Where Have The Producers Gone?

In her 1957 colossus, "Atlas Shrugged", Balph Eubank, one of the Looters, believes that the time has come for an Equal Opportunity For Literature Bill to be enacted by the government. Eubank, an author who has written a number of books, none ever selling more then 3,000 copies, wants the act to allow for the publishing of but 10,000 copies of any book published. If this is done Eubank believes that people will stop buying trashy books and will broaden themselves by buying the work of other authors like himself. One of the characters in the room with Eubank, a girl in a white dress asks him what if more people want to buy a book and why shouldn't they be allowed to do so if it makes them happy? Eubank replies by stating that people are no longer entitled to be happy and that the new essence is to be unhappy and miserable.

Eubank and his fellow looters are determined to destroy the producers despite the fact that they are dependent on them. The reason for that dependency? They obtain value from the producers through the humiliation and ultimate destruction of those producers. The looters gain satisfaction from their acts of destruction and personal attacks holding themselves at a higher level because they serve humanity.

In the second half of the 19th century in America we had producers. We called them Captains of Industries or in some cases, Robber Barons. These were the men who took up the challenge to bring about a better and more prosperous world for all of us. Yes, there were hardships and greed, but these were the men who invested and ran the transportation industries, the large shipping lines of the Vanderbilts and the railroads of the Harrimans. They were the owners of steel mills, Carnegie and Schwab. Financial giants such as J.P. Morgan who lent money to the government to get us out of a financial panic. Then we have the likes of Henry Ford, who showed us the way to put together an affordable way of transportation for all men. Thomas Edison, the man who gave us light and song. Alexander Graham Bell, who opened the door of communications. The list of the great ones is almost endless. The question is where are they today.

Where is the Edison of today who will see to it that the lights will not go out on us? Where is the Harriman of today who will build us a transportation system across the nation or will we no longer cross the nation or fly out of it? Where is the Morgan who will finance the light transportation system that we need in the cities of America? Where is the newly designed automobile that is standard size, safe, and efficient? Where is the high speed rail line we need? Where is the new and efficient engine for the super sonic jets we want to move a people around the world?

At one time this nation built bridges. We constructed a trans-continental railroad. We built skyscrapers. We ran wire for the telegraph and later the telephone. We had intellectual greatness at our institutions of higher learning but all of that, for the most part, has disappeared. Indeed one can beg the question by stating that given all the regulations we have at all levels of government, could we even begin to think of a new trans-continental line? Our elected representatives and the environmentalists would stop it in its tracks.

FDR A Four Term Progressive--Part 7

In 1936 Roosevelt won in a landslide against Alf Landon, the Republican Governor from Kansas. The Democrats took every state except Maine and Vermont. FDR was entering his second term with his second New Deal.

The congressional elections of 1934 had given Roosevelt an overwhelming majority in both the Senate and House. In 1934 he initiated the Works Progress Administration or WPA. It was to be a national relief agency and was suppose to deal with lowering the unemployment problem. It employed close to two million people who were the heads of the family. It never fully solved the unemployment problem. The unemployment figure was at 12.5% in 1938 when the WPA was at its peak.

Two other major pieces of legislation were passed in the year prior to the 1936 election. They were the Social Security Act and the National Labor Relations Act, a law that allowed federal workers to organize unions, strike and engage in negotiations.

With his second victory Roosevelt came to Congress and asked for more. More for the WPA that saw its employment peak at 3.3 million in 1938. In addition to this a new Agricultural Adjustment Act came on board in 1938. This time Congress left out the processing taxes and did not impose any production quotas on farmers. They did, however, put marketing quotas into place for cotton, wheat, corn, rice and tobacco. When the Secretary of Agriculture found that production of one of these crops had gone too high, he had the power to impose a marketing quota as long as two-thirds of the producers of said crop agreed with him via a referendum. The Secretary was able to assign quotas for each farm and impose severe penalties for going over the quotas.

