Showing posts with label Republicans. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Republicans. Show all posts

Friday, March 11, 2011

Herbert Hoover and the Labor Movement

Since the racist reactionary neo-conservative right wing, the so called Tea Party, has taken over the Republican party during the "worst recession since the Great Depression" and is behind the recent attacks on union rights and the public sector in Wisconsin and around the U.S.

Let's go back to the Republican President during that time; Herbert Hoover, and see what his relationship was to the Labor Movement of his day and his political economic solution to America's post war problems.

The whole of Hoovers chapter on Labour from his Memoirs is posted below.


My views on labor relations in general rested on two propositions which I ceaselessly stated in one form or another:

First, I held that there are great areas of mutual interest between employee and employer which must be discovered and cultivated, and that it is hopeless to attempt progress if management and labor are to be set up as separate "classes" fighting each other. They are both producers, they are not classes.

And, second, I supported continuously the organization of labor and collective bargaining by representatives of labor's own choosing. I insisted that labor was not a "commodity."

On September 5, 1925, I stated:
It is my opinion that our nation is very fortunate in having the American Federation of Labor. It has exercised a powerful influence in stabilizing industry, and in maintaining an American standard of citizenship.


He was on good terms with Samuel Gompers, the founder of the AFL and even asked for his help when Democrats were smearing him during an election. Gompers died in 1924, so this must have occurred during an election campaign earlier than the 1928 election.

"The Democratic underworld made a finished job at these low levels with several favorite libels Another attack was laid on with a defter touch. Some years before, I had taken an interest in a group of young men to enable them to buy a ranch near Bakersfield, California. From over devotion, they had named it the "Hoover Ranch" and had painted the name on the gatepost. Agents of the Democratic County Committee painted a sign "No White Help Wanted" and, hanging it on the gate below the name, had it photographed and distributed the prints all over the country. The reference was to the employment of Asiatics. The ranch never had employed any such help. Through my friend Samuel Gompers, I at once secured an investigation by the Kern County labor union leaders. Their report was an indignant denial, but we were never able to catch up with the lie. This smear was used for years afterwards."
The Presidential Campaign of 1928
Hoover was proud of his relationship to the American Labour Movement, and despite having to intervene in the Great Rail Strike he placed the blame squarely on finance capital, the bankers on Wall Street.

In a statement from his memoirs his critique of finance capital is as pertinent today as it was then.
He blames the continued conflict not on the owners or workers, Hoover was of the progressive school that saw government as a partnership of the productive classes; workers and owners. Instead he blames continued conflict in the rail industry on the Stock Brokers and Investment Bankers of the day.

It is a safe generalization for the period to say that where industrial leaders were undominated by New York promoter-bankers, they were progressive and constructive in outlook. Some of the so-called bankers in New York were not bankers at all. They were stock promoters. They manipulated the voting control of many of the railway, industrial, and distributing corporations, and appointed such officials as would insure to themselves the banking and finance. They were not simply providing credit to business in order to lubricate production. Their social instinct belonged to an early Egyptian period.
Hoover thus exemplified the early 20th Century American Producer ideal, that all Americans were producers, either farmers or workers, even the capitalist. Producerism resulted in political economic ideologies of wealth redistribution popular at the end of WWI; both Social Credit and the ideal of Cooperative Socialism.

Hoover offers a liberal / utilitarian compromise between these two. Hoovers ideas came from his engineering background, which was the new management ideal that developed immediately after WWI.

It is reflected in Hoovers ideal of a scientific solution to American economic problems.
typical is the picture of the engineer presented by J.E. Hobson, Director of
Stanford's Research Institute in the 1950:" the engineer is not playing with
scientific matters for the pleasure he derives from his studies he has a very
specific purpose an objective in mind: that of applying his technical knowledge
to an economic problem".

This concept of scientific social engineering is an American phenomena reflected in Scientific Management that resulted in Fordism , and the idea of Technocracy based on Thorstien Veblen's (a Wisconsinite)
"The Engineer and the Price System

Hoover was no Tea Party Republican, nor was he an Ayn Rand individualist nor did he embrace the economics of the Austrian School, he embraced scientific management of the political economy while having a similar distrust of finance capital as Veblen.


His American Individualism was not that of the American Libertarian Right nor the current Republican leadership.We would call him a Progressive Conservative in the Canadian context or a Liberal Democrat in the UK. Something Left Wing Historian William Appleman Williams goes to great pains to document.

The Postwar Need of the United States for Reconstruction

It was apparent that from war, inflation, over-expanded agriculture, great national debt, delayed housing and postponed modernization of industry, demoralization of our foreign trade, high taxes and swollen bureaucracy, we were, as I have said, faced with need for reconstruction at home. Moreover, not only were there these difficulties arising from the war but there was the letdown from the nation's high idealism to the realistic problems that must be confronted. Deeper still was a vague unrest in great masses of the people.
Our marginal faults badly needed correction. We were neglecting the primary obligations of health and education of our children over large backward areas. Most of our employers were concertedly fighting the legitimate development of trade unions, and thereby stimulating the emergence of radical leaders and, at the same time, class cleavage. The twelve-hour day and eighty-four-hour week were still extant in many industries.
During my whole European experience I had been trying to formulate some orderly definition of the American System. After my return I began a series of articles and addresses to sum up its excellent points and its marginal weaknesses.
Constantly I insisted that spiritual and intellectual freedom could not continue to exist without economic freedom. If one died, all would die. I wove this philosophy, sometimes with European contrasts, into the background of my addresses and magazine articles on problems of the day. Along with these ideas, I elaborated a basis of economic recovery and progress. I did not claim that it was original.2
It involved increasing national efficiency through certain fundamental principles. They were (a) that reconstruction and economic progress and therefore most social progress required, as a first step, lowering the costs of production and distribution by scientific research and transformation of its discoveries into labor-saving devices and new articles of use; (b) that we must constantly eliminate industrial waste; (c) that we must increase the skill of our workers and managers; (d) that we must assure that these reductions in cost were passed on to consumers in lower prices; (e) that to do this we must maintain a competitive system; (f) that with lower prices the people could buy more goods, and thereby create more jobs at higher real wages, more new enterprises, and constantly higher standards of living. I insisted that we must push machines and not men and provide every safeguard of health and proper leisure.
I listed the great wastes: failure to conserve properly our national resources; strikes and lockouts; failure to keep machines up to date; the undue intermittent employment in seasonal trades; the trade-union limitation on effort by workers under the illusion that it would provide more jobs; waste in transportation; waste in unnecessary variety of articles used in manufacture; lack of standard[s] in commodities; lack of cooperation between employers and labor; failure to develop our water resources; and a dozen other factors. I insisted that these improvements could be effected without governmental control, but that the government should cooperate by research, intellectual leadership, and prohibitions upon the abuse of power.
I contended that within these concepts we could overcome the losses of the war.
Aside from the better living to all that might come from such an invigorated national economy, I emphasized the need to thaw out frozen and inactive capital and the inherited control of the tools of production by increased inheritance taxes. We had long since recognized this danger, by the laws against primogeniture. On the other hand, I proposed that to increase initiative we should lower the income taxes, and make the tax on earned income much lower than that on incomes from interest, dividends, and rent.
I declared that we should have governmental regulation of the public markets to eliminate vicious speculation, and that we must more rigidly control blue sky stock promotion.
At that time these ideas were denounced by some elements as "radical."

