Free Republic

One of the great frustrations of the libertarian-minded right is how Republicans got stuck being "the party of big business." The quotation marks around the term are at least somewhat necessary, because in many respects, it's not true. The notion that big business is "right wing" has always been more sloppy agitprop than serious analysis. It's true that historically, big business is against socialism and communism -- and understandably so. Socialism and communism were once close to synonymous with expropriation of wealth and the nationalization of industry. What businessman or industrialist wouldn't be against that? But many of those same...

The trouble with the current administration is that they believe their ideas are the solution to our problems; what they fail to realize is that the American people are the solution.After years of solutions from the left, too many Americans have lost the grit and determination of past generations. They have become a collection of "have nots". Some no longer feel the sting associated with dependency in adulthood and easily buy into the hope and change fraud of government solutions to their predicaments. Our recent financial woes have made productive people, the "haves", weary and worried about a future with...

Toward the end of a mostly sympathetic profile of the great journalist and critic H. L. Mencken, Christopher Hitchens once claimed that Mencken’s only “brilliance and verve” occurred during “the period between 1910 and the end of Prohibition.” Which is to say, before Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal came along. It’s an all too common refrain. Biographer Terry Teachout characterized Mencken as “blinded partly by his hatred of Roosevelt.” Mencken scholar Charles A. Fecher—whom you’d expect to know better—declared Mencken’s opinion of Roosevelt to be “maniacal—there is no other word to use.” Although it’s true that Mencken ended the 1930s as...

A year after the financial bubble burst, recovery still struggles against the political meddling that caused the recession in the first place. But the G-20 meeting of government leaders in Pittsburgh offers more of the contradictory promises made in April, offering bailouts and subsidies while condemning protectionism. We would all be better off if the Western economic powers had simply let the recession work itself out. The financial crisis was not caused by bankers. Bankers have been doing their business for centuries. They did not simply get together and agree that suddenly they would take huge risks and get really...

One of the biggest myths about the great depression is that FDR's NEW Deal and the related government intervention and public works projects got us out of the Great Depression. The truth is that the New Deal did not work. Instead of creating growth in the private sector, it created government growth that squeezed out the private sector. Of course, the number one public golf course in the country Bethpage Black (where the US Open played this year) was a was a New Deal Federal works project, but that only cures MY depression, it did little for the country. As...

Obviously, you’ll want to split the business community: the problem makers should get nothing but grief; the problem solvers should get plenty of support. Right now the problem makers — the warmongers, the polluters, the clear-cutters, the incarcerators — get all the support they need from the government. The problem solvers — the solar engineers and the people who are growing local and organic produce — get very little support from any level of government. We want to lure the government away from the problem makers and put it back on the side of the problem solvers: give them the...

Burt Folsom takse a look at the future of the economy, as some say it is showing signs of improvement. He also discusses his book, “New Deal or Raw Deal: How FDR’s Economic Legacy has Damaged America,” and his speech today at the Young America Foundation’s conference.

I am currently planning an essay and a youtube presentation about FDR's new deal. I want to refute claims that it brought an end to the Great Depresion and show that it actually made the depresion worse. I've been getting a lot of moonbats on Youtube and my blog claiming that Obama's stimulus package will save America the way FDRs new Deal did. :ROLLS EYES: I need some help refuting them. Articles, graphs, you could reference would be appreciated. Thanks.

At times Barack Obama has compared himself and his policies to that of FDR, the President during the Great Depression.That is turning out to be a very valid and frightening comparison. The traditional social studies text book view is that Herbert Hoover turned a recession into the great depression, by sitting on his hind quarters doing nothing. Actually that is a result of political propaganda of Roosevelt and his administration. The Truth is that both Herbert Hoover and then FDR turned the recession into a depression by OVER-tinkering with the economy. They were like the Tim Allen character on Home...

New Deal Nostalgia Deconstructed by: Alana Goodman, June 09, 2009 With the U.S. unemployment rate hitting a 25-year record high of 9.4 percent in May, economists have expressed pessimism about the future of the economy, but were quick to draw distinctions between the current recession and the Great Depression. Speaking at the Cato Institute’s “Lessons from the New Deal and Great Depression” seminar, Economics Professor Harold Cole of the University of Pennsylvania told the audience, “You want to be careful about comparing the current [recession] with the Great Depression…The Great Depression was much worse.” Cole explained that during the Great...