What was truly amazing was that the Court, many members having been frightened out of their wits by the Court Packing Plan, found this Agricultural Adjustment Act to be constitutional. This would go on and on and on through FDR's second term. In West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, the Court allowed that a minimum wage was constitutional. In National Labor Relations Board v. Jones and Laughlin Steel the Court upheld the National Labor Relations Act that had put into place very extensive and detailed controls upon labor-management relations. This decision began the constant use of the commerce clause to beat industries over the head in order to favor the unions. These are just a few of what would be many cases that took this nation down the road of liberal nationalism or, if you will, the so called Progressivism we have today. Please keep in mind that if we do not stand up to this, we will be a collectivized country.

Don't believe me? Listen to candidate Obama who tells us that we must think of the rest of the world. We are consuming to much. We shouldn't be driving our big SUVs. We shouldn't burn all that petroleum. We should not eat all that food or consume all that energy.

Look at Speaker Pelosi. She tells the president to go to the Middle East and get them to drill more oil and make the price cheaper for us. Meanwhile no drilling in ANWR, off the American Coasts or in the Gulf of Mexico. Drill somewhere else. Keep Americans dependent on foreign oil. Put Americans in teeny unsafe cars. Where are the producers, the creators, the Captains of Industry, the Robber Barons? Where in the world is John Galt?

Hanging Chads

The nightmare of the 2000 presidential election with its hanging chads and butterfly ballots is never going to go away. Not that I didn't expect this to surface this year. What is interesting is that the folks in the Democrat Party are referring to it as it pertaines to the current mess with the delegates from Florida and Michigan. Already we are hearing the mournful "Count all the votes" only in this case the Democrats have brought disaster on themselves.

Let's take a little walk back in time to the year 2000, a presidential election year where that very smart guy and inventor of the Internet, Al Gore, was going to wipe up the floor with that dunce from Texas, George Bush. The whole thing came down to Florida's returns. Briefly here is what happened.

At 7:30 PM the networks declared Gore the winner based on exit poll information. Bush, however, began to pick up more votes so that by 10 PM the networks state that the race is undecided. At 2:30 AM Bush is declared the winner. By 4:30 AM Gore has narrowed the gap to approximately 2000 votes. While he had previously conceded to Bush earlier in the evening, Gore now with drew his concession and decided to wait for the recount.

On November 9, the day after the election, Gore initiated legal action by asking for a hand recount of four counties, heavily Democratic, putting the election in to the judicial system for a decision. On November 10, the automatic recount of the election was completed and Bush was declared the winner by a small margin. Note, this was not the hand recount of the four counties requested by Gore.

On November 11, the Bush team asked that a Federal Court in Miami stop the recount. On November 13, the judge in that Miami Federal Court denied the Bush team's request and the recount went on and on and on. Ultimately, the United States Supreme Court stepped in and rightly stopped the recount. With that decision, George W. Bush became president of the United States. Further recounts had Bush winning in all legally recounted scenarios. If Gore had gone for the suggested full state recount he would have had a narrow victory. The Democrats and their allies in the press have yet to determine what a vote really is in the matter of a recount.

What was more distressing was the ignorance of the American voter. Many across this nation acted as though they had never heard of the Electoral College much less how it actually worked. People across this nation stated that they had always believed that the guy with the popular vote won the office of the presidency this despite the fact that this very type of election had occurred three previous times in our nation's history, 1824, 1876, and 1888. Please tell your kids to pay attention in history class.

Now the Democrats are stating that the folks in Florida and Michigan are not going to be properly represented at the Democratic Convention and if a compromise is not reached that will be true. But keep in mind Democrats, your party leaders made this decision and your party, at least 20 some years ago made the decision to put Super delegates into place to control who wins the nomination. This was done so that the party had the appearance of fairness while making sure that the right guys, McGovern, Carter, Dukakis,Mondale, and others, received the nomination. Your party took the smoke filled rooms public.

FDR A Four Term Progressive--Part 6

Roosevelt did not let the decision on the Agricultural Adjustment Act stop him from implementing additional legislation that moved the New Deal forward. He continued to meet with members of his administration, while for the most part ignoring Congress, to draw up programs supposedly designed to rid the nation of its economic problems. This is how the vast majority of programs were put together. It was, for all intents and purposes, a dictatorial process.

The primary solution to the Depression was known as "pump priming". Simply put it was more and more government spending. Indeed as a youngster in high school and then college, I vividly recall teachers and professors preaching that the Federal government was the only facility that had access to tremendous amounts of money that could now be used to pay for all these wonderful programs espoused by the Roosevelt Administration.