2 Twenty years later an economic institution in Washington, with loud trumpet-blasts of publicity, announced this as a new economic discovery.


I came across the Hoover memoirs thanks to this interesting article;

John L. Lewis as Herbert Hoover's Secretary of Labor


In *The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: The Cabinet and the Presidency
1920-1933,* pp. 221-2, Hoover wrote as follows concerning his choice of a
Cabinet after his election in 1928:

"When I formed the Cabinet, I came under strong pressure to appoint John L.
Lewis Secretary of Labor. He was the ablest man in the labor world. In view,
however, of a disgraceful incident at Herndon, Illinois, which had been
greatly used against him, it seemed impossible. He, however, maintained a
friendly attitude. As he stated publicly in later years, 'I at times
disagreed with the President but he always told me what he would or would not
do.' Lewis is a complex character. He is a man of superior intelligence with
the equivalent of a higher education, which he had won by reading of the
widest range. He could repeat, literally, long passages from Shakespeare,
Milton, and the Bible. His word was always good. He was blunt and even brutal
in his methods of negotiation, and he assumed and asserted that employers
were cut from the same cloth. His loyalty to his men was beyond question. He
was not a socialist. He believed in 'free enterprise.' One of his favorite
monologues had for its burden: 'I don't want government ownership of the
mines or business; no labor leader can deal with bureaucracy and the
government, and lick them. I want these economic royalists on the job; they
are the only people who have learned the know-how; they work eighteen hours a
day, seven days a week; my only quarrel with them is over our share in the
productive pie.'

"If Lewis's great abilities could have been turned onto the side of the
government, they would have produced a great public servant."


(There is no "Herndon, Illinois"; this is obviously a misprint for "Herrin,
Illinois." See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herrin_massacre and
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/7847/massacre.htm for the details of the
1922 "Herrin massacre.")

Anyway, Hoover decided to re-appoint the Harding-Coolidge Secretary of Labor,
James J. Davis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_J._Davis But in November
1930, a second opportunity arose to appoint Lewis. Davis was elected to the
US Senate from Pennsylvania and Hoover had to choose a succesor.

According to Irving Bernstein, *The Lean Years: A History of the American Worker,
1920-1933*, p. 354

"The American Federation of Labor had traditionally regarded the Department
of Labor as its own and the Secretary of Labor as its voice in the Cabinet.
Gompers had played the decisive role in the creation of the Department on
March 4, 1913. No one from outside the AFL had ever been Secretary of
Labor...Shortly after the Davis announcement, [William] Green [Gompers'
successor as head of the AFL] called at the White House to ask the President
to name a man from the Federation. He suggested five prominent leaders:
William L. Hutcheson of the Carpenters, John L. Lewis of the Miners, Matthew
Woll of the Photo-Engravers, John P. Frey of the Metal Trades, and John R.
Alpine of the Plumbers. Green urged Hoover to 'maintain the precedent set by
your predecessors.'

"The President, however, chose to break with tradition. He appointed William
N. Doak of the independent Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen as Secretary of
Labor. In Hoover's judgment the AFL could be ignored even on an issue of
moment."

The idea of Lewis as Hoover's Secretary of Labor intrigues me in part because
the two men were philosophically compatible in many ways. I don't just mean
Lewis' opposition to socialism and communism--that was commonplace among
American trade unionists. What was more unusual is that Lewis shared the
engineer Hoover's enthusiasm for technological advance and modernization.
Notoriously, many labor leaders opposed the introduction of new technology
for fear it would put people out of work. Lewis, however, wanted the coal
industry to become more modern even if that meant employing fewer coal
miners. Mechanization would help put out of business the smaller, less
efficient mines that were driving down coal prices and wages. As Lewis put
it, "We decided it is better to have a half million men working in the
industry at good wages...than it is to have a million working in the industry
in poverty." (Bernstein, p. 225) Moreover, Lewis endorsed Hoover for the
presidency not only in 1928 but for re-election in 1932 as well (despite
Hoover's having turned him down for Secretary of Labor twice). Lewis'
politics later in the 1930's could hardly have pleased Hoover, but in 1940
they were allies again--Lewis even trying to get the Republicans to nominate
Hoover for president on a stay-out-of-the-war platform.


The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: The Cabinet and the Presidency

1920-1933,


CHAPTER 15
___________________________________________________________
LABOR RELATIONS
From a technical point of view labor problems were in the hands of the Secretary of Labor, James J. Davis. He was a most amiable man who through his natural abilities had climbed from the ranks on the ladder of labor union politics. He was skillful in handling industrial disturbances—"keeping labor quiet," as Mr. Coolidge remarked. He proved to be good at repair of cracks. He had a genuine genius for friendship and associational activities. If all the members of all the organizations to which he belonged had voted for him, he could have been elected to anything, any time, anywhere.
When I accepted membership in the Harding Cabinet I had stipulated that I must have a voice on major policies involving labor, since I had no belief that commerce and industry could make progress unless labor advanced with them. Secretary Davis was very cooperative. I have already related my part in the Economic Conference of 1921, which bears upon these activities.
My views on labor relations in general rested on two propositions which I ceaselessly stated in one form or another:
First, I held that there are great areas of mutual interest between employee and employer which must be discovered and cultivated, and that it is hopeless to attempt progress if management and labor are to be set up as separate "classes" fighting each other. They are both producers, they are not classes.
And, second, I supported continuously the organization of labor and collective bargaining by representatives of labor's own choosing. I insisted that labor was not a "commodity." I opposed the closed shop and "feather bedding" as denials of fundamental human freedom.

I held that the government could be an influence in bringing better relations about, not by compulsory laws nor by fanning class hate, but by leadership.
The labor unions in that period were wholly anti-Socialist and anti-Communist. On September 5, 1925, I stated:
It is my opinion that our nation is very fortunate in having the American Federation of Labor. It has exercised a powerful influence in stabilizing industry, and in maintaining an American standard of citizenship. Those forces of the old world that would destroy our institutions and our civilization have been met in the front-line trenches by the Federation of Labor and routed at every turn.1

UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE
One result of the Industrial Conference of 1919 was an attempt on my part to convince the private insurance companies that it was to their advantage as well as that of the people at large to work out a method of unemployment insurance. I spoke on the subject at the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company managers' conference on January 27, 1923, stating my belief that in some industries, such as the railways and the utilities, the fluctuations in employment were not widespread, and that there was in them actuarial experience which would give a foundation and a start to such an insurance. However, the companies did not wish even to experiment with it.

