Biden's American rescue plan isn't

A hike in the minimum wage for federal workers to $15/hour is in Biden's American rescue plan. Don't fall for it. Only a tiny percentage of Americans work for minimum--it will make no difference, except for reluctance to hire inexperienced, slow workers. First minimum wage law was passed under FDR during the Great Depression. Threw many black families out of work; before that, blacks had lower unemployment than whites. They used their labor to outsmart the white workers and could bid low for jobs when everyone was desperate to work. Before government "help" blacks also had a higher marriage rate than whites. Now it's low for both. Black men had a higher marriage rate than white men until 1950, and black women had a higher marriage rate than white women until 1970. This affects education, health and wealth of children. And look at the government programs that ran amuck with the "War on Poverty." Liberals will blame the war on drugs and prison rates, or advocate for more education, but I blame the government's "help."

"The flagship of the New Deal was the National Industrial Recovery Act, passed in June 1933. It authorized the president to issue executive orders establishing some 700 industrial cartels, which restricted output and forced wages and prices above market levels. The minimum wage regulations made it illegal for employers to hire people who weren’t worth the minimum because they lacked skills. As a result, some 500,000 blacks, particularly in the South, were estimated to have lost their jobs." Cato Institute, Dec. 3, 2003

The Minimum Wage: Enemy of Blacks – The Future of Freedom Foundation (fff.org)

On The Historically Racist Motivations Behind Minimum Wage (forbes.com)

https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2020/home.htm?

Capra’s America

Frank Capra was an immigrant--he rejected the theories of progressivism, communism and socialism popular in Europe. ". . . he did not understand America, as many Americans do today, in terms of personal categories of identity such as race, ethnicity, gender, or sexuality. He understood America in terms of its political principles—the moral principles of America that can be shared by all who understand them and are willing to live up to them. . .

In his last and most personal tribute to his adopted country, Capra recalled his family’s arrival at Union Station in Los Angeles after their long journey across America in 1903. When they got off the train, his mother and father got on their knees and kissed the ground. Capra’s last words to his assembled audience were these: “For America, for just allowing me to live here, I kiss the ground.” Capra did not believe that he had a right to be a citizen of America. Rather he was grateful for the privilege of living in America."

https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/frank-capras-america-and-ours/

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/05/03/books/it-wasn-t-such-a-wonderful-life.html

http://rougholboy.com/capra/

FDR abolished benefits for American veterans as an economy measure

Maybe that's why all those WWI veterans' photos and stories in Life and Look are so awful! Go to a library and see for yourself! Look what FDR did to the veterans--those guys who survived the enormous battles in France that took thousands of lives, who survived gassing and the flu pandemic. And it could happen again if you give a President too many powers like FDR had during the Depression to "restore" the economy.

Veterans Administration Created

President Hoover, in his 1929 State of the Union message, proposed consolidating agencies administering veterans benefits. The following year Congress created the Veterans Administration by uniting three bureaus - the previously independent Veterans' Bureau, the Bureau of Pensions and the National Homes for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers. President Hoover signed the executive order establishing the VA on July 21, 1930. Hines, who had served since 1923 as director of the Veterans' Bureau, was named the first administrator of the agency.

The new agency was responsible for medical services for war veterans; disability compensation and allowances for World War I veterans; life insurance; bonus certificates; retirement payments for emergency officers; Army and Navy pensions; and retirement payments for civilian employees. During the next decade, from 1931 to 1941, VA hospitals would increase from 64 to 91, and the number of beds would rise from 33,669 to 61,849.

In March 1933, President Roosevelt persuaded Congress to pass the "Economy Act." A response to the Great Depression, the measure included a repeal of all previous laws granting benefits for veterans of the Spanish-American War and all subsequent conflicts and periods of peacetime service.

It also gave the President authority to issue new veterans benefits. Roosevelt then promulgated regulations that radically reduced veterans benefits. When the President's authority to establish benefits by executive order expired in 1935, Congress reenacted most of the laws that had been in effect earlier."

You can read about this at the History of the VA.

Another fragile group FDR's new tax programs (tripled during the Depression) nearly destroyed was African Americans--one of his "new deals" threw half a million blacks out of work by raising wages above market levels and allowing union goons to organize by going after employees and employers alike with violence. Has a familiar ring, doesn't it?