Recovery went on at an enormous price. The National Industrial Recovery Act spent $3.3 billion through the Public Works Administration or PWA later to be know as the WPA. These two organizations were supposed to end unemployment but that did not happen. Then there was the Tennessee Valley Authority. Working with Republican Senator George Norris, FDR put together the largest government owned industrial enterprise in our history. The first impulse is to say TVA was a good thing. Was it? Why wasn't this effort carried out by private industry? Why didn't we give incentives to public power companies to do this job? Most importantly how happy were those folks, already in poor economic condition, about TVA and the loss of their homes and livelihoods?

In the economic arena Roosevelt moved in 1933 to regulate the banks and in 1934 put into place the Securities and Exchange Commission to regulate Wall Street the epicenter of capitalism. However, a major and extremely controversial move was taken under Executive Order 6102 which took all the gold owned privately and turned it over to the US Treasury. Declared by many to be unconstitutional, FDR claimed that he had the power to do this under the 1917 War Powers Act. The ability of Americans to own gold was finally reinstated under President Ford in 1934.

While many would say that all these programs were wonderful, they did not end the Depression. There were consequences for all these programs in that Peter was robbed to pay Paul. In order to keep his campaign promise of cutting the federal budget, Roosevelt had to make cuts and he did so in a rather harsh but not unusual manner. He cut benefits to veterans by 40% and cut the military budget overall a tactic that would soon prove to be costly but one still practiced to this day. Over 500,000 veterans and their widows were removed from the pension rolls and had benefits cut. The salaries of Federal workers were cut as were the budgets of the military and navy. Spending was reduced on education and research and little was done to assist science until World War II began. However, he did sign an Executive Order in April of 1933 that ended Prohibition because much as politicians today view gambling, FDR was convinced he could acquire lots of money from taxing alcohol.

FDR and the Democrats had tremendous success in the 1934 Congressional election. Roosevelt gained larger majorities in the House and Senate. This in turn allowed him to move forward and continue the nationalization of our government with the consolidation of power in the hands of the central government. As for the people, they were going to pay more for less, move toward becoming wards of the state and pay no attention as everything from charity to education fell within the control of the Federal government.

The Plan Is Out

Praise be the truth is out! Yesterday, Maxine Waters, a representative from California and sympathizer of Fidel Castro, told the world that if the oil companies did not promise to lower gas prices for consumers if the companies were allowed to drill wherever they wanted she would press for government takeover of said companies. There is no longer any doubt where the Democratic Party stands. As of 7:46 AM this morning no Democrat from the committee, indeed no Democrat from anywhere in the party has stepped forward to denounce Maxine.

Ms. Waters simply revealed what is and has been going on within the Democrat Party for a long time. Those who have read their history and have paid attention to what is going on in this nation are not surprised by the blatant takeover statement that was made. Our supposed leaders have been taking us down the path to socialism/nationalism for the past century particularly during Democrat administrations.

There is no doubt that we have an energy problem. Congress wants to blame it on the oil companies allegeded price fixing. Time and time again they bring the CEOs of the oil companies before their silly committees to get face time and time and time again they have found nothing to indicate there is wrong doing. That is because they have failed to look in the proper place. The greatest wrong doing will not be found in the closets of the oil companies executives, it will be found in the closets of the likes of Maxine Waters and the dastardly deed can be summed up in one word, regulation.

The regulations placed on the oil companies are not the sole reason for the high price of oil but I would argue that they are a major contributor. Regulations that keep them from drilling for gas and oil off our coasts while China is drilling in the Gulf possibly horizontally and thus grabbing product that might rightfully be ours. Regulations that are so prohibitive that oil companies do not want to build refineries. Regulations that prohibit us from building nuclear plants that in and of itself could have a tremendous affect on so called carbon footprints given that such a thing really exists and is really harmful. Regulations that require some 26 blends of gas and retooling at least twice a year. Why do we have all these blends? Why wouldn't we have the best blend for the entire country? Aren't all of us entitled to the best air quality?