CHILD LABOR
The Federal statutory prohibition of child labor had been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. I had joined during 1920 in several efforts to secure a new Constitutional prohibition. Soon after I entered the Cabinet Senator Lenroot consulted me about the text of a new Constitutional amendment which he proposed to introduce into the Congress. I objected to his draft, as he had placed the age limit— eighteen—so high as to generate great public opposition. I agreed that this standard was ultimately desirable, but I feared that the lunatic fringe was demanding two years more than was attainable.

Senator, however, refused to change it and passed the amendment through the Congress. I was proved right as to the strength of the opposition. I spoke several times in support of the amendment, for instance, in April and December, 1921, and June, 1922.
When I became President I urged the adoption of the amendment by the states, but some of them, particularly the Democratic-controlled ones, would not ratify it. Roosevelt during his four years as governor of New York did not give more than lip service to its passage.
In the meantime, the agitation, particularly of the American Child Health Association, drove many of the Republican states to pass better laws prohibiting child labor. By the end of my administration in 1932 this evil was largely confined to the backward states.

ABOLISHING THE TWELVE-HOUR DAY
For the practical improvement of working conditions I undertook a campaign to reduce the work hours in certain industries. This black spot on American industry had long been the subject of public concern and agitation. Early in 1922 I instituted an investigation by the Department of Commerce into the twelve-hour day and the eighty-four hour week. It was barbaric, and we were able to demonstrate that it was uneconomic. With my facts in hand I opened the battle by inducing President Harding to call a dinner conference of steel manu-facturers at the White House on May 18, 1922.
All the principal "steel men" attended. I presented the case as I saw it. A number of the manufacturers, such as Charles M. Schwab and Judge Elbert H. Gary, resented my statement, asserting that it was "unsocial and uneconomic." We had some bitter discussion. I was supported by Alexander Legge and Charles R. Hook, whose concerns had already installed the eight-hour day and six-day week. However, we were verbally overwhelmed. The President, to bring the acrid debate to an end, finally persuaded the group to set up a committee to "investigate," under the chairmanship of Judge Gary.
I left the dinner much disheartened, in less than a good humor, resolved to lay the matter before the public. The press representatives were waiting on the portico of the White House to find out what this meeting of "reactionaries" was about. I startled them with the
information that the President was trying to persuade the steel industry to adopt the eight-hour shift and the forty-eight-hour week, in place of the twelve-hour day and eighty-four-hour week. At once a great public discussion ensued. I stirred up my friends in the engineering societies, and on November 1, 1922, they issued a report which endorsed the eight-hour day. I wrote an introduction to this report, eulogizing its conclusions, and got the President to sign it. We kept the pot boiling in the press.
Judge Gary's committee delayed making a report for a year—until June, 1923—although it was frequently promised. They said that the industry, "was going to do something." When their report came out, it was full of humane sentiments, but amounted merely to a stall for more time. I drafted a letter from Mr. Harding to Judge Gary, expressing great disappointment, and gave it to the press. The public reaction was so severe against the industry that Judge Gary called another meeting of the committee and backed down entirely.
On July 3 he telegraphed to the President, saying that they would accede. I was then with Mr. Harding at Tacoma en route to Alaska. He had requested me to give him some paragraphs for his Fourth of July speech. I did so, and made the announcement of the abolition of the twelve-hour day in the steel industry a most important part of the address. He did not have time to look over my part of his manuscript before he took the platform. When he had finished with the American Eagle and arrived at my paragraphs, he stumbled badly over my en-tirely different vocabulary and diction. During a period of applause which followed my segment, he turned to me and said: "Why don't you learn to write the same English that I do?" That would have required a special vocabulary for embellishment purposes. Anyway, owing to public opinion and some pushing on our part, the twelve-hour day was on the way out in American industry—and also the ten-hour day and the seven-day week.
When I became Secretary of Commerce, the working hours of 27 per cent of American industry were sixty or more per week, and those of nearly 75 per cent were fifty-four or more per week. When I left the White House only 4.6 per cent were working sixty hours or more,
while only 13.5 per cent worked fifty-four hours or more. This progress was accomplished by the influence of public opinion and the efforts of the workers in a free democracy, without the aid of a single law —except in the railways.

INDUSTRIAL CONFLICTS
During the years of my service in the Department we had comparatively little labor disturbance. Because of general prosperity and increasing efficiency, wages were increasing steadily in unorganized as well as organized industries—in the former to some degree because employers stood off organization by paying wages at least as high as those in the organized industries. But, in the main, employers willingly shared their larger profits with employees. We had only two bad conflicts.
In 1922, the railway shopmen and the organized bituminous coal miners went on strike at the same time. President Harding assigned the coal strike to Secretary Davis and requested me to negotiate a settlement of the railway strike. I was to learn some bitter lessons. I had arranged that the railway employees' leaders see the President and disclose confidentially to him their minimum demands, which were as usual considerably below the demands which they announced publicly. Through President Daniel Willard of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, the chairman of the Railway Managers' Committee, I secured a confidential statement of their maximum concessions. I found that the two antagonists were not far apart and suggested some modifications which seemed to me to be fair. The Employees' Committee believed they could carry the settlement. Mr. Willard's committee agreed to support the settlement on this basis. The railway presidents called a meeting in New York to consider the proposal. Mr. Willard asked me to attend the meeting and give him support. I secured a message from President Harding to open my statement. I was kept waiting outside the meeting for some time and was finally ushered in and introduced by the chairman with an attitude which seemed to convey, "Well, what have you got to say here?" Most of the two hundred men present were very antagonistic. I learned afterwards they had already repudiated Willard and his
committee. Anyway, I certainly had a freezing reception. Paradoxically, my temperature rose somewhat and my preachment upon social relations raised their temperatures and made my exit more welcome.
The railway executives now refused every concession. The men continued the strike until the roads represented by Willard's committee fell away from the rest and gave the men even better terms than the original formula. Then they all gave way.
While thenceforth I was not devotedly loved by certain railway magnates, their lack of affection was more than offset by friendship of others. Especially among these friends was Daniel Willard, who remained unwavering during the quarter-century before his death. He was respected by the whole American people and beloved by every B. & 0. man. There were many fine citizens among the railway presidents. At that time and in later years I had many devoted friends among them, such as Sargent, German, Budd, Crawford, Shoup, Gray, Storey, Downs, Scandrett, and Gurley, mostly western railway presidents. It was a suggestive thing that the railway presidents who led the opposition had their offices in New York City. They have mostly gone to their rest in graves unknown to all the public except the sexton, or they still dodder around their clubs, quavering that "labor must be disciplined."
A by-product of this incident gave me deep pain. An editor of the New York Tribune came to see me after the meeting in New York. He was a man with a fine conception of public right; he was greatly outraged at the whole action of the majority of railway presidents. The following morning the Tribune's leading editorial gave them a deserved blistering. The next day the editor informed me that Mrs. Whitelaw Reid, Sr., who dominated the paper, had ordered his instant dismissal after many years of service. The dear old lady was a righteous and generous woman, but a partial misfit with the changing times. In the science of social relations she was the true daughter of a great western pioneer, Darius 0. Mills. When the editor came to see me in Washington, while he had no regrets, it was easy to see that he was wholly unstrung by his tragedy and distracted by anxieties over growing family obligations and lack of resources. At once we gave him an economic mission in Europe, during which he somewhat recovered his spirits and was able to keep his family going. But he never really regained his grip.
It is a safe generalization for the period to say that where industrial leaders were undominated by New York promoter-bankers, they were progressive and constructive in outlook. Some of the so-called bankers in New York were not bankers at all. They were stock promoters. They manipulated the voting control of many of the railway, industrial, and distributing corporations, and appointed such officials as would insure to themselves the banking and finance. They were not simply providing credit to business in order to lubricate production. Their social instinct belonged to an early Egyptian period. Wherever industrial, transportation, and distribution concerns were free from such banker domination, we had little trouble in getting cooperation.
Others of the Department's services to labor sprang from its broad economic programs. However, our emphasis on the needs and rights of organized labor and our constant insistence on cooperation of employers and employees as the means of reducing the areas of friction brought no little change in public attitudes.

