubling taxes, making it more expensive for employers to hire people, making it harder for entrepreneurs to raise capital, demonizing employers, destroying food . . . breaking up the strongest banks, forcing up the cost of living, channeling welfare away from the poorest people and enacting labor laws that hit poor African Americans especially hard,'' Powell writes.

Taxes spiraled (as a percentage of gross national product), jumping from 3.5 percent in 1933 to 6.9 percent in 1940. An undistributed profits tax was introduced. Securities laws made it harder for employers to raise capital. In ''an unprecedented crusade against big employers,'' the Justice Department hired 300 lawyers, who filed 150 antitrust lawsuits. Winning few prosecutions, the antitrust crusade not only flopped, but wracked an already reeling economy. At the same time, a retail price maintenance act allowed manufacturers to jack up retail prices of branded merchandise, which blocked chain stores from discounting prices, hitting consumers.

Roosevelt's central banking ''reform'' broke up the strongest banks, those engaged in commercial investment banking, ''because New Dealers imagined that securities underwriting was a factor in all bank failures,'' but didn't touch the cause of 90 percent of the bank failures: state and federal unit banking laws. Canada, which allowed nationwide branch banking, had not a single bank failure during the Depression. The New Deal Fed hiked banks' reserve requirement by 50 percent in July 1936, then increased it another 33.3 percent. This ''triggered a contraction of the money supply, which was one of the most important factors bringing on the Depression of 1938--the third most severe since World War I. Real GNP declined 18 percent and industrial production was down 32 percent.''

Roosevelt's National Recovery Administration hit the little guy worst of all, Powell writes. In 1934, Jacob Maged, a 49-year-old immigrant, was fined and jailed three months for charging 35 cents to press a suit rather rather than 40 cents mandated by the Fed's dry cleaning code. The NRA was later ruled unconstitutional. To raise farm prices, Roosevelt's farm policy plowed under 10 million acres of cultivated land, preventing wheat, corn and other crops from reaching the hungry. Hog farmers were paid to slaughter about 6 million young hogs, protested by John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. New Deal relief programs were steered away from the South, the nation's poorest region. ''A reported 15,654 people were forced from their homes to make way for dams,'' Powell writes. ''Farm owners received cash settlements for their condemned property, but the thousands of black tenant farmers got nothing.''

In contrast, the first Depression of the 20th century, in 1920, lasted only a year after Warren Harding cut taxes, slashed spending and returned to the poker table. But with the Great Depression, the myth has grown that unemployment and economic hardship were ended by magical New Deal fiat. The truth: The Depression ended with the buildup to World War II.

[aslan]

New Deal or Raw Deal? How FDR's Economic Legacy Has Damaged America by Burton Folsom Jr.

Reviewed by Eric Daniels
Seventy-five years have elapsed since Franklin Delano Roosevelt introduced the flurry of government programs he called the New Deal. In the years since, most historians have lavished FDR with praise, claiming that his bold leadership helped to pull America out of the Great Depression. Even those who acknowledge the failure of particular Roosevelt-era programs claim that FDR instilled hope and confidence in the American people, and that his economic failures were the result of his not going far enough in his policies and not spending enough money.


Today, amidst calls for increasing government regulation of the financial industry and increasing government spending through stimulus packages, the New Deal is making a comeback. In light of the recent mortgage crisis and economic downturn, pundits are calling for a revival of 1930s-style policies. Daniel Gross claimed at Slate.com that New Deal reforms were “saving capitalism again.” Newly minted Nobel economist Paul Krugman issued calls in the New York Times for President-elect Obama to mimic and expand FDR’s response to the Great Depression. And a recent Time cover called for a “New New Deal”—and featured an iconic photo of FDR, with Obama’s face and hands substituted.