Then there is the question will conservation give us cheap prices? If we indeed move toward a 30mpg target for car mileage what will happen? I believe we will not only see smaller and less safe cars, we will also see higher gas prices because oil companies have an obligation to their stockholders. We use less gas or power the price will go up. If you check you will see that since we have been in conservation mode in this country energy prices have gone through the roof and they will continue to do so unless we get a real energy plan into place and recognize that what we must do is use things like solar and wind power as supplemental power.

Yesterday, May 27, 2008, it was announced that coal, we have an abundance of it, was going to be turned into jet fuel for the Air Force. Other nations, including Japan the only country to be struck with a nuclear weapon, use nuclear power plants. Why don't we? I remember a 7th grade assembly where a representative of General Electric used a sun lamp to show us the future, a solar car. Where is it? Why don't we have it? Could it be cost? Could it be cloudy days say here in Pennsylvania when your car might not run all that well?

The sad part of all of this is that this debate should have been going on in the 1970's during the Carter Administration and our first messy gas lines. Carter established the Energy Department and then went on with his business of not governing. Least you think I am too partisan let me state that every administration since Carter has steered away from making us less dependent on foreign oil. But the real person to blame can be found every day when we look in the mirror.

We have a candidate running for the office of President who just the other day condemned us for our consumption. According to Senator Obama, we should not be allowed to drive our SUVs thus telling us what cars we can buy. We eat to much thus it is our fault that others are starving. We, that leader of the free world, we the first people to step up to assist in every disaster in the world, we are looking at a socialist who would be president and who already has an admitted comrade in arms in the House of Representatives and Maxine isn't the only one there.

FDR A Four Term Progressive--Part 5

The Roosevelt Administration was absolutely furious with the Supreme Court decision on the Agricultural Adjustment Act. The primary reason for the anger was that the Social Security Act was coming on line and they feared that the Court would declare it unconstitutional. Roosevelt was so irate that he took to calling the justices the "nine old men" and that something needed to be done to stop them.

In 1937 Congress passed the Judiciary Reorganization Bill. This Bill soon came to be known as the Court Packing Bill. It contained a lot of provisions. The primary one gave the President the right to add extra judges to the Court for every judge over the age of 70.5 years of age. This would have given Roosevelt the power to appoint 6 new justices. It was all done as a counter to the Court declaring a pile of New Deal programs unconstitutional.

Normally a Justice is replaced upon his retirement or death. Roosevelt, however, was extremely impatient and decided to force the Court's hand after Butler. He turned to Article III of the Constitution and found that it was silent on how many justices could be on the Supreme Court the exception being that there could be but one Chief Justice because he was mentioned in the Constitution under Article 1 section 3. There was also precedent in that there had been changes numerous times to the number of justices on the Court

Roosevelt went on offense. He declared that the conservatives on the Court were putting words in the mouth of the Constitution, words that had never been there and it was never the intent of the Founders to have those words. He stated that the Court's decisions were "frustrating" and they were blocking his political and economic programs to bring about an end to the Depression.

Roosevelt had won re-election in 1936 despite the fact that his first New Deal not only failed to end the Depression but came under attack by the Court and those political opponents to its Left. The election victory gave him the courage he needed to take on the Court.

The administration stated that they only wanted the bill in order to assist older justices with their work load. When a justice reached the age of 70.5 years a new younger justice with ten years experience was to be appointed. FDR knew he could count on the Democratic controlled Congress to pass his nominees but first he was going to have to get it by both the Congress and the American public.

The debate in Congress did not go well for Roosevelt. Many Democrats thought this to be a good idea; many thought it wasn't and it certainly was not liked by the Republicans. Meanwhile, those in the press looked on with a jaundiced eye on Roosevelt and questioned his motive. Some pointed out what it was, a grab for power and an attempt to intimidate the Supreme Court of the United States.

Things were not going well for him in the countryside. Public opinion polls showed FDR that the citizens were opposed to this law. Despite those polls, Roosevelt felt that he had them by his side.

On March 9, 1937, he gave his first fireside chat of his second term. In it he noted his true intentions--he wanted a Supreme Court that understood the modern era. Was this Progressive showing his true hand? Was he telling the folks that the centralization of power into the hands of the Executive Branch was the wave of the future.? I believe he was.