Unintended consequences

My favorite breakfast is a sliced Honey Crisp apple (preferably huge and from Minnesota, but I'll take Michigan or NY if nothing else is available) and half a cup of whole walnuts. The problem is I had a frenulectomy in 1977 to close the gap between my front teeth. Let me tell you, when you've had surgery in your mouth you'll know it forever. I can't actually bite into a whole apple--it has to be sliced. After that surgery, all my teeth started to shift. You wouldn't think a tiny piece of flesh removal could do that much, but it did. Probably because I still have all my permanent teeth, even four wisdom teeth, as well as most of my childhood fillings. Even brushing my teeth and flossing can't remove the residue from this sticky breakfast, so I often don't eat until I get back from the coffee shop where I might talk or smile. The tiny shift of my front teeth has affected the enamel on my bottom teeth wearing it thin--so on it goes, 30 years later.

Every time we do something to improve something else, or to discourage something, or to destroy something, there are unintended consequences waiting. For instance, polio was virtually unknown when my grandmothers were children. Improved sanitation of the 20th century actually created the epidemics that began around the time of WWI. Middle class people were much more likely to get polio than the poor, and there was a time when they thought African Americans were immune! But in fact, in earlier times, everyone had had some exposure as children, got sick, and then recovered but had continued immunity. After the public water supplies were cleaned up, no one was able to withstand the exposure, which occasionally still lurked in water.

Let's jump a head to a bigger problem. Slum housing. At least, that's what it used to be called. In the earlier centuries in America, poor people built or rented their homes, and moved up or down as their income and circumstances dictated. The freedom to own land was a huge appeal to the immigrants who came here in the 18th and 19th centuries. My maternal grandparents had rented in Wichita when they were first married in 1901, then returned to Illinois in 1908 and lived out their lives on a farm inherited from grandma's father. My paternal grandparents were tenant farmers in the next county in the 1920s, had a large family (nine children) and a disability (my grandmother was blind). My grandmother's parents and other relatives were very good about helping, but there wasn't a government plan to assist them like there would be today for disabled poor people. There was charity, of course--my dad got a grant to go to college from the Polo Women's Club. So first their own children helped with the farm labor doing age appropriate tasks, and eventually, their adult children pooled their money and purchased a small home for them in town during WWII. Later, my grandfather who went to work in a plant when all the younger men had gone off to war (he really wasn't suited for farming), was able to save money, buy another home, and then another home, renting one. That's how housing worked in the early to mid-20th century.

Both Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt extended what started as a panic, then became a recession and then a depression by inserting government programs into problems instead of letting them heal themselves. My maternal grandparents had already begun sinking because of the easy credit for agricultural land and products in the 1920s. Like today, it was an over extension of credit that brought the economy down, but my other grandparents, tenants who had nothing anyway, really weren't affected. The New Deal of the 1930s built on Hoover's (a liberal Republican) mistakes and extended the Depression another 8 years. But worse still are the long term, unintended consequences of those programs.

The New Deal began the federal government's interference in the housing market which extends right up to the balance today in our 401-k and 403-b. It went way beyond zoning and health and safety, long a concern of government. The reason for the housing shortage after WWII, for the existence of all those Lustron homes in Mt. Morris, was rent control, and the government giving a corporation money to develop a house to meet the need and use factories developed during the war. Cheap housing just disappeared from the market, so rent and home prices soared. The government created that shortage. We didn't have fewer buildings in 1946 than 1941, just more rules. So who benefited from that? Certainly not the poor. Then when the poor had no access to even bad housing, the government stepped in again and built public housing, which quickly became a cesspool of crime, rigid segregation by race and very inhospitable living conditions. When public housing failed (remember the demolition of Cabrini Green in Chicago?), the government came up with new plans to "solve" the housing crisis--housing vouchers, community development agencies and non-profits, tax breaks or subsidies, condemning large tracks and rebuilding with tax incentives which created gentrification and scattered the poor yet again!

You think Katrina destroyed housing and hurt the poor? Nothing like what the residue of our federal government's housing experiments over the years have done! At every step, private enterprise has either been discouraged through regulation, or allowed to run wild through lobbying efforts and kick-backs to government officials who hold the keys to housing very tightly. Fast forward to the latest failure of our government to help the poor and low income with housing: the creation of the Community Redevelopment Act under Jimmy Carter, and it's expansion during the Clinton era to the point where banks were held hostage by "non-profits" with massive amounts of government funding receiving huge fees for each low income family they stuffed, unprepared, into a mortgage that didn't fit.