THE RAILWAY LABOR BOARD
It was obvious that we must find some other solution to railway labor conflict than strikes, with their terrible penalties upon the innocent public. Therefore, early in 1926, I began separate conferences with the major railway brotherhoods on one hand, and the more constructive railway presidents, under Daniel Willard, on the other. I discarded compulsory measures but developed the idea of a Railway Labor Mediation Board, which would investigate, mediate, and, if necessary, publish its conclusions as to a fair settlement, with stays in strike action pending these processes. Having found support in both groups, I called a private dinner at my home of some ten leaders, half from each side—and I omitted extremists of both ends from the meeting. We agreed upon support of this idea and appointed a committee to draft a law. We presented it to the Congress, and with some secondary modifications it was passed on May 20, 1926. This machinery, with some later improvements, preserved peace in the railways during the entire period of my service in Washington.

Commenting upon the progress of labor relations I was able to say in an address on May 12, 1926:
There is a marked change . . . in the attitude of employers and employees. . . . It is not so many years ago that the employer considered it was in his interest to use the opportunities of unemployment and immigration to lower wages irrespective of other considerations. The lowest wages and longest hours were then conceived as the means to attain lowest production costs and largest profits. Nor is it many years ago that our labor unions considered that the maximum of jobs and the greatest security in a job were to be attained by restricting individual effort.
But we are a long way on the road to new conceptions. The very essence of great production is high wages and low prices, because it depends upon a widening range of consumption only to be obtained from the purchasing power of high real wages and increasing standards of living. . . .
Parallel with this conception there has been an equal revolution in the views of labor.
No one will doubt that labor has always accepted the dictum of the high wage, but labor has only gradually come to the view that unrestricted individual effort, driving of machinery to its utmost, and elimination of every waste in production, are the only secure foundations upon which a high real wage can be builded, because the greater die production the greater will be the quantity to divide.
The acceptance of these ideas is obviously not universal. Not all employers . . . nor has every union abandoned the fallacy of restricted effort. . . . But . . . for both employer and employee to think in terms of the mutual interest of increased production has gained greatly in strength. It is a long cry from the conceptions of the old economics.
1 The C.I.O., with its socialist and Communist control in its early stages, was not organized until several years later.
2 Indeed, it preserved peace until the presidents failed to give moral support to the Board's recommendations and its potency was largely destroyed.
3 A list of my more important statements upon labor as Secretary of Commerce appears in the Appendix, under the heading Chapter 15.

CHAPTER 15
1921: April 1, article in Industrial Management; Nov. 4, address at New York; statement in Labor on strikes.
1922: Feb. 18, statement on Coal Strike; Aug. 7, on Railroad Strike.
1923: Jan. 27, May 8, addresses at New York.
1925: April 11, address at New York; May 19, on the Seven-Day Work Week; Sept. 5, at American Federation of Labor; Dec. 28, on Labor Arbitration.
1926: May 12, address at Washington.
1927: Aug. Foreword to Year Book on Commercial Arbitration in the United States, 1927 (American Arbitration Association).
1928: Feb. 25, Report to President from Secretaries of State, Commerce, Labor, on immigration.
___________________________________________________________

Sunday, February 27, 2011

Real Educational Reform

The assault on teachers unions has historically driven educational reform in North America. The claim that our education system is failing due to bad teachers, bureaucratic public education etc. has led the move towards so called market reforms in education; merit pay and charter schools to name two favorite right wing bugaboos.

However the reality is that in North America public education is generalized unless you are destined to go to university. Graduating from High School gives you a generalized diploma, worth nothing to employers. If you qualify as a potential candidate for a university education you get put into that track. That high school diploma is not generalized, and allows you to enter university post secondary education, if you can afford it.

All other forms of post secondary education; college and trades education, which actually educate/train students for the world of work are not tracked. They are in Europe and Asia which is why they beat out our students. Its not a matter of knowing more math or science but of having access to educated embedded job learning, apprenticeship opportunities beginning in high school and transitioning to post-secondary technical schools.


What’s the problem? The fact that the U.S. is the only industrialized society that relies so heavily on its higher education system to help young people get from the end of compulsory schooling into the workforce with the knowledge and skills to be successful in today’s economy. Despite the fact that nearly all young people now say that they want to go to college and that increasing percentages of high school graduates are in fact enrolling in college, our college completion rate is stuck at about 40 percent. Many organizations are now focused on the challenge of how to increase our college completion rate and have set a very aggressive target of 55 percent by 2025.

But even if this very ambitious improvement goal were to be reached, what is our strategy for getting the other 45 percent of young people the skills and credentials they will need to get launched on a career path that can enable them to earn a family-supporting wage and lead a productive life? This is the big question our report raises, and that you barely acknowledge.

In our search for answers, we draw heavily on two recently published Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) studies that bring important international evidence and experience to bear on the problem we cite, but you never even acknowledge this major section of our report. We point out that throughout Northern Europe from the age of 16 between 40 and 70 percent of young people enroll in programs that combine classroom and workplace learning, have significant employer involvement, and prepare students for careers in a wide range of occupations, not just the traditional trades.