As things turned out there was a change in the bill. Support for FDR in the Congress began to slip after the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings. On June 14 that committee presented a report that stated that FDR's plan was stepping all over the principles found in the Constitution. To make matters worse the man Roosevelt selected to get the votes for him in the senate, majority leader Joseph Robinson, had a heart attack and died on the day when the roll call was to be taken. Vice President Garner was charged with the task of telling FDR he did not have the votes in the Senate thus the bill and the plan were dead.

At first glance this appears to be a loss for Roosevelt. However, the Senate did provide him with a revised bill that allowed him to appoint two new judges. He signed it into law on August 26, 1937. He also was going to have to deal with a bunch of conservative Democrats who had looked at the Court as their wall, the place where the New Deal would be stopped. In the end, however, all turned out well for Roosevelt. In his second term, FDR nominated and Congress confirmed five new justices to the Court thus cementing the New Deal into place.

Had the American people gained with this action? The answer is a resounding no. FDR used his position and his popularity to threaten the members of the Court. The Court is suppose to be a neutral branch rendering decisions on the constitutionality of laws and no more. This would open the door to put pressure on the Court and for the Judicial activism that we are seeing today.

FDR A Four Term Progressive--Part 4

The Roosevelt administration moved quickly to establish control of the government. Within days they had 15 major pieces of legislation drawn up and presented to Congress. Ultimately a tremendous amount of power was gathered by the national government while stripping rights and responsibilities from the people. In the process of initiating and passing this legislation a welfare nation was created.

In order to get the legislation ready the Executive Branch all but ignored the Legislative Branch. The National Industrial Recovery Act passed in 1933 had as its mission ending cutthroat competition. In order to do this the government was going to force industries to come up with codes that would govern all the companies in a certain industry. The leaders of said industries wrote the codes, sound familiar, and the NIRA officials then approved them. In order to get this approval the industries had to raise wages. On top of that, the NIRA encouraged industries to accept unions and in return anti-trust laws were suspended. Ultimately the NIRA was declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Of all the legislation passed in the early days of the New Deal, the Agricultural Act was the most odious. This legislation was designed to assist American farmers. The intent of the Act was to balance the supply and demand for farm products, an age old problem for farmers. It was also suppose to address the matter of farm income and it was so written into the Act. This was going to be accomplished by paying farmers not to grow certain crops namely corn, wheat, cotton and peanuts, produce dairy products or raise some animals like sheep and pigs. In return, the government paid the farmers for not growing or raising these items. The money for the payment came from those who took the crops and manufactured products from them. Thus the guy who ground the grain paid a tax which in turn went to a farmer who was not producing. The goal was to put the farmer in a position where his wages were keeping up with his costs. There were only two problems with this. Some farmers, those who raised steers, were left out of the program. The other was the fact that despite the fact that land was taken out of production, as it is today, farmers raised more food due to fertilization and improved technology.

In 1937 the U.S. Supreme Court declared AAA to be unconstitutional in United States v Butler. The administration had attempted to get this by on the welfare clause in that the government was "to provide for the common defense and general welfare" of the nation. Justice Roberts consulted Madison and Hamilton on the matter. He found that Madison stated that said clause was simply an introduction to the enumerated powers while Hamilton viewed it as the government having the power to so provide. Roberts found two reasons to declare it unconstitutional. First, the processing tax levied on the manufacturers was not a proper tax under the taxing power in that one group was being taxed to support another group. Next he found that crops did not fall under the welfare clause in that "they were a system of agricultural regulations projected under the guise of appropriations for the general welfare" and these thing actually came under the Tenth Amendment. Roberts went on to note that the farmer was not given a choice in the matter and had to "accept the benefits and submit to regulation." In this decision Roberts recognized the right to appropriate under the general welfare clause but the government could not put conditions on those who accepted the funds. The government could give away their money but could not tell the recipient what to do with them.

Roosevelt was furious. Not only was AAA shot down, and rightly so, but it was going to cause great consternation within the Administration. Coming up on the SCOTUS's docket was the issue of Social Security, the greatest Ponzi scheme approved by man. This in turn lead to Roosevelt's infamous Court Packing Plan

The decision was 6-3 in Butler. There were decent arguments on both sides. The Act itself was re-written and became law. As such the farmers, who to this day accept subsidies in bloated farm bills, went on to become wards of the state with many bad ones hanging on when they should have moved on to other jobs.