New Deal Reality Check by: Malcolm A. Kline, June 02, 2009 As self-proclaimed intellectuals get embarassingly excited over the prospect of a new, New Deal, the rest of us would do well to take every opportunity to examine how the first one turned out. For one thing, it didn’t start under Roosevelt. In The Politically Incorrect Guide To The Great Depression And The New Deal, economist Robert P. Murphy, Ph. D., gives us a very useful comparison of what happened in another recession that occurred in the 1920s when so-called laissez-faire economics was practiced and the more famous economic collapse...

New Deal Fails Again by: Emily Kanyi, May 12, 2009 In his essay, Money and Our Future, Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. begins with an ironic twist. He says, “We are fortunate to be living in these times….” To make sure that his sardonic meaning is not lost to the reader, he goes further to paint these “fortunate times” by asking, “What is fortunate about our times? The economy is tanking, stocks have been pummeled, unemployment is rising, and Washington is pursuing the worst combination of economic policies since Hoover and FDR….” Irony aside, Rockwell Jr. points out that despite the...

There aren’t any sex scenes or vampires, and it won’t help you lose weight. But House Republicans are tearing through the pages of Amity Shlaes’ “The Forgotten Man” like soccer moms before book club night. Shlaes’ 2007 take on the Great Depression questions the success of the New Deal and takes issue with the value of government intervention in a major economic crisis — red meat for a party hungry for empirical evidence that the Democrats’ spending plans won’t end the current recession. “There aren’t many books that take a negative look at the New Deal,” explained Republican policy aide...

Barack Obama says his “unprecedented” economic stimulus package will not merely be “a short-term program to boost employment.” No, it “will invest in our most important priorities like energy and education; health care; and a new infrastructure that are necessary to keep us strong and competitive in the 21st century.” The massive cost of the stimulus doubled even before any legislation was written, much less approved. Originally tagged at $400 billion, the proposal quickly jumped to $825 billion, and latest estimates at press time have it costing north of $1 trillion (comprised of 60 percent spending and 40 percent tax...

For more than half a century, America’s political leaders — Republican and Democrat — have sought to wrap themselves in the legacy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the man credited with replacing fear with hope and ending the Great Depression. But in recent years some writers and economists have been telling a version of this story that is quite different from the one generally taught in school or seen on the History Channel. In this interpretation Roosevelt is a well-meaning but misguided dupe who not only prolonged the Depression but also exacerbated it. ... Amity Shlaes, a syndicated columnist who works...

Two UCLA economists are blaming the length of the Great Depression on President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who instead of being blamed has always been thought of as the main catalyst who brought the country out of the Depression. Instead, in the August issue of the Journal of Political Economy, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian conclude that the New Deal policies FDR signed into law thwarted economic recovery for the country. See UCLA Newsroom. After scrutinizing Roosevelt's record for four years, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian conclude in a new study that New Deal policies signed into...

Congressional Democrats Bankrupted the Nation *snip* The End In April 2001, before the events of 9/11 and just after entering the White House, President Bush began signaling warnings to members of congress that both Fannie and Freddie were headed into deep treacherous waters which could cause “strong repercussions in financial markets.” In early 2003, the Bush White House upgraded its warnings to “a systemic risk that could extend well beyond just the housing markets.” On September 10, 2003, Bush Treasury Secretary John Snow testified in congress that something had to be done to confront the growing storm at Fannie and...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Prime Minister Gordon Brown raised the prospect of a global "new deal" to fix the finance industry within months, setting the stage for April's G-20 economic summit with President Barack Obama. Brown, taking a welcome break from political problems back home, claimed his prize as the first European leader to meet Obama in the Oval Office, and won a statement from the US leader that US-Britain ties were unbreakable. Obama agreed the world needed to work collectively to head off future financial crises, but did not give a specific, public endorsement of Brown's calls for a sweeping...

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown arrives in Washington this week to press for a “global new deal” to rescue the world from recession. Brown will be the first European leader to meet with President Obama when he sits down for talks with Obama on Tuesday morning, then addresses a joint session of Congress on Wednesday. The embattled prime minister arrives at a delicate moment in Anglo-American relations, amid speculation that the “special relationship” between the two countries might be downgraded. Brown gave a preview of what he will say to Obama in an editorial for The Sunday Times, where he...

One evening in the 1930s, a 13-year-old named William Troeller hanged himself from the transom of his bedroom in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. William's father was laid up in Kings County Hospital awaiting surgery for an injury he'd suffered on the job at Brooklyn Edison. A federal jobs program was paying William's older brother Harold for temporary work. But the amount wasn't nearly enough to make ends meet. Gas and electricity to the family's apartment had been shut off for half a year. Harold told a New York Times reporter that both hunger and modesty had driven William to act. "He was...