As the Obama administration begins to implement its economic plan, Americans would do well to reexamine the history of the original New Deal and its effects. Though most historians rank FDR as a great president, some, including Burton Folsom Jr., boldly dare to ask if “the New Deal, rather than helping to cure the Great Depression, actually help[ed to] prolong it” (p. 7). According to Folsom, a professor of history at Hillsdale College, the answer is clearly the latter. In New Deal or Raw Deal? How FDR’s Economic Legacy Has Damaged America, he challenges the myth that FDR’s New Deal represents a shining moment in American history. As long as the mythology surrounding the New Deal remains intact, he notes, “the principles of public policy derived from the New Deal will continue to dominate American politics” (p. 15), costing Americans billions of dollars and further damaging the economy. . . .

[aslan]

How government intervention -- not private enterprise -- both triggered and prolonged the Great Depression
And why Democratic plans for a "new New Deal" would have the same catastrophic effects today
New Deal or Raw Deal? How FDR's Economic Legacy Has Damaged America

by Burton Folsom, Jr.

The greatest and most enduring economic myth of the twentieth century is the idea that Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal pulled America out of the Great Depression. This fantasy is so prevalent even today that liberal Democratic leaders in Congress call for a "new" New Deal to lift the incomes of the middle class and shelter American workers from the competitive forces of a global economy. Now, in New Deal or Raw Deal?: How FDR's Economic Legacy Has Damaged America, Burton Folsom makes the case that government intervention, not private enterprise, both triggered and prolonged the Great Depression -- and that much of what is threatening American prosperity today has its seeds in the government programs of the '30s and the New Deal legacy FDR left behind.


Folsom rigorously reviews the history and leaves no doubt to anyone with a clear and open mind that the New Deal was in every objective way a failure. New Deal or Raw Deal? reveals:

• Why the Smoot Hawley tariff of 1930 (signed by Herbert Hoover), which raised the import tax to the highest level ever, may have been the single most economically destructive law ever to pass the U.S. Congress. . .so far
• How taxes and tariffs triggered the great stock market collapse in 1929 -- then held the head of the economy underwater for another dozen years
• How the Depression lasted eight years after FDR was elected and his first hundred-day assault on free markets was launched
• How the tax rate under Roosevelt soared to almost 80% and then 90%, thus smothering any possibility of a recovery -- a history lesson that Democrats would be wise to memorize
• How, in the decade of the '30s, U.S. industrial production and national income fell by almost one-third
• How the minimum wage actually increased unemployment in the 1930s -- which averaged greater than 12% during all of FDR's first two terms in office
• Social Security: why "pay as you go" worked like a dream when there were 40 workers per retired person, but now looks like an Enron accounting fraud to today's young workers -- every two of whom will eventually subsidize every one retiree
• FDR's dishonorable tactics as president: how he used the IRS as a tool to go after political enemies; how he doled out economic relief along pure patronage lines; how he attempted to pack the courts, how he ran on a platform of lower taxes and a balanced the budget, yet did opposite once in office, and more
• How FDR's popularity had more to do with his gift as an orator, his personal charm and his manipulation of the press than the popularity of his programs
• How the Democrats' current laundry list of "new" New Deal programs -- from cap and trade anti-global warming regulations, to 52% marginal tax rates, to socialized health care, to $300 billion of new spending programs every year -- would cause the U.S. economy to crater

"The irony of the New Deal is that this agenda, based on good and honorable intentions to help the poor and unemployed, caused more human suffering and deprivation in America than any other set of ideas in the twentieth century. And this book proves it. Democrats make many of the same lofty promises today: They promise to put equality above growth. Yet they are likely to discover, as we learned from the New Deal, that this redistributionist agenda produces neither." -- STEPHEN MOORE, The Wall Street Journal editorial board, from his foreword

[aslan]

Check out those unemployment figures throughout the first eight years of FDR's presidency. In 1929 we had the an unemployment rate of 1%, lower than the world index, and by 1938 it was nearly 20% (19.8%), HIGHER THAN THE WORLD INDEX of 11.4%.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjYhBtWxs3c

[aslan]

How FDR's New Deal Harmed Millions of Poor People
http://www.cato.org/dailys/12-29-03.html ^
Posted on Monday, December 29, 2003 12:55:56 PM by Stew Padasso
December 29, 2003
How FDR's New Deal Harmed Millions of Poor People by By Jim Powell


Jim Powell, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, is author of FDR's Folly, How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression (Crown Forum, 2003).
Democratic presidential candidates as well as some conservative intellectuals, are suggesting that Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal is a good model for government policy today.



