[Peace-discuss] Howard Zinn for President!?

[n.dahlheim at mchsi.com]

Fat chance.....   As the nation reprises 1929, the Fed led by "Helicopter Ben" will print money to bail out 
their criminal gambling friends on Wall Street.  I mean we even repealed the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 
that guaranteed the safety and solvency of the American banking system under Clinton and Greenspan 
when times were "good."   The government will help their rich friends out, even if unemployment 
shoots up to 20-25%....  

Enjoy the 21st Century Great Depression, and if this country survives that, we will enjoy perpetual 
peonage under a fascist regime; because we let our Constitution get destroyed.  This election was and 
has always been  a joke; the new President will inherit a nasty mess and will be able to take dictatorial 
powers if he/she wants in order to protect his corporate-Wall Street banker buddies.....




----------------------  Original Message:  ---------------------
From:    "Morton K. Brussel" <brussel4 at insightbb.com>
To:      Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>
Subject: [Peace-discuss] Howard Zinn for President!?
Date:    Sat, 22 Mar 2008 16:14:54 +0000

> 
> Published on Friday, March 21, 2008 by The Nation
> 
> Beyond the New Deal
> 
> by Howard Zinn
> 
> We might wonder why no Democratic Party contender for the presidency  
> has invoked the memory of the New Deal and its unprecedented series  
> of laws aimed at helping people in need. The New Deal was tentative,  
> cautious, bold enough to shake the pillars of the system but not to  
> replace them. It created many jobs but left 9 million unemployed. It  
> built public housing but not nearly enough. It helped large  
> commercial farmers but not tenant farmers. Excluded from its programs  
> were the poorest of the poor, especially blacks. As farm laborers,  
> migrants or domestic workers, they didn’t qualify for unemployment  
> insurance, a minimum wage, Social Security or farm subsidies.
> 
> Still, in today’s climate of endless war and uncontrolled greed,  
> drawing upon the heritage of the 1930s would be a huge step forward.  
> Perhaps the momentum of such a project could carry the nation past  
> the limits of FDR’s reforms, especially if there were a popular  
> upsurge that demanded it. A candidate who points to the New Deal as a  
> model for innovative legislation would be drawing on the huge  
> reputation Franklin Roosevelt and his policies enjoy in this country,  
> an admiration matched by no President since Lincoln. Imagine the  
> response a Democratic candidate would get from the electorate if he  
> or she spoke as follows:
> 
> “Our nation is in crisis, just as it was when Roosevelt took office.  
> At that time, people desperately needed help, they needed jobs,  
> decent housing, protection in old age. They needed to know that the  
> government was for them and not just for the wealthy classes. This is  
> what the American people need today.
> 
> “I will do what the New Deal did, to make up for the failure of the  
> market system. It put millions of people to work through the Works  
> Progress Administration, at all kinds of jobs, from building schools,  
> hospitals, playgrounds, to repairing streets and bridges, to writing  
> symphonies and painting murals and putting on plays. We can do that  
> today for workers displaced by closed factories, for professionals  
> downsized by a failed economy, for families needing two or three  
> incomes to survive, for writers and musicians and other artists who  
> struggle for security.
> 
> “The New Deal’s Civilian Conservation Corps at its peak employed  
> 500,000 young people. They lived in camps, planted millions of trees,  
> reclaimed millions of acres of land, built 97,000 miles of fire  
> roads, protected natural habitats, restocked fish and gave emergency  
> help to people threatened by floods.
> 
> “We can do that today, by bringing our soldiers home from war and  
> from the military bases we have in 130 countries. We will recruit  
> young people not to fight but to clean up our lakes and rivers, build  
> homes for people in need, make our cities beautiful, be ready to help  
> with disasters like Katrina. The military is having a hard time  
> recruiting young men and women for war, and with good reason. We will  
> have no such problem enlisting the young to build rather than destroy.
> 
> “We can learn from the Social Security program and the GI Bill of  
> Rights, which were efficient government programs, doing for older  
> people and for veterans what private enterprise could not do. We can  
> go beyond the New Deal, extending the principle of social security to  
> health security with a totally free government-run health system. We  
> can extend the GI Bill of Rights to a Civilian Bill of Rights,  
> offering free higher education for all.
> 
> “We will have trillions of dollars to pay for these programs if we do  
> two things: if we concentrate our taxes on the richest 1 percent of  
> the population, not only their incomes but their accumulated wealth,  
> and if we downsize our gigantic military machine, declaring ourselves  
> a peaceful nation.
> 
> “We will not pay attention to those who complain that this is ‘big  
> government.’ We have seen big government used for war and to give  
> benefits to the wealthy. We will use big government for the people.”
> 
> How refreshing it would be if a presidential candidate reminded us of  
> the experience of the New Deal and defied the corporate elite as  
> Roosevelt did, on the eve of his 1936 re-election. Referring to the  
> determination of the wealthy classes to defeat him, he told a huge  
> crowd at Madison Square Garden: “They are unanimous in their hatred  
> for me–and I welcome their hatred.” I believe that a candidate who  
> showed such boldness would win a smashing victory at the polls.
> 
> The innovations of the New Deal were fueled by the militant demands  
> for change that swept the country as FDR began his presidency: the  
> tenants’ groups; the Unemployed Councils; the millions on strike on  
> the West Coast, in the Midwest and the South; the disruptive actions  
> of desperate people seeking food, housing, jobs–the turmoil  
> threatening the foundations of American capitalism. We will need a  
> similar mobilization of citizens today, to unmoor from corporate  
> control whoever becomes President. To match the New Deal, to go  
> beyond it, is an idea whose time has come.
> 
> Howard Zinn is the author of “A People’s History of the United  
> States,” “Voices of a People’s History” (with Anthony Arnove), and  
> most recently, “A Power Governments Cannot Suppress.”
> 
> Copyright © 2008 The Nation
> 
> Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org
> 
> URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/03/21/7820/
> 
> 
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