Lady Bird Johnson passed...

[tedrbr]

Originally posted by storch
..... the man needed to have gone after his second term.  one of our best presidents?  we are still suffering under the weight of his imbecillic and catastrophic policies to this very day.

I'll grant you he was ineffective his 4th term due to failing health, but there was a national desire to not change horses in the middle of a war.

I'll also grant that, despite popular opinions, he did not manage to end the depression with his "New Deal" -- I also don't think  laissez-faire policies would have ended the suffering much sooner, despite what FDR's critics claim --- it took a war economy and war production to finally do that in the end as the problem of the Depression was so large.

He also made mistakes in dealing with Stalin and Churchill, especially in regards to post war Europe.


Which programs of his still haunt us storch?

Are you referring to the WPA??  Works Progress Administration, that employed millions of Americans and worked to create public facilities and infrastructure, such as highways, streets, public buildings, airports, utilities, power generating dams, sewers, parks, city halls, public libraries, and recreational fields. "The WPA built 650,000 miles of roads, 78,000 bridges, 125,000 buildings, and 700 miles of airport runways."  And it was disbanded in 1943.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)?  Been 70 years of Administrations and Congressional Representatives to put their stamp on the SEC since it's inception.  And we haven't had a downturn on the scale of the Depression since it's formation.

Social Security??  What has happened to Social Security in the last 70 years is the fault of politicians adding more benefits and entitlements to the program over all that time. The original idea of SS is not bad, just the way it's been mismanaged for over half a century.  Not FDR's fault.

His making the Presidency a more powerful position in the government?  Turns out that was a good think in light America ended up fighting a World War.  That he managed to force Lend Lease through to keep Russia and Britain in the fight long enough until the U.S.A. joined after Pearl Harbor was also a feat.
We are also lucky Germany declared war on the U.S. after Pearl.  If they had not, would America have gone to war against just Japan?  You can argue both ways.  


Which exactly of FDR's policies from the 1930's and 1940's, relatively unaffected by 70 years of Washington D.C. politicians, politics, and Administrations, do we still suffer under?  I am curious.

[storch]

Originally posted by Shuckins
So...Storch....I take it then that when you turn 65, as a matter of principle, and to prove how strongly you disapprove of President Roosevelt's policies, you will refuse to draw your Social Security check?

Which of his policies, specifically do you find most dangerous?

The AAA....or the CCC....or the WPA....or the NRA?  How about the PWA?  And the TVA?  

There were few programs as damaging as the Rural Electrification Administration and the Farm Securities Administration was there?  And who could forget the subversive activities of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union and the NCAA, both of which the elitist, communistic Roosevelts gave their support to.

And don't forget the FDIC.

Yep, we would have been better off, in the long run, if the affable Mr. Roosevelt and his great-souled wife had left the country at 25% unemployment and large numbers of the populace on the point of starvation.

considering that I have been paying into the system since 1973 and provided that I even qualify to receive SS payments I would most certainly want back what I have paid in.  however given that a good portion of our income is derived from passive means and is becoming progressively more significant with each year I doubt that we will qualify to receive the benefits.

aside from that I fully expect to work every day of my life.  I enjoy what I do so much so that I don't consider it work and I'm lucky enough to be paid to do it.

I'm one of those guys that started digging his well long before he was thirsty and in the process of excavating stumbled onto a spring.  

yup great programs now what we have is a populace that believes in entitlements.  I find all of mr roosevelts socialistic schemes to be the antithesis of what made america in the first place.  in another generation we will be like europe and the genesis of that decline was the oyster bay roosevelt and exascerbated by the hyde park one.  poor america, it's gone down hill ever since.

[Shuckins]

The New Deal programs were mostly work programs my friend....not entitlements.  

As I've said before, Americans didn't want handouts, they wanted work.  They took pride in the work ethic and simply wanted the government to guarantee a chance at

The modern "entitlement" programs of which you so strongly object were part of Lyndon Johnson's  "Great Society" legislative movement, not the New Deal.

By and large it was the same group of Congressmen who created the Great Society programs who started dipping into the Social Security fund to finance them.  Until then, 1974 I believe, Social Security operated as it was meant to, and was solvent.  Again, that was not the fault of the Roosevelts or the New Deal.

You seem, by your own account, to be doing fairly well in a capitalistic system which has been devastated by the Roosevelt programs.  There is certainly nothing wrong with taking pride in eating the bread earned by one's own labors.  You share that trait with your Great Depression ancestors.  By no means do I defend the entitlement programs that consume the lion's share of the national government's budget.  But I understand and applaud the humanitarian impulse behind their formation, however misguided these programs have become.

As I said in an earlier post, perhaps we need another Great Depression.  It would cure us of our arrogrance, and help many of us fully understand the forces that impelled my grandparents generation to elect a man who promised to use the power of the government to end their suffering.

I believe there is much truth in the old adage, "A little suffering is good for the soul."

[storch]

true enough but the flood gates for the entitlements programs were essentially opened by the rooseveltian concept of deferring payments for today's benefits for tomorrow's children.  the new deal and it's programs created the concept of uncle sugar and the mindset of "close enough for gubmint work".  both very damaging to the overall health of our society.  mr lyndon baines entitlements johnson very much considered himself to be a rooseveltian democrat and many of his administrators went back to the roosevelt administration.  one can clearly see the indeliable prints of mr roosevelt's policies all the way to this current administration.

prior to rooseveltianism americans were pretty much a self sufficient lot.  the only thing people bought with borrowed money were homes and even then not everyone did.  within a decade or so of new deal programs the average american was lured into the trap of buying stuff on time, so much so that by the time of my birth one could buy a car, a '58 for $58 as was advertised.  people were now mortgaging their futures and the concept of immediate gratification enters the american way of life.

mr roosevelt basically borrowed from us to solve his problems way back when.  genious? maybe. chicanery? definitely.

what was worse than mortgaging future generations of american taxpayers with gargantuan debt was the elimination of a huge block of future taxpayers by the tacit support of monsters like margaret sanger who's ideas brought to policy by rooseveltians have robbed the nation of some twenty million contributors to the social security system through the barbaric practice of national infanticide on the wholesale level.

I think that if one looks at the roosevelt legacy on the whole and does so with an open mind instead of parroting what granny says or accentuating the good but glossing over the catastrophic one could easily come away with a different opinion, as I have.

the finger of all of america's social ills is pointed directly at mr roosevelt, his policies and the generation of policy makers that followed him and admired him so.