SEE

Obama Embraces Neo-Con Agenda

Losing the Future

President Obama wanted to be the Education President, with his State of the Union speech entitled Winning the Future. Where he said;"Cutting the deficit by gutting our investments in innovation and education is like lightening an overloaded airplane by removing its engine. It may feel like you’re flying high at first, but it won’t take long before you’ll feel the impact."

Here is the sound of Air America crashing:

Rhode Island school district issues pink slips to nearly 2,000 teachers in effort to deal with massive budget deficit

Guess they missed the Presidents State of the Union speech when he said;

If we take these steps – if we raise expectations for every child, and
give them the best possible chance at an education, from the day
they’re born until the last job they take – we will reach the goal I
set two years ago: by the end of the decade, America will once again
have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.


See this is what happens when Republicans sweep local elections, grab governorships and state houses and legislatures, when they say spending cuts they mean attack on public sector workers and services, and in the final end union busting.

In his letter to the entire school department, republished in The Providence Journal, Brady wrote, "Since the full extent of the potential cuts to the school budget have yet to be determined, issuing a dismissal letter to all teachers was necessary to give the mayor, the School Board and the district maximum flexibility to consider every cost savings option."


Ah ha flexibility, that means instead of laying off the teachers, which would require rehiring based on union seniority rights, they have fired everyone giving themselves the option of rehiring whomever they like. In effect union busting.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) - Hundreds rallied on the steps of the State House in Providence Saturday as they stood behind their fellow protestors from Wisconsin.

The Rhode Island Teacher's Union marched to show support for their Wisconsin colleagues vying to keep their collective bargaining rights and to preserve the American dream.

"We're not gonna let them take away collective bargaining from us...it is time for every worker and every person in America to stand up and fight corporate greed," urged one protestor Saturday.

Mixed in among the crowds were Providence teachers who protested the recent firing of some 2,000 teachers in the district.

"Get down to city hall and tell Angel Taveras he has betrayed us...this is not just about a budget trying to bust our union," said Classical Teacher Anna Kuperman.

Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval has shown "contempt" for public school teachers by proposing to cut their pay by 12 percent to 20 percent, the state teachers union leader said Thursday.

Lynn Warne, president of the 28,000-member Nevada State Education Association, said the annual starting pay of teachers -- now about $35,000 -- would drop to the $30,800 range in Clark County through the Republican governor's budget-cutting proposals.

"We feel an assault on education in this state," Warne told a joint Senate-Assembly budget committee hearing. "There is an assault on state workers as well."

Warne later explained that besides a 5 percent pay cut, teachers also would pay a 1.125 percent additional premium for retirement benefits and Sandoval also wants them to kick in 5.9 percent to help cover Public Employees Retirement System costs. That would bring every teacher's pay reduction to 12 percent.

Jeff Weiler, chief financial officer of the Clark County School District, said his district will have to lay off 2,500 teachers and 700 support personnel if Sandoval's plan wins approval.

The average class size would be increased by eight students and laid-off teachers would go on unemployment, he said.


The right wing pundits like to talk about 'class war' whenever someone mentions taxing the rich. This is what real class war looks like, union busting by Republicans. And it won't stop with the public sector unions.


In Wisconsin, the governor wants to gut collective-bargaining rights for public employees. Not to be outdone, the governor of Indiana is pushing two bills that would end bargaining not just for public employees but also for the private sector on construction projects (House Bills 1585 and 1216). In Ohio, Senate Bill 5 would end collective bargaining for state employees and take the heart out of bargaining for local government workers.

Governor Walker’s cuts aren’t just about Wisconsin. These legislative attempts to limit workers’ rights are a coordinated effort by the GOP and corporate CEOs trying to push cuts in our wages, abolish our benefits and outsource our jobs.

Public officials in several other states like Ohio, New Jersey, and Michigan are also set to consider eliminating collective bargaining (a worker’s ability to negotiate for wage increases, healthcare, job security, retirement plans, etc…) or drastically change employee pension and access to affordable health insurance.

In many states, public officials aren’t willing to negotiate with the unions that help protect the workers who keep states running—social and economic protections that help communities of color the most.

The Republican National Committee could not care less about the U.S. economy. A new RNC fundraising video (http://www.gop.com/obamasunionbosses/email/) demonstrates that it wants Americans to forget about our economic problems.

Instead the RNC has conjured up a new boogeyman to scare Americans enough to forget the past and open up their wallets: Union leaders.

“The RNC is trying to fool the public into thinking that they are defending the middle class against unions, and that is both outrageous and offensive,” said IAFF General President Harold A. Schaitberger. “Who do they think created the middle class? If they are successful in their efforts to destroy unions, there will be no middle class in America.”

The video seeks to paint middle class Americans – the teachers, sanitation workers, fire fighters and police in Wisconsin -- desperately trying to defend their collective bargaining rights as “jack-booted thugs.”


Unfortunately the firings in Providence this weekend were not a one off, nor should they have been unexpected as they had been done as early as last year, with support not only of Republicans but President Obama as well.

4 March 2010

Speaking before an audience of business executives at the US Chamber of Commerce on Monday, Obama hailed the decision to fire the entire teaching and support staff at Central Falls High after they rejected demands to work extra hours without pay.

He defended such measures as critical to implementing the national strategy of Education Secretary Arne Duncan to deal with 5,000 of the nation’s “lowest performing” schools, overwhelmingly located in the most impoverished areas of the country. In order to qualify for federal funding, school districts have the option of closing a school outright, handing it over to a charter school or school management company, imposing a longer school day and other attacks on teachers, or firing the staff and rehiring only half back.

Pointing to the 74 teachers and 19 other school employees in Central Falls, Obama insisted that teachers had to be held “accountable.”

The Rhode Island firings are meant to serve as an object lesson and warning to any teachers who dare oppose the destruction of their working conditions and wages and the government’s efforts to undermine and privatize the schools.

Wednesday, November 05, 2008

America's Historic Election

The election of Barack Obama as 44th President of the United States was the fulfillment of the drream of Abraham Lincoln and Fredrick Douglas, who himself ran for the Republican nomination for President. Obama kicked off his campaing in Springfield, Illinois Lincolns home. His politics of unity, his sweep in the polls showing America is neither Blue nor Red but purple; his politics as I have pointed out here before are those of classic 19th century liberalism. He appeals to the old Republican party, the progressive, labour party of Lincoln not the later nativist, neo-con party of Reagan. And he made that clear in his victory speech....


Let us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long. Let us remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House – a party founded on the values of self-reliance, individual liberty, and national unity. Those are values we all share, and while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress. As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, "We are not enemies, but friends…though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection." And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn – I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your President too.


While McCain supporters chanted USA, USA, Barack appealed not to a narrow jingoist nationalism but to a greater vision of Americans by their own merit and pulling together in a collective effort to meet the historic challenges facing them with his call; Yes We Can.