Mounting evidence, however, makes clear that poor people were principal victims of the New Deal. The evidence has been developed by dozens of economists -- including two Nobel Prize winners -- at Brown, Columbia, Princeton, Johns Hopkins, the University of California (Berkeley) and University of Chicago, among other universities.



New Deal programs were financed by tripling federal taxes from $1.6 billion in 1933 to $5.3 billion in 1940. Excise taxes, personal income taxes, inheritance taxes, corporate income taxes, holding company taxes and so-called "excess profits" taxes all went up.



The most important source of New Deal revenue were excise taxes levied on alcoholic beverages, cigarettes, matches, candy, chewing gum, margarine, fruit juice, soft drinks, cars, tires (including tires on wheelchairs), telephone calls, movie tickets, playing cards, electricity, radios -- these and many other everyday things were subject to New Deal excise taxes, which meant that the New Deal was substantially financed by the middle class and poor people. Yes, to hear FDR's "Fireside Chats," one had to pay FDR excise taxes for a radio and electricity! A Treasury Department report acknowledged that excise taxes "often fell disproportionately on the less affluent."
Until 1937, New Deal revenue from excise taxes exceeded the combined revenue from both personal income taxes and corporate income taxes. It wasn't until 1942, in the midst of World War II, that income taxes exceeded excise taxes for the first time under FDR. Consumers had less money to spend, and employers had less money for growth and jobs.



New Deal taxes were major job destroyers during the 1930s, prolonging unemployment that averaged 17%. Higher business taxes meant that employers had less money for growth and jobs. Social Security excise taxes on payrolls made it more expensive for employers to hire people, which discouraged hiring.



Other New Deal programs destroyed jobs, too. For example, the National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) cut back production and forced wages above market levels, making it more expensive for employers to hire people - blacks alone were estimated to have lost some 500,000 jobs because of the National Industrial Recovery Act. The Agricultural Adjustment Act (1933) cut back farm production and devastated black tenant farmers who needed work. The National Labor Relations Act (1935) gave unions monopoly bargaining power in workplaces and led to violent strikes and compulsory unionization of mass production industries. Unions secured above-market wages, triggering big layoffs and helping to usher in the depression of 1938.



What about the good supposedly done by New Deal spending programs? These didn't increase the number of jobs in the economy, because the money spent on New Deal projects came from taxpayers who consequently had less money to spend on food, coats, cars, books and other things that would have stimulated the economy. This is a classic case of the seen versus the unseen -- we can see the jobs created by New Deal spending, but we cannot see jobs destroyed by New Deal taxing.
For defenders of the New Deal, perhaps the most embarrassing revelation about New Deal spending programs is they channeled money AWAY from the South, the poorest region in the United States. The largest share of New Deal spending and loan programs went to political "swing" states in the West and East - where incomes were at least 60% higher than in the South. As an incumbent, FDR didn't see any point giving much money to the South where voters were already overwhelmingly on his side.



Americans needed bargains, but FDR hammered consumers -- and millions had little money. His National Industrial Recovery Act forced consumers to pay above-market prices for goods and services, and the Agricultural Adjustment Act forced Americans to pay more for food. Moreover, FDR banned discounting by signing the Anti-Chain Store Act (1936) and the Retail Price Maintenance Act (1937).



Poor people suffered from other high-minded New Deal policies like the Tennessee Valley Authority monopoly. Its dams flooded an estimated 750,000 acres, an area about the size of Rhode Island, and TVA agents dispossessed thousands of people. Poor black sharecroppers, who didn't own property, got no compensation.



FDR might not have intended to harm millions of poor people, but that's what happened. We should evaluate government policies according to their actual consequences, not their good intentions.

[shadroch]

I hope I never live to be old, misguided and bitter.
Just saying.
Yes, I can see how America suffered more than,oh I don't know, China, Austria, Italy,Ethiopia, ect, ect. Hitler certainly did wonders for the German economy, eh? I wonder if those fully employed Indians in South Africa would have been willing to trade places with a few dust bowlers, or vice versa? I can see how the Spanish population would have preferred living thru the blitzkrieg than living in the Us.. What were those foolish Jews thinking, trying to escape the thriving German economy for a place in the ghettos of NYC?

