Investments-Redux

Seems there was some confusion regarding yesterday's picture story posting; perhaps this will help throw a bit of light on the agitprop being recycled currently concerning the New Deal projects instituted by FDR.

The top photo is of three dam projects built in the New Deal era, several of which are Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) projects which lifted much of the rural south out of ignorance and poverty into a new era of... lesser ignorance and poverty?

From top, clockwise:
Conchas Dam-NM, Wilson Dam-AL, and Big Ridge Dam-TN.
(Click on images for larger view.)

The bottom photo is of bombed-out towns in Iraq and Afghanistan. Perhaps I should have also included graphs of the exponential growth in profits of Halliburton, Carlyle, Bechtel, and Blackwater, et al., since they were the primary recipients of taxpayer moneys during a time of self-serving, ginned up wars with a feigned enemy.


If I were going to throw a trillion dollars of national debt at something, I know which it wouldn't be (obviously, the bottom group). Shouldn't the inheritors (your children and grandchildren, et al.) of this massive debt be allowed to enjoy some lasting fruits of their labor? As it is, the public is paying huge amounts of interest on the current debt. Those individuals who profit most from debt are the bankers who carve a percentage off as commissions and the shills on K-Street whom they pay to expound the virtues of such fiscal irresponsibility. The actual debt holders are the remaining beneficiaries, generally those with large sums of capitol to extend. In the year 2008, the US taxpayer spent $451,154,049,950.63 paying interest alone on a debt of $10,024,724,896,912.49. In 1988 that figure was $214,145,028,847.73 on a debt of $2,602,337,712,041.16. That's a lot of numbers so we'll shorten it to:

2008 - 451 billion on a debt of 10 trillion in 2008
1988 - 214 billion on a debt of 2.6 trillion in 1988.

That's quite a jump during a period of alleged "conservative" ideology.

While many of the GOP's Robber Barons would apparently like to see the bulk of the population imprisoned due to marshall law and working in their privately owned prison sweat shops run on US soil, saner heads see this as a societal problem not going away soon without some government intervention. After all, government deregulation of the more avaricious players in the corporate and financial world are the root cause of much of our current ills.

Below is a timeline representing the US GDP from the years 1929-1941. In stark contrast to the historically challenged media talking heads and right-wing stalwarts of the deep red south, one can clearly see that much of the New Deal projects were a success in saving much of the population from lingering or violent deaths from starvation, suicide, and competition over food, shelter and water.
Contrary to the actual Free Traders (as opposed to the morass of unwitting rubes who are suckered into embracing this callow philosophy) who would sell you grossly overpriced, closed bid, government contracted Soylent Green produced by and comprised of prison laborers if allowed, Government isn't the problem, BAD Government is - a government literally engorged with ineffectual, incompetent partisan hacks and profiteers. As amply demonstrated by the influx into the American marketplace a plethora of toxic goods ranging from vitamins, pet food, toys, mercury laden tuna, and salmonella tainted peanuts - combined with faltering bridges, roadways, sewers, irresponsible banks, corrupt judicial circuits, and distorted, agenda driven media - government is a necessary evil. There is no logical reason that government cannot serve as a beacon of efficiency and effectiveness to private enterprise - except that the Robber Barons don't wish it to, lest their calculating scenarios of higher profits be proven as what they really are - a desire to return to the company towns, sweatshops, slavery, plantations, coal mines, and company stores of yesteryear. These self-aggrandized, self-indulgent, and self-entitled beings cannot even wrap their zealous little minds around the logic of population control as being a positive in reducing the load on the government for social services - something they should, by all reasoning, be quite enthused about. The last 8 years have proven nothing if not the Modern Conservative's revulsion of the poor or disadvantaged.

When critics raised various objections to FDR's social programs, his relief administrator, Harry Hopkins, had a pointed response: "People don’t eat in the long run. They eat every day." And when people are starving and living in the streets, the first thing they are going to think of eating are those wealthy who made their fortunes from the labor of, and by defrauding, the public en masse.

I think I hear the dinner bell...

There is, however, one major factor in this economic "stimulus" plan which has been utterly ignored - the elephant in the room which is the gutting of the manufacturing base within this country. Unlike 1935, when ramped-up consumption resulted in real jobs making durable goods, there will be no recovery unless jobs are restored to these shores. This has been a long time coming and has been obfuscated by speculative bubbles and propaganda. Do you really want to fix this problem? Impose realistic cost-of-living and environmental impact import tariffs on offshore goods, remove all offshore corporate tax shelter loopholes, simplify the tax code, and tax the frack out of the same people who eviscerated the economy - the top 5% of this economic dung heap. But don't count on that happening any time soon; China holds far too much trade debt for this to occur, and the Robber Barons have a strangle hold on realistic solutions - they are quite comfortable with their grossly elevated profit margins gleaned from pandering to the lowest common denominator. Selling boatloads of cheap plastic crap out of innumerable Big Box Stores is their stock in trade. Apparently, the plutocrat's solution is to so severely devaluate US currency that trade debt ends up paid off pennies to the dollar, while the average citizen will be burdened with crippling inflation, escalating job losses, and economic ruin. The frenzied wails will become deafening, voluminous oratories in defense of Free Trade and condemning the nebulous evils of socialism will be bandied about, and the red-state rubes will buy another perverted bill of goods. As the cards continue to fall the Barons will likely promote a new currency, touting the Amero (or an equivalent) as the remedy to all that stands in the way of a new dawn in economic prosperity - meaning theirs, of course. The banksters simply want control, and their cut, of the heretofore impenetrable Canadian, Mexican, Central and South American financial markets. (Some Latin-American countries already use the US dollar as a de facto currency.) It's a lie, just like all the other plotting, calculating lies, and I'll not be among the fools who believe the self-serving spew which emanates from these treasonous bastards - off with their heads.