He is a Lincoln Republican and a FDR Democrat, remembering the the latters success was based on the progressive movement that pushed not for his election but for the third party candidate; Robert La Follette. A party and movement often overlooked for its impact on American politics, after it got Teddy Roosevelt elected president.

Obama was that third party candidate who used the Democratic party to win election, while appealing to both Republicans and Independents to join him in a bi-partisan campaign to make history. He swept red states and those he didn't win he got more votes in than any other Democrat ever has. He vindicated Howard Dean's fifty state strategy, and he did it by using the grassroots organizing of Saul Alinsky and the Civil Rights movement.

Lincoln and Douglas would be proud as would both Kennedy brothers, and LBJ who in their own way paved the way for Obama's historic election. Today is the fulfillment of the dreams of Martin Luther King, A. Phillip Randolph and Malcolm X. And it is the redemption of the Democratic party forty years after the debacle in Chicago in 1968.

The tears of Afro-Americans from the young students on campuses shown on TV to the celeberities in the crowd in Chicago; Jesse Jackson and Oprah Winfrey, were the geniune mass weltashung of the realization that finally the ugly history of slavery and segregation were ended last night. And a man was elected on the merit of his belief's not his skin colour.

It's a new dawn in America.



SEE:

America's Real Conservative Choice For President



Lincoln Obama



Black Like Me

Winds of Change

The Blue Origin of the Red States



The Era Of The Common Man

A NEW AMERICAN REVOLUTION



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Tuesday, November 04, 2008

October Surprise Was The Market Crash

On the Sunday News Talk Shows and on the American cable news channels the pundits all commented on how this election there was apparently no October Surprise.

In American political jargon, an October surprise is a news event with the potential to influence the outcome of an election, particularly one for the presidency.

No October Surprise???

What do you call this.......Mutual funds plummet in October as global credit crisis grows

THE US stock-market crash appeared to draw to a close with the month of October, as a gain in the final session helped shares to stellar returns for the week.However, consumer-spending data and a steady stream of layoffs suggest the bear market is not over yet. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 144.32 points, or 1.57 per cent, to 9325.01, for its first two-session gain since September. For the month of October, the Dow fell 14 per cent, its biggest percentage drop since August 1998. It could have been worse: Until Tuesday's rally helped it bounce 11 per cent this week for the best weekly return since 1974, the Dow was looking at one of the worst months in its 112-year history. The Nasdaq Composite rose 22.43 points, or 1.32 per cent, to 1720.95, gained 11 per cent on the week and finished the month with a loss of 18 per cent. The Standard & Poor's 500 rose 14.66 points, or 1.54 per cent, to 968.75, helping it to a 10 per cent gain for the week. In October, the broad S&P 500 fell 16.9 per cent, its worst month since the date of another infamous crash, October 1987. "It was nuts," said Joseph Saluzzi, co-founder of agency brokerage Themis Trading, of the October action. "There was a time there in the middle of the month people were afraid, thinking: 'What is really happening here? Is this the end of the world? What's going on?'

It cost McCain the election when he insisted that the fundamentals of the economy were good as the market came tumbling down.US Election Panel: 'It was close until the credit crunch

Wall Street collapsed right on top of McCain
Point: Dan SchnurThe most decisive event in this campaign wasn't anything either of the candidates said at their respective conventions or in any of the debates. It wasn't a sound bite from a speech or interview, or a memorable assertion in a television commercial or e-mail attachment. The turning point in this election didn't happen on the campaign trail but rather on Wall Street. In the last week of September, the race was essentially tied. Then Wall Street collapsed -- and it collapsed right on top of John McCain.In the first week or two after the extent of the economic meltdown became apparent earlier this fall, what had been a closely contested election broke significantly in Barack Obama's direction. The worst month for the Dow Jones industrial average in more than a decade made McCain's national security credentials almost irrelevant to voters frightened about their economic futures. Just as the success of the troop increase in Iraq and the rise in gasoline prices earlier this year represented real-world events that boosted McCain's support, the political ramifications of the rapidly spreading economic crisis have been of immense assistance to Obama's efforts to convince voters as to the necessity of a change of course in Washington.

SEE:
McCain A Socialist
No Austrians In Foxholes


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Pork

So Joe the Plumber, who ain't a plumber but a McCain stand-in stereotype gets preferential treatement because of his celeberity status....pork by any other name. Hey McCain gimme the straight talk on this....

Joe the Plumber gets warning, not speeding ticket
TOLEDO, Ohio (AP)
— Police stopped "Joe the Plumber" for speeding last week but didn't issue a
ticket out of concern it would reflect negatively on the Toledo department, an
officer's report said.
Officers tracked Samuel J. Wurzelbacher driving about
50 mph in a 35 mph zone in his Dodge Durango SUV on Wednesday, the police report
said.
In the final presidential debate, Republican John McCain portrayed
Wurzelbacher as emblematic of people with concerns about Democrat Barack Obama's
tax plans. Wurzelbacher has since endorsed McCain. His instant fame set off a
rush of interest in the plumber's background.
Toledo's police chief said on
Tuesday — the day before the traffic stop — that a department clerk faces a
disciplinary hearing for allegedly looking up Wurzelbacher's address on a state
computer database.
Wurzelbacher was given a verbal warning because of that
ongoing investigation and because a citation could have "negative repercussions
to the department and city as a whole," according to the report, which lists
"Patrolman Bailey" as its author.
Wurzelbacher would not comment on the traffic stop when reached by telephone Monday evening.


And I really like 'Joe's' honesty

JW: You know, I don’t know enough about that to give you a real intelligent
answer

Typical Republican.

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Tuesday, October 28, 2008

White Power

Is race an issue in the upcoming American Presidential election? You bet. It was clear to anyone who watched the two America's which appeared this summer at the Democratic and Republican conventions. While the media and pundits have focused on VP Pallin's success in appealing to the Republican base, that base is white. The sea of white faces during the republican convention was overwhelming. And it sends a message; Republican America is old rich white people. The amount of Afro-America, Latino, or Asian American faces in the crowds can be counted on one hand. Indeed during a recent McCain rally, the only African Americans present were his Secret Service detail.



A sea of white faces grey and blue rinse hair stared out at us from the floor of the Convention. Since then the sea of white faces that surrounds McCain and Pallin at rallies, may not be the core of the rich upper class white Republican party, but it is white none the less.


The messaging that Obama does not understand small town America, those who love their guns and bibles is aimed at this white base.

The result is that McCain and Pallin are addressing themselves to the issue of race, they speak for White America.


The Democratic convention by contrast was the real America, multiracial, young and old, women, men, gays and lesbians, latinos, blacks, asians, and yes even the forgotten Americans; those of the First Nations. Blue collar workers, students, professionals, and yes rich lawyers. But the overwhelming nature of the crowds that gather at Obama rallies, whether vote for him or not, is by contrast with the McCain crowd, the real America, a demographic diverse crowd.