[aslan]

I hope I never live to be old, misguided and bitter.
Just saying.
Yes, I can see how America suffered more than,oh I don't know, China, Austria, Italy,Ethiopia, ect, ect. Hitler certainly did wonders for the German economy, eh? I wonder if those fully employed Indians in South Africa would have been willing to trade places with a few dust bowlers, or vice versa? I can see how the Spanish population would have preferred living thru the blitzkrieg than living in the Us.. What were those foolish Jews thinking, trying to escape the thriving German economy for a place in the ghettos of NYC?

Gee, I didn't know the world consisted of four countries. Most countries came out of the depression in a few years. We pushed it from 1929 to the 1939. Our unemployment in 1938, 9 years after the crash, was 19.8% compared to a world index of 11.4%. Raising taxes doesn't help during a depression and neither does untargeted spending. If Obama was sincere, he would be doing most the spending now, not postponing it until 2011. My hunch is that he wants to create a feeling of euphoria by massive spending just before the next election.

Am I bitter? No. Maybe I would be if he were hurting me personally, but he isn't. I am concerned by the professional campaigners on both sides of the aisle who spend more of their focus on winning the next election than helping Americans. I am concerned when their help amounts to buying votes, and not real concern for the people they serve. I think it's time to vote everyone out and start from scratch. I would like to see a limit of four years for anyone, house or senate.

You will live to be old, if you continue to live. I don't resent that particular charge; it's beyond my power. Misguided? I guess that's a point of view. I used to think like you when I was younger. I believe we grow wiser with age, not suddenly misguided. And bitter? As I said before, I have nothing to be bitter about. Life has been good to me. Try honest. What I say is what I honestly believe from what I have seen.

Power corrupts. We can prevent a lot of that corruption by limiting terms of office to four years. We can prevent a lot of corruption by preventing corporate donations to political campaigns and by further limiting the size of campaign contributions in general. Congress doesn't act on such things because it is corrupt.

I can respect a man like Harry Truman who returned to Independence the same man he was when he left. I could, but I won't, say any more.

[shadroch]

Yes, Germanys unemployment rate was certainly lower than ours. Its amazing what a universal draft can do to unemployment.Then toss in a few concentration camps for the undesirables and suddenly you have full employment. Same thing in Italy.
Lets see, what else is left of Europe? Finland and Russia were at war, always good for lowering unemployment. So is Japan, China, Korea, and Spain. Yugoslavia,as usual is torn by fractional fighting.Whats left of the developed world? Canada, with its conscription? Holland? England and France? Poland? Hungry? Take a look at their economic states in the late 30s. Are you suggesting the European colonies in Africa, the Mid-east or Asia had better economies than the US?

[Katweezel]

Quote from Aslan:
..."In contrast, the first Depression of the 20th century, in 1920, lasted only a year after Warren Harding cut taxes, slashed spending and returned to the poker table. But with the Great Depression, the myth has grown that unemployment and economic hardship were ended by magical New Deal fiat. The truth: The Depression ended with the buildup to World War II."

Aha, now it all makes sense at last. GWB must have been trying to prevent another depression, by his very expensive (one way or another) adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. He may yet go down in history as an economic genius.

[aslan]

Yes, Germanys unemployment rate was certainly lower than ours. Its amazing what a universal draft can do to unemployment.Then toss in a few concentration camps for the undesirables and suddenly you have full employment. Same thing in Italy.
Lets see, what else is left of Europe? Finland and Russia were at war, always good for lowering unemployment. So is Japan, China, Korea, and Spain. Yugoslavia,as usual is torn by fractional fighting.Whats left of the developed world? Canada, with its conscription? Holland? England and France? Poland? Hungry? Take a look at their economic states in the late 30s. Are you suggesting the European colonies in Africa, the Mid-east or Asia had better economies than the US?

No one had so prolonged a depression as we did.