dagblog - Comments for "Defending our New Deal"

I was responding to a right

Barth — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 12:18:00 +0000

In reply to there is little question that

I was responding to a right wing canard that says Gov Walker is carrying out something FDR would have supported. I am applying FDR's support for the labor movement and the rights of workers, which no President before him had championed. That's all.

President Kennedy did not face the crisis that President Roosevelt did, nor did he have as lopsided a majority in Congress with whom to work. He did believe that the government had obligations to the people of this country who needed its help.

Thank you, Richard. Perfect.

Barth — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 12:14:26 +0000

In reply to http://thinkprogress.org/

Thank you, Richard. Perfect.

Was FDR forced to concede

Resistance — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 04:20:38 +0000

In reply to Defending our New Deal

Was FDR forced to concede ground, against the wishes of his Capitalist benefactors?

Socialism was on the rise......Enter the McCarthy Era; suppress the Democratic/ Socialist movement

Was Lyndon Johnson forced to concede ground, when he enacted the Great Society, against the wishes of his Capitalist benefactors?.......Martin Luther King was labeled a Socialist; the Civil rights movement was gaining strength. The mob was angry

Obama said he was the only thing between the bankers and the angry mob.

Was the angry mob, Socialism?

Is the only time the Democrats have done the Socially acceptable thing; only when they are forced to concede to the angry mob?

Is this is why the Capitalist predator bankers have not been brought to justice, as the socially acceptable thing to do as required, to instill confidence, the Capitalist were not forced to concede? The mob was quieted down?

Now because Obama helped quell the angry mob, the Capitalists are emboldened to take back collective bargaining, a pillar of FDR's concessions?

http://thinkprogress.org/

Richard Day — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 03:49:22 +0000

In reply to Defending our New Deal

http://thinkprogress.org/

there is little question that

artappraiser — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 00:13:23 +0000

In reply to No it's more than that. Two

there is little question that a President Roosevelt of 1961 would have approved of it

Sorry, as a cultural historian, I really dislike this sort of revisionist fairy tale exercise. I feel it dishonors the dead's accomplishments to make them into mythic hero saints that you can role play with after they are gone and use them to support whatever cause you are flogging. He could have turned into a John Bircher if he lived, too, he could have done a lot of things; Gaddafi was once a revolutionary working for the people.

It's like "what would Jesus Saint FDR do?" We can't figure out on our own if something is the right thing to do now without the eternal Saint Roosevelt's sign from the heavens? What is the purpose of imagining a 1961 President Roosevelt?

(we largely had one in President Kennedy anyhow)

Suffice it to say that I think that's an extremely inaccurate thing to say, but I am not going to support my opinion, as anyone can google regarding his economic policies and judge for themselves.

No it's more than that. Two

Barth — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 23:40:00 +0000

In reply to Sorry but I do not buy Joseph

No it's more than that. Two years into the Wagner Act is not enough time for the concept of collective bargaining to be accepted as something that works even without the possibility of a strike. The issue in 1935, as it was in 1961 and as it is today, is the issue of public employee strikes and,, essentially, that is what the President was talking about. Read his whole letter (which was not to "a postal worker" but to the head of a public employees untion. The President fully supported the existence of the union, but it was not until the late 1950s that the value of collective bargaining with government was recognized.

Most states still have laws which prevent strikes by public employees and that is what protects the public from the extortion which President Roosevelt feared. Public employees do strike from time to time, illegal as it may be; collective bargaining, we know today, helps to make such strikes less likely.

Yes, "management" in the public setting present different issues and diffewrent considerations than in a private setting. But the right of employees to bargain collectively---a concept in its infancy in 1937---has been recognized in many states since the late 1950s and early 1960s and there is little question that a President Roosevelt of 1961 (we largely had one in President Kennedy anyhow) would have approved of it, as President Kennedy and, later President Johnson did.

Sorry but I do not buy Joseph

artappraiser — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 22:06:00 +0000

In reply to Defending our New Deal

Sorry but I do not buy Joseph McCartin's mind reading, about what FDR would have thought if he had lived, in the Salon interview:

The quotation you refer to is in a letter he wrote to a postal worker leader in the 1930s. It has been a bit blown out of proportion. Roosevelt absolutely did not favor collective bargaining for federal workers and especially did not favor the right to strike. But like many people, had he lived into the postwar era, he might well have changed his mind. Because a consensus developed pretty quickly after World War II that collective bargaining in the public sector was actually a positive thing. That consensus really took shape between the late '40s and '50s.

Maybe he would have changed his mind from this very strongly voiced "conviction" in his letter:

Particularly, I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of Government employees. Upon employees in the Federal service rests the obligation to serve the whole people, whose interests and welfare require orderliness and continuity in the conduct of Government activities. This obligation is paramount. Since their own services have to do with the functioning of the Government, a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government until their demands are satisfied. Such action, looking toward the paralysis of Government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable and intolerable. It is, therefore, with a feeling of gratification that I have noted in the constitution of the National Federation of Federal Employees the provision that "under no circumstances shall this Federation engage in or support strikes against the United States Government."

But it reads to me that it's part of his conviction about how his whole New Deal was supposed to work. That you can't have something like Social Security (and social security) with the people who do the work of sending out the social security checks can go on strike.

To do a "what if," i.e. "what if he knew that the New Deal would not continue or work out as planned," would he have changed his mind? Well yeah doh probably maybe whatever, what if there was no Pearl Harbor. The point: his concept of his New Deal was one where government workers would not consider the people an adversary employer. Should you want to recreate his New Deal, that was part of the deal. Without his concept of being "sworn to support the government, "it's not his New Deal concept, it's someone else's. To Joseph McCartin, it's an imaginary FDR that lived longer and changed his mind according to circumstance, someone who says he knows exactly what FDR would have thought.