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.