Is this any way to help the poor? FDR didn’t think so. In his annual message to Congress in 1935, President Roosevelt warned that “continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber.” The father of the New Deal knew that “to dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit. It is inimical to the dictates of a sound policy. It is in violation of the traditions of America.”
It is a mark of how far we have declined that a political figure who dared to say such a thing today would be denounced as heartless, a hater of the poor, even a racist — as Newt Gingrich found out when he tried to make an issue of soaring food stamp rates during the presidential campaign.Newt Gingrich, the FDR of his time!
By the way, nine years later FDR proposed a Second Bill of Rights, the theme of which was not to throw all the bums off welfare, but to guarantee every American, among other things, "the right to a useful and remunerative job.. the right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation... the right of every family to a decent home; the right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health..." Maybe Jacoby heard about this, but couldn't believe it was true -- not his Newt Roosevelt!
I don't usually pay attention to Jacoby but I have to admit, anyone who can combine a Nooningtonian personalization/distortion of history and the viciousness toward the poor of a Rob Port belongs in the asshole hall of fame. (BTW, the title refers to this.)
Ah yes, the irrefutable smoking gun: Something a politician said 78 years ago.
ReplyDeleteWow. Has the supply of revisionist axes been ground to the nub?
ReplyDeleteI think this marks the first time that one of the brethren has tried to label FDR as a social conservative.
Next up: Keynes was a supply-sider!
Okay you guys, I just went and read that FDR speech and sure enough, it is not a denunciation of relief. Instead, FDR's "warning" segues straight to his proposal that the federal government directly hire 3.5 million unemployed people from the dole and put them to work modernizing infrastructure and advancing conservation. He proposes they remain federal employees until there exist enough jobs for them in the private sector -- in other words, he advocates a more muscular and proactive government, indefinitely.
ReplyDeleteIt is juuust about 105% dishonest for Jacoby to claim that FDR could be construed as "a hater of the poor" here; more accurate to say that today this speech would get every Republican and half the Democrats alive to exclaim "Jesus, he can't do that!" In 2013, FDR wouldn't be run out of town for being a heartless race-baiter -- he'd be run out of town as a bomb-throwing radical communist.
Gah, now I'm envisioning an Orson Scott Card peened (sic) alternate history novel in which FDR and his youthful ward MLK team up to knock some sense into those shiftless negroes and zoot-suiters.
ReplyDeleteI think I shall now be sick.
It is a mark of how far we have declined that a political figure who dared to say such a thing today would be denounced as heartless, a hater of the poor, even a racist — as Newt Gingrich found out when he tried to make an issue of soaring food stamp rates during the presidential campaign.
ReplyDeleteFDR wanted to replace welfare with a jobs program so people could maintain their skill set and regain their pride, while Newt wanted to replace welfare with nothing. These two things are not alike... Newt is denounced as heartless, a hater of the poor, even a racist because he is all of those (and more).
Jacoby has always been an intellectually dishonest little fuck, and this is classic Jacobyism. He knows exactly what FDR was talking about in this speech, but as a rank propagandist, Jacoby doesn't give two shits about the actual intent of the words he carefully razors out of their all-important context. He also knows that his readership lacks the intellectual curiosity to seek out and consider the full context of FDR's words. He has done his job well.
ReplyDeleteThe Adventures of White Man and Hobgoblin?
ReplyDelete~
You're exactly correct, Roosevelt is arguing for expanding the government through massive and unprecedented public works programs, federal unemployment insurance, old-age insurance, child benefits, and other social programs.
ReplyDeleteThe quote about living on the dole being spiritually harmful is, in fact, an argument for federal works and insurance programs. In other words: socialism.
Roosevelt does declare his intention to end federal cash subsidies to the poor but he also states his unwillingness to cease them until these public works programs kick in and lower unemployment, and until the transition from federal assistance to state, local, and private charitable assistance is complete. People who need to be on the dole will still be on the dole, the monies will just eventually come from the states.
Any reasonable reading of this speech does not support Jacoby's argument that welfare is "corrupt." He just cherry-picked a quote to use out of context to bash recipients of government relief. Roosevelt, on the other hand, goes out of his way to exonerate the less fortunate of moral wrongdoing and emphasize the absolute necessity of helping them with tax dollars.
Were Jacoby to get behind Roosevelt's actual message and support a transition to the Swedish-style socialist state envisioned in his speech, then count me the fuck right in. Sadly, I don't think this where he's going with this.
Never have I been more thankful for the existence of a paywall.
