ET Williams

The Doctor of Common Sense

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Theodore Roosevelt Policies

 

We Want Socialism

 

 

1901–1909: Domestic Policies

On the domestic front, President Roosevelt was one of the most visible Progressives of his time. Many of his domestic policies involved fighting big industry and corruption in an attempt to help the common man. He offered the American people a Square Deal to improve their standard of living and exert more control over large domineering corporations or trusts. Trusts, which were technically illegal under the 1890 Sherman Act, attempted to consolidate business interests to create a monopoly on specific products and eliminate competition. Many businesses attackedRooseveltas a socialist, but he ardently refuted these accusations and refuted the principles of Marxism. In truth,Roosevelt did not despise big business, and in fact realized that the trusts had indirectly increased the standard of living for nearly every American in the latter half of the nineteenth century.Rooseveltdid, however, dislike the power of the trusts and the fact that the American public had little control of them. On the other hand, however, he also feared giving too much power to labor. His Square Deal policies attempted to strike a balance between the two.

Roosevelt’s first major domestic test as President came when 140,000 miners in easternPennsylvania went on strike in the 1902 Coal Strike. Coal was a vital energy source for almost all Americans during this era, and the nation panicked during the strike. Represented by John Mitchell, the miners formed the United Mine Workers Union to demand higher wages and better working conditions. The president of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company and owner of the mine, George Baer, would not concede to the strikers’ demands. Mitchell approached Roosevelt and asked him to establish an independent arbitration council. Baer–and, ironically, even the miners themselves–refused arbitration.Roosevelt, under pressure from Republicans and the American citizenry and not even considering the legality of his actions, planned to replace the strikers by force with ten thousand Army troops and begin mining coal again if a settlement could not be reached. Fortunately, Secretary of War Elihu Root was able to avert a disaster. Working with banker J.P. Morgan, Root was able to convince the miners to accept independent arbitration.Roosevelt won the American people’s approval of the way he handled the situation.

Also in 1902, President Roosevelt shocked financiers on Wall Street with his decision to approve the government’s lawsuit against Northern Securities, a large and recently merged western railroad company, for violating the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. J.P. Morgan, the financier who had arranged the merger and who had significant amounts of money invested in Northern Securities, took Roosevelt’s decision as a personal insult. Many conservative Republicans in Congress and bankers on Wall Street attacked the President and Attorney General Philander Knox for the decision. The American people, one the other hand, loved Roosevelt for his boldness in the face of the trusts. To ensure the government’s victory,Roosevelt also nominated Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., to replace Justice Horace Gray on the Supreme Court. As Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, Holmes had voted against industry and railroads in similar suits, making him the perfect choice from Roosevelt’s perspective. In the end, theU.S.government won the suit, Northern Securities was dismantled into smaller companies, and President Roosevelt came to be known as the “Trustbuster.”

As the Sherman Act had never been truly enforced until this time, the breakup of Northern Securities opened the floodgate for suits against other major trusts. Famous among these was Roosevelt’s “busting” of the Standard Oil trust. Muckraker Ida Tarbell’s History of Standard Oil, which was published in McClure magazine, detailed the business practices of Rockefeller’s oil machine. Tarbell accused Standard Oil of issuing rebates in total of one million dollars to its customers to effectively eliminate competition. In 1906,Roosevelt had the Hepburn Bill drafted and passed through Congress to reform rate evaluations and outlaw excessive rebates designed to thwart competitors. The bill also stipulated that all companies engaged in interstate commerce were under the supervision of the federal government. The bill hurt not only Standard Oil but the powerful rebate-issuing railroads as well. In all,Roosevelt brought lawsuits against forty-three other trusts during his Presidency.

In 1907, financial troubles hit the United States when the Knickerbocker Trust Company in New York failed, leading to a cascade effect that caused many other banks to totter as well. Conservative Republicans blamedRooseveltfor the economic distress, claiming that his actions had undermined stability and shattered consumer confidence.Roosevelt shot back that it was the plutocracy that caused the troubles. Although it was impossible to discern at the time, the rest of the world was suffering as well, and the Panic of 1907 was neither the result of Roosevelt’s policies or the plutocrats’ business practices. When the large brokerage of Moore and Schley nearly collapsed, J.P. Morgan once again met with the President. Moore and Schley held five million dollars of stock in the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company that it could not convert to cash to pay its investors. Morgan suggested that financially sound U.S. Steel Company purchase the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company, validating its stock, and thus stabilize Moore and Schley. This plan would work so long asRooseveltapproved the merger and promised not to declare it a violation of the Sherman Act.Roosevelt consented, U.S. Steel purchased Tennessee Coal and Iron, and as a result the stock market did not collapse. Together, Roosevelt and Morgan successfully avoided a widespread economic depression.

Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel The Jungle, which graphically depicted the horrible working conditions of theChicago stockyards and meatpacking industry, spurredRoosevelt to make other reforms. The President was especially disgusted by Sinclair’s apparently fact-based account of a machinist who fell into a meat grinder and emerged as canned meat to be sold and eaten. Roosevelt called for immediate action and organized an investigation into the packing houses in Chicago and other cities. The details of the report turned out to be not far from Sinclair’s fictional account. An outraged public cry for action quickly produced the Meat Inspection Bill and later the creation of the Food and Drug Administration.

 Another major component of Roosevelt’s domestic policy was conservation, stemming from his great love of the outdoors. After having toured the nation on several campaign trips, including stints in California, thePacific Northwest, and the Southwest, the president determined to conserve as much land as possible.Roosevelt’s idea of conservation was groundbreaking–at the time, the idea of conserving the land primarily meant not preservation, but merely saving the land for future generations to use later. For this reason, most of the conserved land at that point was forest that provided valuable timber. During his administrations,Roosevelt purchased 150 acres of land to conserve.Rooseveltalso consorted with many prominent conservationists of the time, such as Gifford Pinchot and John Muir, and established many wildlife preservations along with them. The National Forest Service was organized and additional National Parks were set aside throughout theU.S.for recreation and conservation purposes. Such acts faced opposition from many members of Congress and Western settlers who had plans to use the land that was being set aside. Settlers were, however, pleased with the 1902 Reclamation Act that set aside money to irrigate previously dry and unlivable tracts of land.

 http://www.sparknotes.com/biography/troosevelt/section10.rhtml

 

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Obama is Channeling Theodore Roosevelt and that’s not good

We will keep trying it no matter how many times it fails.

“Roosevelt Was A Socialist Also” Please see Theodore Roosevelt’s Policies On The Next Post

By David Nakamura

Having failed to transcend ugly partisan politics in the here and now, President Obama has resorted instead to trying on different personas of presidents past in an attempt to rise above his Republican rivals.

During an address to Congress this summer, he quoted GOP icon Ronald Reagan to show that his plan to tax the wealthy to reduce the deficit was one that Republican heroes had once embraced.

On Labor Day, Obama appeared in Detroitand invoked Harry Truman’s visit on the same holiday decades earlier to launch a more pugilistic tone against his Republican opponents

On Tuesday, Obama will speak in Osawatomie, Kan., the same Midwestern town where, 101 years ago, Theodore Roosevelt gave a famous address trumpeting a new progressive agenda.

By arguing that every American deserves “a fair shot and a fair shake,” White House aides said, Obama will echoRoosevelt’s speech laying out his New Nationalism philosophy.

Rooseveltwas calling for a government that ensures that the welfare of ordinary residents trumps that of businesses and special interests. It’s an argument that builds on Obama’s jobs tour, in which he has attempted to cast himself as a champion of the middle class and accused Republicans of working only to protect the interests of the wealthy.

Last week, in an appearance in Scranton, Pa., Obama went so far as to question the GOP’s core values. (Republicans have countered that it is the Obama administration’s failed economic policies, such as the massive federal stimulus package in 2009, that have stymied a robust economic recovery.)

Obama’s address in Osawatomie aims to “put into broader perspective the kind of debates we’ve been having to build an economic future in this country,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Monday.

“It’s abundantly clear, and was clear even prior to this most recent economic crisis,” Carney added, “that the middle class in this country has been squeezed for a long time, and most especially in the last decade. . . prior to this president coming into office.”

Rooseveltgave his New Nationalism speech after finishing two terms in office. Frustrated with the stout conservatism of his hand-picked replacement, William Howard Taft, Roosevelt sought to press a more progressive agenda that would regulate corporations and the railroad industry, extend food and drug protections and provide federal assistance to the poor and middle-class, said Allan Lichtman, distinguished professor of American History at American University.

“It was a crystallizing speech that did what Obama wants to do, which is throw down the gauntlet,” Lichtman said. Having identified with Abraham Lincoln during his inauguration and now withRoosevelt, Lichtman added, Obama is “trying to show how far the Republican Party has strayed, trying to draw a contrast between a narrow, cramped, corporate Republican party and the party of Lincoln and Roosevelt that sought liberty and represented ordinary people.”

Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, in an appearance on Meet the Press two weeks ago, suggested that the president channelRoosevelt. But senior administration officials said Monday that Goodwin did not influence Obama’s decision to appear in Osawatomie.

The officials cited still other Republican presidents who took actions that current Republicans might balk at — Richard Nixon starting the Environmental Protection Agency, Dwight Eisenhower expanding the federal highway system — to highlight the stakes facing the country.