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown will propose a "global new deal" to rescue the world's economy when he makes his first visit to the U.S. since President Obama's inauguration, the Times of London reports. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown hopes to forge a "global new deal" with President Obama to rescue the world's economy when he makes his first visit to the White House since Obama's inauguration. The Times of London reports Brown, who arrives Tuesday, will reportedly introduce a plan requiring massive spending on a worldwide scale.

Paul Krugman, on his New York Times blog ("New Deal Economics, November 8, 2008), posted a graph showing that recovery from the New Deal began in early 1933, possibly before FDR took office and definitely before any of his initiatives had time to play out through the economy which, though much smaller than it is today, was large and complex. Gross domestic product grew 17 percent in 1933, still before any of his New Deal initiatives had time to play out through the economy. In any case, two of his most important laws that year – the National Industrial Recovery...

Last week, I had the opportunity to hear Burton Folsom speak to a group of more than 300 college students at San Jose State University. In addition to presenting a strong case that the programs of Franklin Roosevelt provided a "raw deal," he proved to be an enthusiastic and inspiring speaker. Based on the many questions asked after his presentation, it was apparent that by the end of the event that most students were convinced that FDR's economic legacy left a damaged America. He started his economic journey in 1920 when the country elected Warren Harding as president as we...

Fidelity’s Edward “Ned” Johnson jumped into the controversial debate over President Obama’s “New Deal II” and what Johnson called government “make-work projects.” Without naming names, Johnson praised the administration’s effort to make economic recovery its top priority, saying it was “admirable.” But Johnson, sounding like he’s never been a big fan of the original New Dealers from the 1930s, warned of too much government involvement in the economy and indicated Fidelity is beefing up its government-affairs unit to fend off possibly burdensome new regulations. “We can only hope that the government’s cure doesn’t further sicken the patient,” Johnson wrote in...

BERLIN, Germany (CNN) -- The world needs a "global New Deal" to haul it out of the economic crisis it faces, Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the United Kingdom said Sunday. Gordon Brown addresses a press conference following a G20 preparatory meeting in Berlin, Sunday. Gordon Brown addresses a press conference following a G20 preparatory meeting in Berlin, Sunday. "We need a global New Deal -- a grand bargain between the countries and continents of this world -- so that the world economy can not only recover but... so the banking system can be based on... best principles," he said,...

It's not just Eric Holder, James Clyburn and Al Sharpton playing "race card" poker! Introducing Otis Moss Jr: Father, Reverend, Racist, Friend of Communism, Terrorist Sympathizer and BFF of Rev. Wright.

WASHINGTON – In sheer size, the economic measures announced by President Barack Obama to address "a crisis unlike we've ever known" are remarkable, rivaling and in many cases dwarfing the New Deal programs that Franklin D. Roosevelt famously created to battle the Great Depression. Winning approval was a political tour-de-force for the new administration. Yet gloom and uncertainty persist about the plan's ability to deliver a cure for the economy's severe ailments. Stocks plunged to six-year lows after the burst of bill signings, bailout announcements and presidential pledges.

There are those who still think they are holding the pass against a revolution that may be coming up the road. But they are gazing in the wrong direction. The revolution is behind them. It went by in the Night of Depression, singing songs to freedom. There are those who have never ceased to say very earnestly, "Something is going to happen to the American form of government if we don't watch out." These were the innocent disarmers. Their trust was in words. They had forgotten their Aristotle. More than 2,000 years ago he wrote of what can happen within...

One reason why Republicans strenuously oppose the Obama administration's fiscal stimulus plan is because it repeats the errors of Franklin D. Roosevelt. To them, the New Deal was mainly about vastly expanding government spending and deficits, which Republicans believe made the Great Depression worse rather than better. Therefore, doing so again in the present downturn will also lead to failure. The true New Deal legacy, however, is more complicated. Serious mistakes were indeed made. In particular, the National Industrial Recovery Act was fundamentally ill-conceived and retarded economic recovery. But in terms of fiscal policy, Roosevelt's error wasn't that he spent...

