help again-replying to a local cretin

[w8liftinglady]

http://www.thedailylight.com/articles/2008/03/15/opinion/doc47dc6b53a6af0702333295.txt
To the Editor,

I heard a New York Senator comparing President Bush to President Hoover in an interview, and I would just like to ask a few questions. During the Hoover administration, were there no Democrats in the Senate or House? As a matter of fact, which party was in the majority of each? When government fails it is easy to blame one man, but in truth there are many who have earned that blame. As I was not yet born in 1929, all I know about that time is what I’ve learned from others. What the old timers have told me about what happened during that time period was that the very wealthy, who were burdened by greed, were not putting their money back into circulation. In other words, they stood back and let businesses fail in order to make their many dollars be able to purchase more products for much less money. I see the same thing occurring today among some of the very wealthy; but you might want to check their party affiliation. You might just discover that many are liberal Democrats!


some things just defy,yet demand a comment

[lonestarnot]

1. Well why would greed know party lines?

I'm gona get it now hugh?

[iamjoy]

2. Iraq

The major reason we are in this financial mess is Iraq. You can debate whether what George HW Bush called "voodoo economics" - a policy now subscribed to by his son - helps or hurts the economy. But you cannot deny that throwing $3 trillion (largely borrowed from foreign interests) at a war does not do our economy any good. Yes, Democrats voted for that ware because they believed our President when he told them that its costs would be paid for with oil revenues.

It is unfair to compare Bush to Hoover. The worst we can say about Hoover and the economy is that he did nothing while it all went to hell in a handcart. But at least Hoover didn't help drag the cart there.

[magellan]

3. Total bunk

First of all, the Great Depression didn't start with the stock market crash in 1929. The market was the last thing to react to a huge disparity of income between the rich and middle classes that grew during the 20s. Sound familiar? Back then it was driven by industrialization.

Calvin Coolidge (Republican) and his conservative-controlled Congress were in charge from 1923-1929, very business friendly, very in tune with the 1-percenters, the have and have-mores. Wikipedia says "(Coolidge's) reputation underwent a renaissance during the Reagan administration".

Bush** has done a good job posing as Coolidge too.

Ever hear of the Revenue Act of 1926? It reduced federal income and inheritance taxes dramatically.

"Andrew Mellon, Coolidge's Secretary of the Treasury, was the main force behind these and other tax cuts throughout the 1920's. In effect, he was able to lower federal taxes such that a man with a million-dollar annual income had his federal taxes reduced from $600,000 to $200,000. Even the Supreme Court played a role in expanding the gap between the socioeconomic classes. In the 1923 case Adkins v. Children's Hospital, the Supreme Court ruled minimum-wage legislation unconstitutional."

Even then the Republicans were partial to their rich business friends. It was good to be wealthy back then as now.

Hoover was elected in 1928 and the crash happened on his watch, but it was brewing for some time before then, and he flailed about trying to stem the bleeding. We all know how that worked out for him and the Republicans. FDR.

Do GOPers care at all about history except as they can twist it to fit their bias?

[Adsos Letter]

4. Well, magellan...

let us pray we get something even close to an FDR this time through, and not something closer to the 1930's Italian/German alternative.


I will admit, I am not nearly so positive as I would like to be on the prospect of this...

[magellan]

5. Quite frankly, neither am I

The prospects are dismal. I hope to be happily surprised, but the way things are going I'm not at all sure we'll even have elections. The Dems seem oblivious to the seriousness of the situation, not to mention how their failure to prosecute the creatures in the WH may embolden those criminals to new excesses.

Heaven help us all.

[intaglio]

6. How to reply?

Firstly the GOP were in charge of Congress in 1929 and it seems that a previous poster was correct regarding the tax cutting that Hoover's Treasury indulged in. Add in the fake "War on Alcohol" (Prohibition) and you have a good metaphor for today. The wealth gap today is higher than at any time since 1928 http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/03/29/163/

Now because you know that the wealthy 1% lost ground compared to the poor because of the 1929 crash the idea that they were holding back to gain wealth is a lie

[Rabrrrrrr]

7. It's how Republicans will blame a Democratic president for all evils,

but if the president during a time of shit is Republican, then they blame the Democratic congress. And if the Congress isn't majority Democratic, then the fault lies with obstructionist Democrats.

Consider the whole first six years of Shrubbie's presidency, with Republican majority in everything - and the Democrats still get blamed for anything that went wrong. Assuming the Republicans are even willing to admit that anything did go wrong.

[mwb970]

8. It's Americans vs. Republicans now.

The Republicans have been in control for seven years and their ruination of America is almost complete. But don't count us Americans out yet! We're waking up, albeit slowly, to the horrific evil that threatens us from within. This fight ain't over.

[nealmhughes]

9. No fair overaching comparison of the D or R parties in the 1920s and today can be made.

Portions of each party may seem similiar, such as the idolization of the large corporation over small business and the individual, a lack of concern over regulation of business, etc. but in hindsight, there were probably as many Progressives in each party; witness both T. Roosevelt, then W. Wilson taking on the mantle of leader of Progressiveness.

Both parties were still very much regional parties: NYC, Chicago, and the other large cities were very much solidly Democratic, as was the South -- and not like today with "red state" or "blue state" divisions, one simply had a slim chance to win local elections if they dared run on the Republican ticket in most of the South or Chicago.

Of course, a strong personality and personal magnetism as well as a good message could thwart this: witness Roosevelt's popularity in the South until it was discovered he had invited Booker Washington to dine at the White House. His mother being a Georgian might have had a bit to do with that, of course, for his initial popularity in Richmond.

The Democratic Party was the party of tacit and overt support for segregation, while the Republican tried to maintain a facade of support for Civil Rights, but in reality, there was little movement save a few isolated "victories" such as Freguson v. Plessey.

The realignments of Roosevelt and Nixon have almost inverted the parties' historic rhetoric on race! At one time, soon after its foundation, the Republican Party claimed to be the party of "Free Soil and Free Labor," the champions of the little man against the entrenched wealth and slave labor-based capital eminating from the South and New York. In reality, Lincoln was a corporate lawyer who made a fortune off of rail road companies suits!

The soi disant leaders of each party has and often will claim one thing and do another when it comes to platform v. actual overt and covert support for the status quo, so long as their friends, families and cohorts are making money.

I would not even dare to compare the parties of the 1920s and 2000s as merely continuations of the same old same old. Many of the issues have changed, and others are again re-emerging, and a comparison is only mental masturbation or source of a frustrated seminar paper's composition. One can find rhetoric to support the RP as the Party of Big Busines, and other sources to support the view that the RP was actually for small business. Going into race, rhetoric and deeds were equally noxious and marked by a silent agreement on inaction on both sides, overall.

In short, this is the type of question that a professor loves to give a PhD or MA candidate!