Roosevelt“was criticized by members of his party,” said one administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to lay out White House strategy. “That’s why he ultimately left his party and gave the speech. . .We’re at a crossroads here.”

 http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/44/post/obama-invokes-theodore-roosevelt-in-latest-bid-to-defeat-gop/2011/12/05/gIQARwwsYO_blog.html

 

 

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The truth about the Fast & the furious reveals that Eric Holder is a liar

 

 

 

By: Michael A. Walsh

 It was all a lie. The angry denials, the high dudgeon, the how-dare-you accuse-us bleating emanating from Eric Holder’s Justice Department these last nine months.

 Operation Fast and Furious — the “botched” gun-tracking program run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — did, in fact, deliberately allow some 2,000 high-powered weapons to be sold to Mexican drug cartel agents and then waltzed across the border and into the Mexican drug wars — just as Sen. Chuck Grassley and Rep. Darrell Issa, who are leading the congressional investigations, have charged all along.

 His stonewall crumbles: Eric Holder’s explanations of the Fast & Furious operation are sounding more hollow as new documents emerge.

That’s the conclusion we can draw from Friday night’s nearly 1,400-page document dump, which gives us a glimpse into the inner workings of the Justice Department as it struggled earlier this year to come up with an explanation for the deadly mess — and “misled” Congress.

Now the man who supervised it, Attorney General Holder, will appears before Congress again Thursday to testify in the exploding fiasco. But there’s really only one question he needs to answer: Why?

 Why did Justice, the ATF and an alphabet soup of federal agencies facilitate the transfer of guns across the border — without the knowledge of Mexican authorities — when they knew they couldn’t trace them properly?

The scandal erupted late last year, after at least two F&F weapons were found at the southernArizonascene of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry’s murder. Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, asked Justice for an explanation.

The response was a Feb. 4 letter from assistant AG Ron Weich, who insisted, “The allegation . . . that ATF ‘sanctioned’ or otherwise knowingly allowed the sale of assault weapons . . . is false.” The ATF, Weich went on, “makes every effort to interdict weapons that have been purchased illegally and prevent their transportation toMexico.”

 

That letter has now been formally withdrawn. “Facts have come to light during the course of this investigation that indicate the Feb. 4 letter contains inaccuracies,” wrote deputy attorney general James Cole on Friday.

Nice to finally see the government admitting what we’ve known all along — that according to ATF whistleblowers, Fast and Furious was an ill-advised, poorly supervised mess that was doomed from the start.

 

Fox News recently unearthed a Feb. 3 memo in which ATF agent Gary Styers recounted to his superiors his conversations with Grassley’s investigators: “It is unheard of to have an active wiretap investigation without full-time, dedicated surveillance units on the ground,” he wrote, adding that objections by agents were “widely disregarded.”

 Again — why? Perhaps the point was to put the onus for the Mexican drug violence on the American “gun lobby.” The newly released e-mails show Dennis Burke, the since-firedUSattorney inArizonawho supervised the operation, furiously pushing back against Grassley and his staff, calling them “willing stooges for the Gun Lobby.”

Holder has insisted he knew nothing about F&F, but the documents show his underlings’ fingerprints. Weich’s original “misleading letter, for example, was edited by Jason Weinstein, a deputy to Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, who forwarded various drafts to his boss.

But Breuer (who reports to Holder) has denied that he had anything to do with drafting or editing Weich’s letter and doesn’t even remember reviewing it before it went to Congress.

 So who’s telling the truth?

Meanwhile, Holder spins that F&F was merely a continuation of the Bush-era Operation Wide Receiver, which also lost a few weapons. The difference is that Wide Receiver’s mistakes were inadvertent: That gun-tracking program was under tight surveillance and — unlike F&F — was a joint venture between theUS and Mexican authorities.

 It’s time for the months of lies to end — but don’t hold your breath. The administration recently sealed the court records relating to agent Terry’s murder and — a year later — the one man arrested hasn’t been tried.

So far, three presidential candidates, a couple of senators and more than 50 congressmen have called for Holder to resign. If he can’t answer the one question that matters — why — that number ought to include his boss.

 http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/fast_furious_lies_0EAFsSpd9y1RaeAxikkGUN

 

 

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The Obama Administration has cost the taxpayer $200M on propping of Egypt

We the taxpayer should be happy because it is for a “greater cause”.

Is this just corruption at it’s finest or is Obama a great humanitarian?

By Margaret Menge

The Obama administration spent some $200 million on democracy building in the lead-up to the elections this week in Egypt.

But with 65 percent of the vote going to Islamist candidates, it doesn’t appear the money was well spent.

Stephen McInerney, executive director of the Project on Middle East Democracy, told Campaigns & Elections magazine that $65 million went to Egypt after the uprising that toppled President Hosni Mubarak and an additional $100 million was earmarked for economic development but also to train Egypt’s nascent political parties.