You often hear President Obama's stimulus plan referred to as the new New Deal. So it shouldn't come as a surprise that some critics of the stimulus aren't big fans of Franklin Roosevelt either. In fact, if you've been following the debate, you may have heard a surprising number of people put forth the notion that the New Deal actually prolonged the Great Depression. If that doesn't sound like anything your high school history teacher taught you, you're not alone. So let's take a closer look at what the New Deal's critics are claiming. It's inarguably true that in the...

A prominent Democrat made news on MSNBC Feb. 11 with his guarantee of new financial industry regulations "comparable" to FDR's New Deal. House Financial Services Committee Chairman Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., appeared on MSNBC's "Rachel Maddow Show" Feb. 11 and told the MSNBC and Air America host that things should be done to limit what financial services can do, specifically when it comes to compensation. "There's no question about it for the future," Frank said. "Look, there's a problem with the American system and we as liberals should be honoring this. The principle that you don't go back and do...

Those who have watched cable news lately have undoubtedly noticed conservative media figures attempting to rewrite history by denigrating the successes of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal policies. This amounts to an orchestrated effort to derail the economic recovery plans of President Barack Obama. Fox News' Brit Hume recently claimed that "everybody agrees, I think, on both sides of the spectrum now, that the New Deal failed." He's correct, if by "both sides of the spectrum" Hume is referring to the right and far-right over at Fox News. He then called Roosevelt's policies "a jihad against private enterprise." Hume's own jihad...

H.R. 1 "The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act"i.e.: The US Congress' Spend & Tax Free Lunch Act Well, here is what Obama wants. Read it. Highlight the pork.Then, call your Senators/Congressmen and tell 'em: "No way!"

The New Deal is widely perceived to have ended the Great Depression, and this has led many to support a "new" New Deal to address the current crisis. But the facts do not support the perception that FDR's policies shortened the Depression, or that similar policies will pull our nation out of its current economic downturn. ... Why wasn't the Depression followed by a vigorous recovery, like every other cycle? It should have been. The economic fundamentals that drive all expansions were very favorable during the New Deal. Productivity grew very rapidly after 1933, the price level was stable, real...

D.C. officials say any federal stimulus funds provided for schools and bridges in the District will enable them to drop their own funding plans for such projects and divert the money to help plug other gaps in their 2010 budget. The officials argued at a meeting of the Federation of Citizens Associations of the District of Columbia on Tuesday evening that such action would not undermine the purpose of the stimulus package, which has been designed to move money quickly into projects where it will produce the most jobs. But some economists see the plan as an example of a...

President Barack Obama (AP Photo) (CNSNews.com) - In a closed-door meeting with House Republicans on Tuesday to discuss the $819-billion economic stimulus bill, President Obama suggested that Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal failed because it was too small, Reps. Steve King (R-Iowa) and Rob Bishop (R-Utah), who attended the meeting, told CNSNews.com.   “FDR’s initial steps did actually work,” Obama said at the meeting, according to King. Obama went on to say, “Then he [FDR] pulled back towards a balanced budget, and then what you had was a recession within a depression. Then World War II came along and was...

When will people learn that the New Deal prolonged the Great Depression? Obama needs to reject these ideas and realize that he needs to promote business in every way to create a stable economy again. He needs to do whatever he can to raise employment in the country without taxing the businesses so that they won't hire new people. Let's take a trip back in history.

It is unclear where President Barack Obama will lead the United States of America – besides $825 billion or so deeper in debt if he approves the House Democrats’ stimulus package. But what is clear is the direction liberal New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wants Obama to take: toward an FDR expansion of government. Within days of Obama’s electoral victory Krugman wrote a column titled: “Franklin Delano Obama." Although he has no official advisory role, Krugman himself has said he will be influential in shaping policy. In a Dec. 6 interview, Krugman said “I probably can have as much...

“We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work.” Sound like Rep. John Boehner of Ohio, or perhaps another exasperated Republican stalwart, lamenting President Barack Obama’s inclination this week to try to spend our way out of the recession? Listen again: “I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises.” Sound more like a liberal Democrat -- say, Harlem’s Rep. Charlie Rangel -- pushing Obama to...

.... welfare reform has been a staggering success. I recently spoke with a member of middle management with the Illinois Dept. of Human Services. He told me welfare reform had literally freed up millions of those who were formerly dependent on a welfare check to now truly be able to seek their human potential. This was not a political pitch I was hearing because this DHS official would benefit from more Illinois residents being on the welfare rolls. You see, the more people dependent on his office, the more power he has. It's a simple equation that many have manipulated...