None of this was intended. There were enough good intentions to wall paper Washington DC. But there are consequences when you try to change people's behavior through government programming or reprogramming. Don't be fooled by politicians who weep and mourn over our "selfishness" when we have spent trillions on these government created crises and have only kept the poor down longer than they would have been if we'd done nothing and only stood by and wrung our hands.

Obama and the Courts

All courts will of course swing to the left under an Obama presidency. He has made it very clear that when he vows to uphold the Constitution as President, he will be lying. He has been absolutely consistent from his dope smoking days to the smoking of Democrat dopes in the primaries to get their votes. He believes the U.S. Constitution is at fault for not providing a socialist, marxist template for social change, that the Founding Fathers were wrong in limiting the role of government in the lives of the citizens of the newly formed country, and that the country needs to be free from unfair competition (or any competition if you read between the lines).

The last time we had three branches of the federal government marching in lock step were the Johnson and Carter years. We got the War on Poverty and the Great Society with Johnson and stagflation with Carter (high inflation, high unemployment, stagnant growth). The 1964 Civil Rights Act was a spring board for blacks into the middle class. The War on Poverty which cost trillions, however, helped create an underclass of poverty and crime that is stubbornly resistant to change but which feeds every black candidate's election coffers. Yet the Democrats have never been happy, no matter how many trillions are spent, even when Republican presidents extend the programs so they can keep their cushy jobs.

Meanwhile, our liberal policies have killed millions of unborn American citizens. Our hysteria over the potential death of a bird caused premature withdrawal of DDT from the international market (after our own swamps were cleaned up) and more Africans have died as a result of a "liberal" environmentalist testifying before Congress than were killed by the Spanish, Portuguese, French and English during the transatlantic slave trade with the Arabs in Africa.

Under liberalism, several generations of young black men have grown up in prison because we stripped them of their manhood through government handouts to their mothers and girlfriends, never expecting them to get a job or get married and take care of business. Glorification of the gay lifestyle and focus on their civil rights rather then the disease eating up and spitting out their community have helped spread horrible diseases, destroying the lives and immunity of millions of gay men.

The chickens have really come home to roost on the liberals' 1970s feel good programs of finding the American dream for all Americans, regardless of their credit-worthiness or desire to live like white folks do. All the better to push them out of their neighborhoods into suburbia making the valuable central city land available for development by capitalists, who are never shy in finding opportunities the liberals create for them. The non-profit, ACORN clones gobbled up the grant money that each succeeding administration, regardless of party, pushed through Congress for approval. Even Bush waxed eloquent with words praising the growing housing bubble--and there was money pouring in from all over the world to buy these bundled, toxic funds.

Whether you call it the New Deal, the War on Poverty, The Second Bill of Rights or the Great Society, it's just one more toxic bundle of programs which will help destroy our liberty and economy.

How the New Deal hurt the poor

Poor people were principal victims of the New Deal. The evidence has been developed by dozens of economists. . .

"New Deal programs were financed by tripling federal taxes from $1.6 billion in 1933 to $5.3 billion in 1940. Excise taxes, personal income taxes, inheritance taxes, corporate income taxes, holding company taxes and so-called "excess profits" taxes all went up. . ." excise taxes on alcohol, chewing gum, candy, playing cards, movie tickets--hitting mostly the poor and middle class.

"New Deal taxes were major job destroyers during the 1930s, prolonging unemployment that averaged 17%. Higher business taxes meant that employers had less money for growth and jobs. Social Security excise taxes on payrolls made it more expensive for employers to hire people, which discouraged hiring."

Other New Deal programs destroyed jobs, too. For example, the National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) cut back production and forced wages above market levels, making it more expensive for employers to hire people - blacks alone were estimated to have lost some 500,000 jobs because of the National Industrial Recovery Act. . . "

"For defenders of the New Deal, perhaps the most embarrassing revelation about New Deal spending programs is they channeled money AWAY from the South, the poorest region in the United States. The largest share of New Deal spending and loan programs went to political "swing" states in the West and East - where incomes were at least 60% higher than in the South. As an incumbent, FDR didn't see any point giving much money to the South where voters were already overwhelmingly on his side.

For the whole article.

Interesting thought. FDR channeling money away from the people supporting him to influence votes in another region.