In order to make himself appear popular amoung youth McCain and his handlers have been lining up young people behind him on the stage, many who are clearly not of voting age.


McCain and Pallins campaign to appeal to White America has resulted in the predicatable; White supremacist 'plot' to kill Barack Obama: A history of hatred


By claiming by inference that Obama is not American, not white, a terrorist sympathizer, a socialist and a Marxist, all the key words used by StormFront and other radical right wing conspiracy types to justify their hatred of America's diversity. McCain and Pallin launched their Nativist attack on Obama at the Republican Convention and the result has been to shore up their racist base and to appeal to those on the fringe of America who brought us Ruby Ridge and the Oklahoma Bombing.

I note that not one media pundit has pointed out that the Republican convention and the McCain rallies are overwhelimngly white. They are in fact White Power rallies.


While discussing supposeded white working class anathema to Obama, and the issue of race, these same pundits both liberal and conservative refer obliquely to 'ethnic' America. Now we in Canada would use that term differently, it would refer to our multicultural heritage. In American Speak it refers to white Americans an in particular those whose politics are reflective of American Nativism.




Will white Americans vote for Obama, of course, overwhelmingly. That is not the real question the pundits are asking, rather will white Nativist/racist Americans vote for Obama? And the anwser is they have their own party and candidate; the Republican Party and John McCain.


And with the recent attacks on Obama and the this latest assassination plot, Black America's very real fear is that once again a Black leader will be assasinated before he gains power, or in the immediate aftermath of his election. American history of the long march for Civil Rights proves this fear is valid.




The Republican campaign which has focused on the politics of fear makes this a very real possibility. While the apologists will say that the Neo-Nazi's are a fringe element, they are very much part of the base of the Republican Party that Pallin in particular appeals to.




McCain has spent weeks overtly linking Obama to "terrorists" and "Palestinian donors" and posing the sinister question: "Who is the real Barack Obama"? Right this very minute, the McCain/Palin campaign is running massive robocalls in numerous battleground states, including North Carolina, alleging that Obama "has worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, whose organization bombed the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, a judge's home, and killed Americans" and, if elected, "will enact an extreme leftist agenda." Last night on national television, McCain vehemently defended Sarah Palin's repellent and patently false accusation that Obama "is pallin' around with terrorists."


But the McCain brand in recent weeks has taken a beating. In reaching out to that still-restive conservative base, McCain, a gambler partial to craps, in late August put his own history on the line. A survivor of several bouts of dangerous skin cancer, he picked an untested and, critics say, largely unqualified running mate in Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, whom he barely knew. And he launched a negative campaign against Democratic Sen. Barack Obama that has unleashed outbursts of nativism and racism at his rallies that have appeared at times to even startle the nominee. The Palin gambit initially worked in hard-fought states like Florida. "When he named her and settled on the theme that they would be the ticket for change, he really altered the campaign's dynamic and momentum here," says Aubrey Jewett, a University of Central Florida political science professor. "But days later, the economic crisis overshadowed everything."
Even some of McCain's most ardent supporters say they have been stunned by the campaign's singular, provocative focus on painting Obama as "dangerous" and a "pal" of terrorists because he served on an education reform board in the 1990s with 1960s-era antiwar extremist William Ayers, now an education professor in Chicago. "The campaign is heavy into character assassination," says a longtime McCain admirer who, like many, believed that McCain, with his maverick flashes and his appeal to independents, was the only Republican who could win this year after two terms of an unpopular GOP president. "I don't know what the hell is going on."


Sarah Palin has stopped being a joke and is becoming a danger in this troubled democracy of ours. Her job has been to excite the hard-core right-wing base (which McCain could never do) and she is doing it with a strident, demagogic amalgam of nativism and McCarthyism.
She is generating us-against-them warfare, pitting small-town America against the cities. Seems odd at first blush, since there are more votes in the cities—until you recognize that the big difference between her kind of small town and the wicked cities has everything to do with diversity of population.
The cities are filled with others. The cities are filled with “them.” The cities are filled with people like “that one.”
In Palin’s small-town universe—limited to only certain parts of the country—people are pro-America. The others…well, that’s where people pal around with terrorists, don’tcha know. That’s why her audiences are inspired to call for Obama’s execution. Hey—how about “lynch”? We haven’t heard that in a while.
She is the worst demagogue I have ever seen on a major party ticket—including Richard Nixon at his lowest.
Palin is not alone in this drive. Last week we saw U.S. Rep. Michelle Bachmann of Minnesota update Joe McCarthy, proclaiming that “leftists” such as Sen. Harry Reid and Speaker Nancy Pelosi—to say nothing of Obama himself—were not really pro-America. Fact is she wants the media to investigate and expose all Democrats because they are likely against America.
It takes a lot to make my jaw drop, but this return to Red Scare days sure unhinged my mandible.
It is interesting to see that two women are in the vanguard of this new-found America-First-ism. But then, John McCain’s own brother pointed out that northern Virginia—the D.C. suburbs—is communist territory. Not like the real Virginia, where the founding fathers kept slaves on their plantations. Hey—only kidding folks.
These are not just retro weirdos on a soapbox in Bughouse Square. This is the vice presidential candidate of the Republican Party and governor of one of our 50 states. This is a sitting congresswoman from the upper Midwest.
Their words come as we stand at the brink of a major recession—the kind of economic environment that produced native fascists such as Father Coughlin and Huey Long. These are dangerous times for dangerous words—and win or lose we have not heard the end of them from Sarah Palin and her cohort.

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Monday, October 27, 2008

McCain Senile?

During interviews in the past week McCain's talking point on Powells endorsement of Obama is that he is backed by five former Republican Secretaries of State. On Meet the Press on Sunday he couldn't remember them all.......

SEN. McCAIN: No. I'm disappointed in General Powell, but I'm very, very happy to know that five former secretaries of state who I admire enormously--Henry Kissinger, Jim Baker, Larry Eagleburger, Al Hague--Jim Baker, Henry Kissinger, Al Hague, Larry Eagleburger and one other, and over 200 retired flag general--generals and admirals are supporting my campaign. I'm very proud of their support.
MR. BROKAW: Senator, we opened today with a--how you're doing in Iowa. The Des Moines Register has endorsed...
SEN. McCAIN: George Shultz. George Shultz is the other one.
MR. BROKAW: George Shultz, right.
SEN. McCAIN: George, I'm sorry I left you out to start with. George Shultz, the great--one of the great secretaries of state in history. Anyway, go ahead. I'm sorry.

And this is not the first time poor McCain has been confused...........

Did John McCain confuse autism with Down syndrome?

Is McCain Senile? He Confuses FEC with SEC, Sunnis with Shiites ...