ReplyDeleteIn Newt's defense, he did want to put children to work as school janitors.
ReplyDeleteIs Jacoby talking about when Newt referred to Obama as the "food stamp President"? At the time, that seemed more like a racist dog whistle (or just out and out racist) then "making an issue of soaring food stamp rates".
ReplyDeleteUnpaid janitors?
ReplyDelete~
And what do food stamp rates do during a recession?
ReplyDeleteIn exchange for their education, natch. Think of it as ... what's a P.C. term for "indenture?"
ReplyDeleteThis goes straight to the crotch of the strawman that indefinite dependence on a patronizing federal government is a turrible thang.
ReplyDeleteOf course it is--but no progressive, liberal or decent human being is advocating that. Not FDR, not MLK, not JFK, not any of the millions in this nation with NO OTHER CHOICE despite the Big Lie that "anyone can succeed in this Land of Opportunity."
The American Dream only exists for a handful. Social welfare is a stopgap to keep the majority from starving and rioting--not much more. If the wingnuts, libertardians, and general selfish haters would relent for a generation, we could have decent jobs and productive, happy citizens in overwhelming numbers.
Yeah. What's particularly galling is that in the speech Jacobi is talking about FDR is priming Congress to pass the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act to create the WPA, whose purpose was to get people off of relief and into full-time jobs. And it succeeded, employing millions and millions of people, providing them meaningful jobs and dignity. But can you imagine a modern president proposing something similar on even a fraction of the scale today? We would hear the same right wing screaming about it that FDR heard back then: that the WPA was just one more place the lazy and shiftless could go to be lazy and shiftless. That the government should no more provide jobs for the jobless than homes for the homeless or food for the hungry. And then, as now, the vast majority of people on relief were children. Does this all sound familiar?
ReplyDeleteWhat right-wing scumbags such as Jacobi want is suffering. Poverty and need in what passes for their minds is the fault of those who choose to be poor and needy, and who really only need to be sufficiently punished. What Jacoby will never admit for discussion is the failure of their cherished free market capitalism to provide enough jobs to sustain a working populace, at wages commensurate to the productivity that workers themselves create for those who own their labor. It's always better that a single billionaire should upgrade his yacht than for millions to go jobless.
Along with consent and irony, they also don't understand rhetoric versus actions. Clearly whatever else FDR may have said, in or out of context, the New Deal spent government money on lifting people out of poverty. Plus Jacoby looks like a half-shaved Wookie.
ReplyDeleteTo be fair, what is true of Jacoby is true of most of these charlatans. They're not actually stupid, they just assume their readers are.
ReplyDelete"...Jacoby looks like a half shaved Wookie."
ReplyDeleteThere, now...ya see? Liberals actually ARE ever so mean to Conservatives!
True. I should just be attacking his mendacious, cock-headed ideas, instead of gratuitously adding on the fact that baboons think he's mooning them when he smiles.
ReplyDeleteActual conversation I once had at Ann Althouse's place (and one of the reasons I stopped hanging out there even to make fun of the inmates):
ReplyDeleteME: "And you think you're so clever and classless and free" -- John Lennon
ONE OF ALTHOUSE'S INMATES: "Lennon would be a Conservative today. Or else he was kidding back then, or he was on drugs and didn't know what he was saying."
As for welfare being "spiritually damaging", it's not as "spiritually damaging" as starvation or reliance on the underground economy.
ReplyDeleteJacoby and other wingers likely believe that there are plenty of jobs out there, but people won't take them because the gov't is handing out all those free Food Stamps and Unemployment and Welfare. And don't forget "Head Start". Those kids'll never get jobs!
ReplyDeleteThere are still beautiful WPA projects around the nation - bridges, huts along the Appalachian Trail, public buildings. There were projects that supported artists and writers. Think what creative minds and a steady supply of funds can do! And think if a better use is to add some more zeroes to some CEO's paycheck.
ReplyDeleteNorbizness (I'm pretty sure it was) called JJ "unfrozen caveman columnist." That is JJ's image in my head forever.
ReplyDeleteAnd for that he deserves to be impoverished and a taste of his own medicine. Couldn't think of a better fate for him than falling through the cracks and having to spin down for a year before he can get medical coverage.
ReplyDeleteThey probably have the blind-spots that the privileged often do. Jacoby can only use MLK as a reference because he denies structural racism. And he denies that unemployment is a valve that capitalists use purposefully and with design. He denies implicit bias, because it allows him to be izm-ist while declaring his innocence.