The money is going through the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute.

A Washington-based consultant who works with USAID and the State Department says the focus of the aid to Egypt has been on helping the smaller political parties that are competing against the better organized Freedom and Justice Party, the Muslim Brotherhood’s party.

This week saw the first round of Parliamentary elections, with voting in nine of the country’s 27 provinces. The staggered elections will continue over the coming months. The Freedom and Justice Party won 40 percent of the vote on Wednesday, with an additional 15 percent going to the Salafis, a group of hard-line Islamists who reject the right of women to vote.

 http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/us-money-egypt-elections/2011/12/02/id/419829

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Panetta tells Israel “Just get to damned table”

 

Nov. 18, 2011: Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta gestures while speaking during the opening news conference at the 2011 Halifax International Security Forum in Halifax,Nova Scotia,Canada.

WASHINGTON –  Defense Secretary Leon Panetta urged Israel on Friday to “reach out and mend fences” with Turkey, Egypt and other security partners in the Middle East, saying he is troubled by the Jewish state’s growing isolation in the volatile region. 

He also pressed Israeli leaders to do more to restart peace talks with the Palestinians — “Just get to the damned table” — and underscored President Obama’s determination to stopIran from acquiring nuclear weapons. He calledIran”a very grave threat to all of us” and said any Iranian disruption of the free flow of commerce through the Persian Gulf is a “red line” for the U.S. 

In a speech at a Brookings Institution forum, Panetta said that while Israel is not solely responsible for its isolation, it could more actively attempt to reverse the trend. 

“For example,Israel can reach out and mend fences with those who share an interest in regional stability — countries likeTurkey and Egypt, as well asJordan,” he said. “This is not impossible. If the gestures are rebuked, the world will see those rebukes for what they are. And that is exactly whyIsraelshould pursue them.” 

Panetta, who made his first visit to Israelas Pentagon chief in October, said it is in the interests of Israel as well asTurkey, a NATO ally of theUnited States, to reconcile. He said he would take that message to Ankara when he visits there in two weeks. 

He urged the Israelis to address their concerns aboutEgypt’s political revolution through increased communication and cooperation with Egyptian authorities, “not by stepping away from them.” 

Addressing an issue that is in the primary domain of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Panetta urged Israelto “lean forward” to achieve peace with the Palestinians. Peace talks have been moribund for more than a year. 

“Rather than undermining the Palestinian Authority, it is inIsrael’s interests to strengthen it by … continuing to transfer Palestinian tax revenues and pursuing other avenues of cooperation,” he said. 

Panetta spoke starkly of the challenge ofIran’s nuclear ambitions. 

“No greater threat exists to the security and prosperity of the Middle East than a nuclear-armedIran,” he said, adding that Obama has not ruled out using military force to stop Iran from going nuclear. 

In a question-and-answer session with his audience after his speech, Panetta laid out in detail his thinking on the arguments against an Israeli orU.S.military attack onIran’s nuclear facilities. 

He said such an attack would “at best” delayIran’s nuclear program by one or two years. Among the unintended consequences, he said, would be an increase in regional support for Iran and the likelihood of Iranian retaliation against U.S.forces and bases in the Middle East. It also would have harmful economic consequences and could lead to military escalation, he said. 

“We have to be careful about the unintended consequences” of an Israeli orU.S.attack, he said

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/12/02/panetta-laments-growing-israeli-isolation-in-region/#ixzz1fcYI3bHj  

 

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Herman Cain’s New Alleged Affair with Ginger White

By  Juli Weiner

<:time datetime=”2011-11-28T17:32:00.000-05:00″>Yet another lady, Ginger White, has revealed that she had sexual contact with married pizza tycoon Herman Cain. The nature of the contact: a 13-year affair. Ginger White, to whom we apologize in advance for accidentally calling “Gingrich White” at some point when hurriedly typing, is aGeorgia businesswoman who shared her story exclusively with the Atlanta Fox affiliate. Cain’s lawyer didn’t deny the affair:

“This is not an accusation of harassment in the workplace—this is not an accusation of an assault—which are subject matters of legitimate inquiry to a political candidate. Rather, this appears to be an accusation of private, alleged consensual conduct between adults—a subject matter which is not a proper subject of inquiry by the media or the public. No individual, whether a private citizen, a candidate for public office or a public official, should be questioned about his or her private sexual life.”

We look forward to re-reading this statement at Cain’s first inevitable mention of one of his opponents’ personal lives.

The Gingrich White interview—ah ha, at least we got it out of the way!—is on tonight at six p.m.

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2011/11/Meet-Ginger-White-Herman-Cains-Alleged-Inamorata-of-13-Years