Help us out by throwing some cash in the bucket:
Click here to read Hightower's personal message about
REAL CHANGE
(not small change)
Hightower Lowdown
Even a dead fish can go with the flow. -- Jim Hightower
In This Issue
Here we go again--invading when we should be thinking
Team Obama's plan for Afghanistan is a disaster in search of a strategy
Also in this issue:
- The CIA'S uprising in Afghanistan
- STOP CODDLING ELITE CROOKS
- OBAMA MUST BE BOLDER THAN FDR
- INVESTIGATING THE BUSH REGIME
Do Something!
February's Lowdown
How corporate money took over Washington--and created the mobs who rant against reform
Despite a constant racket from the forces of the far-out right (Fox television's yackety-yackers, just-say-no GOP know-nothings, tea-bag howlers, Sarah Palinistas, et al.), the great majority of Americans support a bold progressive agenda for our country, ranging from Medicare for all to the decentralization and re-regulation of Wall Street. Indeed, in the elections of 2006 and 2008, people voted for a fundamental break from Washington's 30-year push to enthrone a corporate kleptocracy.
[read more]
Stay in the Loop
Sign up for email alerts, from breaking news to weekly commentary:
Recent Lowdowns
Search
Subscriber Features
Manage your account by logging in. Don't have an account? Get the Lowdown in the mail every month -- for the unbelievable, ridiculous, low, low price of $15 per year! Save a tree and read it online for just $10 per year!
Dig Deeper
Find more content in these topics: Common good, Democrats, Poverty, Wealth
The General Store
Visit Hightower's General Store, to buy high-power Hightower books and other goodies like that.
Home | Contact | RSS | Privacy policy | Copyright Public Intelligence, Inc., all rights reserved 1999-2009
OBAMA MUST BE BOLDER THAN FDR
When Franklin Roosevelt was accused of being a traitor to his own privileged class, he jauntily replied, "I welcome their hatred."
Those FDR-haters are on the prowl again, now led by right-wing think tanks and talk-show yakkers who are busy rewriting history to trash Roosevelt's New Deal. Their real target is Barack Obama's economic-recovery plan, which is largely modeled on the New Deal approach of government spending for roads, schools, parks, conservation, and other public works, putting millions of people to work on jobs that need doing.
Naysaying popinjays like the far-right-wing Heritage Foundation now claim that the New Deal was a failure. Fox News pundit Monica Crowley has said that the failure is proven by "all kinds of studies," and her Fox colleague Gregg Jarrett added, "I think historians pretty much agree on that."
Uh...no, they don't. Indeed, they pretty much agree that millions of families were saved back then by the New Deal's public-works programs, and we still benefit today from the work that those people did.
The chief shortcoming of FDR's public spending was that he didn't do enough of it. After winning a smashing re-election victory in 1936, largely based on the popularity of his New Deal, Roosevelt gave in to Wall Street interests who were demanding a cutback in federal spending. The result was a relapse into recession in 1937, a return to double-digit unemployment, and a rejection of Democrats in the 1938 congressional elections.
In 2009 we need to stand firm against the ideological naysayers and to be even bolder than FDR.