ReplyDeleteIn right-wing parlance, he's "shoving his privilege down our throats."
what's a P.C. term for "indenture?"
ReplyDeleteCongressional page "internship"
Speaking of welfare. . .
ReplyDeleteFunny you should mention it, but on this day in 1943: "A mob of 60 from the Los Angeles Naval Reserve Armory beat up everyone
ReplyDeleteperceived to be Hispanic, starting the week-long Zoot Suit Riots."
http://www.historyorb.com/today/events.php
It's socially damaging, the only thing Ferdinand Marcos feared more than a Communist take-over were riots over the price of rice.
ReplyDelete"Are there no workhouses?"
I tried to vote this comment up, but the counter went up twice. I'm here to say it's OK -- I think it's that good but wouldn't have double-voted on purpose.
ReplyDelete:)
ReplyDeleteSocial welfare is a stopgap to keep the majority from starving and rioting
ReplyDeleteExactly. If the under-classes are able to get ahead and improve their lot, the upper-class folk won't be upper class much longer.
Easy. Their 'belief' is that they alone deserve the Good Life, everyone else should be poor and hopeless. There isn't enough Good Life to go around, it can't be shared. His definition of the Good Life is possessing at least One Billion dollars.
ReplyDeleteThe Romans supplied their citizens with bread and circuses, and for a very good reason. They knew the citizens would slaughter them if they didn't.
ReplyDeleteGood Times.
Jacoby's just a liar on multiple levels.
ReplyDeleteOne my rules of critical reading is not to trust somebody who doesn't give you comparative numbers.
According to this Boston Globe article, we're talking about $18 Million dollars of "questionable benefits" in a period of years. The same article says that the Massachusetts yearly welfare budget is $1.7 Billion.
Which means that fraud accounts for less than 1% of the Mass welfare budget.
Also, when he complains about Massachusetts governor Patrick vetoing a bill to prevent electronic benefit cards from being used to pay for tattoos, guns, or jewelry, he links to an article in which says the following:
"Patrick said his recommendations... would restrict the use of EBT cards for the purchase of alcohol, tobacco and Lottery, and at liquor stores; casinos, strip clubs, adult bookstores or adult paraphernalia shops, firearms and ammunitions dealers, tattoo parlors, spas, bars and drinking establishments, and cruise ships.
He dropped some items from the Legislature’s list, including jewelry and manicures, arguing it’s more feasible to restrict purchases in certain types of establishments, rather than trying to list prohibited goods or services."
By the way, nine years later FDR proposed a Second Bill of Rights,
ReplyDeletethe theme of which was not to throw all the bums off welfare, but to
guarantee every American, among other things, "the right to a useful and
remunerative job.. the right to earn enough to provide adequate food
and clothing and recreation... the right of every family to a decent
home; the right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve
and enjoy good health..."
so, then, retroactive impeach?
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The work ethic needs to tun full circle here. I agree with the point of view expressed by FDR.
ReplyDelete_____________
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ReplyDeleteAre there no workhouses?
Jacoby is a typical right wing pundit who takes most things out of context because if he were truthful and accurate he'd have nothing to write about. Too bad he's on the Globe's dole.
ReplyDeleteOh, lately, they have tried to co-opt FDR because of his decision in 1937 to contract federal spending, to say, "even FDR understood the need for austerity." That effort is just as disingenuous as is Jacoby's current try at co-opting FDR, since the economy went into the shitter again and FDR's administration reversed most of 1937 changes in 1938, or as soon as the damage became obvious.
ReplyDeleteWhat Jacoby backhandedly proves (and the proof is diametrically opposite his intent) is that while the United States is still the richest nation on earth, it just might also be the stingiest, too.
ReplyDeleteOf interest in the argument is that most surveys of welfare fraud show it to be in the few tenths of one percent range, sometimes maybe as much as one percent. That's cause for the Jacobys of the country to engage in flaming, spittle-flying print hissy fits, but the theft of hundreds of billions of dollars by corporations in such boondoggles as military and intelligence privatization, Iraq reconstruction and Katrina recovery measures, where fraud and theft via no-bid, cost-plus, multi-tiered contracts may account for as much as forty percent of much larger sums of money goes virtually unnoticed.
The undeniable conclusion that one must draw from the ravings of the Jacobys of our day is that there are two entirely different kinds of fraud in this country, and that the petty fraud of the poor is of much more significance than the wholesale fraud of the rich.
As befits the wealthiest nation in the world....
