The Messiah’s reincarnation of Roosevelt Depression politics

Just in the nick of time for tomorrow’s massive Tea Party response to the out-of-line Obama administration, the resurrection of this authentic 1934 Chicago Tribune cartoon. `Planned Economy or Planned Destruction?’, the cartoon title, is the same question millions of Americans are asking 65 years later in 2009. Figures of the day, giddy with power, are driving the horse pulling a wagon to ground. “Depleting the Resources of the Soundest Government in The World”, are the words emblazoned on the bag of the wagon. These figures of the day include Rexford Tugwell, who in 1933 was appointed to work in Roosevelt's administration, working in the United States Department of Agriculture. In 1934, he was promoted to the undersecretary position of the department, then became the head of the Resettlement Administration, a federal agency that relocated the urban poor to the suburbs and impoverished farmers to new rural communities. In 1936, when the RA came under political fire for being overly utopian and socialistic, he resigned from his position in the administration.

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“Overly utopian and socialistic” has returned to haunt Americans in 2009. In 1933, Roosevelt appointed Henry A. Wallace United States Secretary of Agriculture in his Cabinet, a post his father, Henry Cantwell Wallace, had occupied from 1921 to 1924. Wallace had been a liberal Republican, but he supported Roosevelt's New Deal and soon switched to the Democratic Party. During his stay as U.S. Secretary of Agriculture he had to order a very unpopular strategy of slaughtering pigs and plowing up cotton fields in rural America to drive the price of these commodities back up in order to improve American farmers financial situation. Harold L. Ickes served simultaneously in several major roles for Roosevelt. Although he was the Secretary of the Interior, he was better known to the public for other roles in which he served simultaneously. He was the director of the Public Works Administration. Here he directed billions of dollars of projects designed to lure private investment and provide employment at the depth of the Great Depression.. Ickes' support of PWA power plants put increased financial pressure on private power companies during the Great Depression. Donald Richberg was Head of the National Recovery Administration (NRA) from 1934 - 1935. The NRA, symbolized by the blue eagle, was popular with workers. Businesses that supported the NRA put the symbol in their shop windows and on their packages. Though membership to the NRA was voluntary, businesses that did not display the eagle were very often boycotted–making it seem to many mandatory for survival. The words on the cartoon’s artist palette: “SPEND! SPEND! SPEND! Under the guise of recovery-bust the government-blame the capitalists for the failure-junk the Constitution and declare a dictatorship.” Sound all too chillingly familiar? Notice the figure of Stalin off to the side, stating “How red the sunrise is getting” and the words “It worked in Russia!” In 1934, it was the middle of the Great Depression, and Franklin D. Roosevelt was in the White House. In 2009, the world is in a recession experts say will lead to a Depression worse than the one in the “dirty 30s”. Americans hitting the streets in tomorrow’s Tax Day Tea Parties can take heart in knowing that their forbears have been there before. They came through the Great Depression and survived the arrogant politicians of the day. And the people who survived the Great Depression are the parents and the grandparents of the very Americans who will be out in force tomorrow. Surviving President Roosevelt took some doing. Surviving President Barack Obama, a mere knock-off of the original, and a George Soros puppet to boot--should be a walk in the park. And just to think Obama’s cult thinks “The Messiah” is being original.