A mind is a terrible thing to see go to waste......

We know from a May review of some of John McCain's medical records and from previous reports that the Arizona senator has battled the most deadly form of skin cancer melanoma. His physician says McCain, who at 72 would be the oldest man ever sworn into a first term as president, has not displayed any memory problems, but she has not said whether her patient has undergone cognitive tests.

After this week perhaps its time for that cognitive test.....since he never has been given any psychological testing even after his years as a prisoner of war and his failed suicide attempt.

McCain has released more details about his health than the other three nominees, though he has done so in a phased way and has apparently not agreed to any extensive interviews about his health. A handful of reporters were allowed to view his records during his bid for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination. Another group of reporters were permitted to see newer records last May. By not allowing reporters to interview him or his doctors extensively about his entire medical history, he has made it impossible to get a complete picture of his diagnoses and treatment.In 1999, early in his first run for the presidency, McCain allowed a small number of reporters, including me, to review an estimated 1,500 pages of his medical records without photocopying or recording the information.In doing so, McCain gave the public its broadest look at the psychological profile of a presidential candidate. He released psychological records about him that were amassed as part of a Navy project to gauge the health of former prisoners of war. Assessments were based on standard psychological tests and what McCain told his doctors after his release. The records mentioned that in 1968, about eight months after his capture and after some particularly brutal beatings from his North Vietnamese captors, McCain attempted suicide, trying to hang himself with his shirt.The records and his doctors, whom I interviewed with the senator’s permission in 1999, said he had never been given a diagnosis of a mental health disorder or treated at the project’s center for a mental health disorder.

McCains mental health is the Republican 800 lb Gorrilla in the room...

The other gorilla in the room
John McCain has his own gorilla.
The Republican gorilla (Shush, he’s old. Is he senile?)
Is John McCain senile, forgetting long held principles, becoming a caricature? With all due respect to this elderly man of integrity and honor, he may not be clinically senile, suffering actual dementia, but he may be past his best years.
Senator McCain acquitted himself well at the first debate; he recalled names, places and events with sufficient clarity so as to deny any clinical disease. However, his interviews with the press have become increasingly angry and hostile. More and more observers have posited that his erratic behavior, adopting contradictory and mutually exclusive positions may be caused by the stress of the campaign and his 72 year old body not being able to get the rest that it requires to function properly. That isn't ageism—that is a simple fact of life.
There have been public comments suggesting that Senator McCain may not have the mental strength and capacity to handle the job of President. Again, just as with the “concerns” about Senator Obama’s race or faith are not well founded and are framed as worries about his “inexperience”, the shifts in John McCain’s positions, sometimes within hours, are raided as issues of senility rather than simple political opportunism. For example, on one day at 9:00 A.M., he declared that the United States economy was basically strong; later that day he called for a massive bailout that would cost our children and grandchildren close to $1 Trillion!

And let us not forget that the mere fact that Democratic VP Thomas Eagleton had been treated for clincal depression led to his resignation when the Republicans exposed it is there any wonder that McCain has not had a cognitive psych test.....

Of course depression and mental illness has not been a limitation for U.S. Presidents in the past.....49% of US Presidents suffered mental illness in Duke study

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McCain A Socialist

Call this a case of the pot calling the kettle black, McCain calls Obama's economic policies socialist Yesterday on Meet the Press McCain admited his own home mortgage buy back plan originated in the 1930's under FDR, and was originally proposed by Hillary Clinton. Now who is a socialist?

MR. BROKAW: But there, there is this continuing use...
SEN. McCAIN: ...I feel that...
MR. BROKAW: ...of the phrase "socialism." How would you describe the $700 billion bailout that has the United States government buying shares in American banks, in effect nationalizing those banks to a degree, and even your own mortgage plan of spending $300 billion to buy bad mortgages from banks, having taxpayers who have done the responsible thing, in effect, subsidize people who've done the dumb or wrong thing?
SEN. McCAIN: Because we are in a financial crisis of monumental proportions. The role of government is to intervene when a nation is in crisis. A homeowner's loan corporation was instituted in the Great Depression. They went out and they bought people's mortgages, and, over time, people were able, then, to pay back those mortgages. And the Treasury actually made some money.
This Treasury in this administration is spending its time bailing out the banks. The cause of the crisis was the housing crisis, as we know. And how--home values, as long as they continue to decline, then we're not going to see a turnaround in this economy. A lot of other things have to happen, have to happen, but at least let's understand that we ought to keep people in their homes. That's the American dream. And they say now that maybe they're going to address that problem. Let's address it first. And so when a, when a nation is in crisis, that's when a government has to intervene.
Now, a lot of the times you were talking about, 2004, other times, times were pretty good overall. You had different--you have to have different roles of government in different times. I'm a fundamentally--obviously, a strong conservative. But when we're in a crisis of this nature, that's when government has to help. That's, that's what, that's what our fundamental belief--the reason why we have governments. In times of crisis, we go in and we try and help the people, especially in this situation where they're the, the victim of a drive-by shooting by excess, greed and corruption in Washington and Wall Street. And again, I and others said we have to have legislation to rein it in. Senator Obama didn't lift a finger.
MR. BROKAW: Well, you did--you made your comments about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac at the time of the accounting issue, when that was first raised. Can you cite a time...
SEN. McCAIN: In, in reality, we, we proposed legislation and made a statement that said, "Look, it's not just the accounting, this whole process is going to lead to disaster." I'd be glad to provide you with the letter.
MR. BROKAW: Let me ask you quickly about your $300 billion bailout of, of mortgages.
SEN. McCAIN: Hm.
MR. BROKAW: Some people have said, look, if there's a homeowner out there who's done the irresponsible thing...
SEN. McCAIN: Mm-hmm.
MR. BROKAW: ...and a bank is looking at that foreclosure and saying, "Hey, I don't have to work this out. I can just get the government to pick it up," why should a taxpayer in Waterloo, Iowa, or in Akron, Ohio, have to subsidize somebody who has done the dumb, wrong thing?
SEN. McCAIN: Well, in simplest terms, if their neighbor next door throws the keys in the living room floor and leaves, then the value of their home is going to dramatically decrease as well. And again, this has been done before. As I said, during the Great Depression and...
MR. BROKAW: And that's when Republicans called it socialism under FDR.
SEN. McCAIN: Well, look, in the Great Depression, there were some things that worked and some things that didn't work. But for the government to do nothing in the face of a massive crisis of proportions that we have not seen, I mean, it's hard for us to imagine how, in, in retrospect, how serious the Great Depression was, but the fact is that Senator Obama, by the way, opposes that, that; and I want to use some of the $750 billion to go and buy those mortgages and that, I think, will stabilize the market. It's not the only thing that needs to be done, but I think it's a vital first step so Americans can realize the American dream.


SEE:
No Austrians In Foxholes

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