Sheesh. I'll never understand people who depend on dishonesty to
ReplyDeleteadvance their beliefs; if they feel the dishonesty is necessary, why do
they hold the beliefs?
Being a person with a living breathing and functional brain, a shred of consciousness, a bit of empathy, some compassion and possessed of something like logic, you find it remarkably difficult to hold two diametrically opposed beliefs in your head at the same time.
I suspect that whatever flaws you may recognize within your person are *not* projected upon everyone around you*.
*this one is easy as you don't sound like a republican.
...
They would be paid with a school lunch...Maybe.
ReplyDelete...
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ReplyDelete...
Thanks, I was just about sure that FDR was decrying cash handouts in favor of his quite-famous make-work projects, and I was proceeding to hunt down the original quote, but you've saved me the trouble. The phrase "in this way" in the quote Jacoby snipped out was the tip-off - maybe Jacoby should have replaced it with an ellipsis. You can't convince me Jacoby didn't read the whole thing, and knew that he was deliberately distorting FDR's meaning totally beyond recognition. What an asshole move, what a sleazy son of a bitch he is!
ReplyDeleteBut then the 'Meritocracy' that vaults a 'Paris Hilton'Bill Kristol into the limelight would be subverted.
ReplyDeleteThere's a certain sort of penny-wise, pound-foolish vein in populist politics that can't really wrap their brains around entire palletloads of cash disappearing half a world away, but can produce instant and endless rage over someone buying a steak with food stamps.
ReplyDeleteSilly, Congressional page is the PC term for "boy candy."
ReplyDeleteThe opinion of the right wingers is not that capitalism has failed the poor, but the poor have failed capitalism - and therefore, must be punished.
ReplyDeleteThe Second Bill of Rights could have saved your country. Instead you got Nixon, Reagan and Bush. And the various Democrats in between who've been mostly stop-gap measures. For once, I have no joke to make, just an expression of shares sadness.
ReplyDeleteThis. Next, Jacoby will say to the unemployed, "By electing not to work, you deny ME the benefit your taxes would provide to my government. I'M the injured party here."
ReplyDeleteHow about a super-natural horror movie in which a character exactly like Jacoby is haunted by the ghost of MLK who tortures him eloquently. It would be clear that MLK is the real victim and he could make the exactly-like-Jacoby bully --- eat all his words.
ReplyDelete"Truth has a well known Liberal bias"
ReplyDeleteThey'd say that is WHY we are the wealthiest nation...
ReplyDeleteThe Jesus-approved phrase is "swallow camels yet strain at a gnat."
ReplyDeleteThe ones McMegan wasn't using for automatic weapons fodder.
ReplyDeleteYeah, what a useless gaggle of make-work bullshit that WPA was: just highways, utilities, schools, libraries, bridges, agriculture, voc ed ...
ReplyDeleteTo which the only reply is "OK, Perfesser Otto Yerass."
ReplyDeleteActually, starvation may leave you nothing but a spirit.
ReplyDeleteThe republicans have the clown show part of that covered.
ReplyDeleteDepends on the someone. Is the someone strapping?
ReplyDeleteHad a blathering libertarian co-worker who rationaized his taking part in the cash for clunkers program by saying "its about time I got some of my tax dollars back"
Needles should accommodate fat rich men, such that the rich fat men should pass through them...Of course needles that large would only allow elephants to remain clothed...
ReplyDelete...
I gave up on the Boston globe because jacoby was a regular on thevtop Ed page. On a regular basis he is an asshole, a rank sentimentalist about his own spawn in the lileksian tradition, and a stunningly immoral person. His columns routinely sent me into paroxysms of rage.
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While on vacation, in D.C. in 2004, I chatted with a man (in an Irish bar) whose home and the land it was built on had recently been destroyed by a hurricane in Florida. He lost everything. I asked him if was getting any government assistance. Then I learned that he was libertarian with the bootstrap-small government speech It was pitiful.
ReplyDeleteHe was clearly on the edge of cracking up, and was using all of his energy not to weep. His knees looked they were about to buckle. He reminded me of my mother caught in the contradiction of being essentially racist while respecting Martin Luther King. Inside I was pleading with him to let go of his silly little poor excuse of a philosophy, if for no other reason than to end his own suffering and prohibit him from making that pathetic little speech again.
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i agree with this sentence It is a mark of how far we have declined that a political figure who dared to say such a thing today would be denounced as heartless, a hater of the poor, even a racist — as Newt Gingrich found out when he tried to make an issue of soaring food stamp rates during the presidential campaign.
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