The eternal parade of scandals? Oh, Daley didn’t know anything about that, of course. The rampant patronage and nepotism? No, no, that was everyone else, not Dick Daley. Trucks For Hire? Endless no-bid contracts given to family and friends (including Outfit-backed firms)? What? No, no, someone else was responsible for that, not the Mayor, who ran Chicago for 22 years. This Mayor was only responsible for all the good things that happened in Chicago… like parks!
If there is any one gift The Chicago Machine has lavished on Obama, it is this inherent talent to redirect negative attention from their leader. The troubles are always because of someone else, and we will find that person and fire them (if we can) or malign them if we cannot. One thing is sure though, Obama had nothing to do with anything negative.
But when it comes to misappropriating funds, Daley is small potatoes. Where he pulled his scam on a small urban area, FDR managed to hoodwink an entire country and brainwash a generation of historians to boot.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
FDR, much like Obama, took office in the throes of an economic downturn. FDR’s inheritance was worse than Obama’s, but they both did about the same thing to counteract it: spend money on votes.
Roosevelt’s horrifying economic failure, encapsulated in his stimulus package usually known as The New Deal (a term he cribbed from his cousin Teddy Roosevelt’s far superior Square Deal), was a vast and horrendous waste of resources that greatly lengthened the Great Depression. The parallels between The New Deal and the Obama Stimulus are terrifying, and the end will be the same: massive expansion of federal power, decreased productivity and degradation of private interests. FDR’s administration proved that the government was horrible at handling money and doing things on a budget. The vast waste of just the DOE’s stimulus cash under Obama eighty years later only shows that nothing has changed.
4 Comments
Great piece Theo!
Good Piece. However, what Theo is really saying is that nothing has changed, in fact it’s gotten worse. It goes beyond Party Politics. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Republicans or Democrats. Obama, Bush, Cheney, Daley, Democrat, Republican, African American, Irish American, Italian American, it doesn’t matter. This Country is in the middle of a DEPRESSION just like 1929. It’s not a Recession, it’s a DEPRESSION. This Country needs to be overhauled like the Roman Catholic Church. What we need is a fucking REVOLUTION! We need to take care of America first and foremost. Forget about trying to Police the whole God Damn World. Worry about America and AMERICA FIRST. Love begins at home! I don’t give a God Damn about Democracy in Iraq or anywhere else in this world. Fix America and forget about everything else until America is fixed with decent Health Care, A lot more Job Opportunities, a Decent Income Tax Structure ( like abolishing it altogether) and just charge a flat 10% sales tax on all goods purchased, Better Schools, Better Banking System, Stop corruption on Wall Street, Help people from suffering foreclosures etc. FIX AMERICA and then worry about what the people in Iraq are doing!
Well someone just read Burton Folsom.
This is frankly a highly bias, one-sided, unfounded use of hearsay and conspiracy and a severely paranoid cobbling of the facts…FDR’s “New Deal” lifted us from the toilet and whether you like it or not, fiscal stimulus and interventionism in the face of disaster is supported among most fiscal experts from Wall Street CEOs like Blankfein, Pandit and Dimon to economists at ratings agencies and financial services firms throughout the country and here in Chicago like Mesirow. They don’t refer to themselves as Keynesians or socialists either…and I’d be willing to bet they know a bit more about capital markets than you.
The fact is that after FDR, Federal Taxes continued to plummet and the role of the government only increased with the population of the American people, under conservative Presidents and liberal presidents. FDR’s stimulus was supported by tax increases, specifically excise tax increases that affected all classes equally. We actually didn’t turn into Stalinist Russia or any other conservative nightmare following FDR, your piece really lacks a strong thesis. Its clear you are a conservative who doesn’t like Obama. There is nothing wrong with that and nothing wrong with expressing your frustration. There is something wrong with using a string of facts to mislead people and present a paranoid conspiracy that we are headed towards Stalinist Russia. Idiotic and a classic symptom of the severe polarization happening in this nation…its no longer “I disagree with you” its “You are the anti-Christ.” The fact of the matter (and I’d welcome you to explain this to me) is that Obama made his fortune in the capitalist system and Wall Street firms including Bain Capital (The firm Romney co-founded) continue to donate more to Obama’s reelection campaign than any GOP candidates campaign combined. Obama continues to hold Wall Street close…and Wall Street is capitalism…and this frankly is a well-known fact among the non-Glenn Beck watching rational minded.
We get it Theo, you’re a Republican and you hate Democrats.
Well, you know what? Nobody gives a fuck about bullshit right vs. left political gamesmanship.
A new poll shows that the middle-class thinks that Republicans in Congress are a bunch of do-nothing obstructionists whose only goal is to beat Obama. For Republicans, if the economy sucks, they are ecstatic because they think it will improve the GOP’s chances in 2012.
Republicans have overplayed their hand. They gleefully defend tax cuts for the 1%, subsidies for oil companies, and then tell the middle-class that we have to cut social security and medicare. They refuse to pass a jobs package and become giddy when public workers are thrown out of work.
There is not a chance in hell that voters are going to turn the reins of government back over to more do-nothing Republicans.