Robert MorleyColumnist The United Ponzi States of America January 20, 2009 | From theTrumpet.com If you thought Madoff’s Ponzi scheme was bad, don’t look now, but you’re in one. Robert Morley Anyone can work a simple swindle. But you need to be a special kind of con man to bilk billions from otherwise intelligent people. Bernard L. Madoff was one such man. Charles Ponzi was another. But the biggest fraud and scam master of all goes by the name of Uncle Sam. Just what does a person have to do to make his name synonymous with fraud? Charles Ponzi, the...

When Barack Obama takes office on Tuesday, his first order of business will be a stimulus package estimated to be close to $1 trillion, including $300 million in tax cuts and the largest new government spending program for infrastructure since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Sages nod that replicating aspects of FDR's New Deal will help pull the country out of a recession. But the experience under FDR largely provides a cautionary tale. Mr. Obama's policy plans are driven by the conventional economic wisdom that the New Deal economic programs ended the Great Depression. Not so. In fact, thanks to New Deal...

Barack Obama’s lefty admirers are agitating for a new New Deal. We’ll know that we’ve achieved that blessed state when the government destroys 6 million baby pigs—turning many of them into grease and fertilizer (anything but food)—to prop up the price of pork. Or when it plows under a quarter of the South’s cotton and slaughters pregnant cows. American agricultural policy remains perverse to this day, but nobody is calling for the willy-nilly destruction of American crops and livestock as a means of checking deflation and fostering economic recovery. New Deal nostalgics forget all the elements of Franklin Roosevelt’s program...

...FDR's New Deal made the Great Depression longer and deeper. It is a myth that Franklin D. Roosevelt "got us out of the Depression" and "saved capitalism from itself," as generations of Americans have been taught by the state's educational establishment....

“Morgenthau, after being in charge of this economic debacle called the New Deal, finally sort of exploded in 1939 and said, ‘We are spending more money than we have ever spent before, and it does not work,” quoted Folsom. “‘I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. I say after eight years of this administration, we have just as much unemployment as when we started and an enormous debt, to boot.”

OXFORD, Miss. -- President-elect Barack Obama has announced plans for a new stimulus package containing $500 billion to $700 billion worth of public works projects. The package would be “the single largest new investment in our national infrastructure since the federal highway system,’’ he said. America’s governors already are scrambling to compose lists of “shovel-ready’’ projects so no bridge or highway is left behind. But while a “new’’ New Deal will produce certain visible results — more construction materials will be sold, more construction workers will be employed and some of the nation’s infrastructure may indeed be improved — it...

Two UCLA economists say they have figured out why the Great Depression dragged on for almost 15 years, and they blame a suspect previously thought to be beyond reproach: President Franklin D. Roosevelt. After scrutinizing Roosevelt's record for four years, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian conclude in a new study that New Deal policies signed into law 71 years ago thwarted economic recovery for seven long years. "Why the Great Depression lasted so long has always been a great mystery, and because we never really knew the reason, we have always worried whether we would have another 10-...

Inspired by FDR, Obama and his fellow Dems promise a "New Deal" economic program that will pull the country out of recession and put it on the road to sustained economic growth. What dangerous nonsense. Democrats, particularly Obama and his advisors, haven't got a clue as to what really happened during the '30s. This is because they are a pack of intellectual sponges rather than thinkers. (And please, don't mention Bernanke). If it were otherwise they would have taken the time and trouble to investigate that greatly misunderstood period in American economic history. What I hope do here is provide...

This satirical piece first appeared in The American Mercury,, 41 (June 1937), 129-36, and was reprinted in condensed form by The Reader's Digest, 31 (July 1937), 27-29. In order to indicate what reached the widest audience, the condensed version appears here. The principal cause of the uproar in Washington is a conflict between the swift- moving idealism of the New Deal and the unyielding hunkerousness of the Constitution of 1788. What is needed, obviously, is a wholly new Constitution, drawn up with enough boldness and imagination to cover the whole program of the More Abundant Life, now and hereafter. That...

New Deal Stacked Again by: Bethany Stotts, December 19, 2008 On December 15, thirty prominent academic associations lobbied Congress for the inclusion of funds for schools in the upcoming economic stimulus bill, adding higher education to other industries looking for federal aid in the midst of the economic turndown. Other businesses calling for government funding include failing newspapers and two Detroit automakers—Chrysler and GM. Drafted by Molly Corbett Broad, President of the American Council on Education (ACE), the December 15 letter requests that Congress allocate six percent of the upcoming economic stimulus bill to higher education. Suggested expenditures include a...