And the Country Went to Hell (David Glenn Cox )

David Glenn Cox -- World News Trust

Nov. 5, 2011 -- George Orwell wrote in his ground breaking novel 1984, “He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”

Orwell had a good grasp on the politics of Fascism and was only amiss in his time table. It is, however, sometimes overlooked that if one knows the past, one can also predict the future.

All of these events: the stolen 2000 election, 9-11, the Iraq War, and even Barack Obama’s election, are milestones along a dark highway. They are ominous forebodings. Yet now, the ruse is exposed.

We are living in the dawn of a great awakening. We the people; are taking to the streets in numbers not seen since the Vietnam War and our numbers are growing and will continue to grow in unstoppable numbers.

We have seen reactionary forces respond with violence against the peaceful and unarmed, same as it ever was. We have seen the media lie and generate false stories, same as it ever was.

In 1932, 400 hungry farmers outside Lawrence, Kansas, came into town to demand relief supplies. The farmers pleaded with the Red Cross that their children hadn’t had anything to eat in three days.

An attorney in town who was acting as an agent for the Red Cross promised to contact Kansas City to get authorization to release the relief supplies. The farmers warned that they would wait until 5 p.m., but after 5 p.m., they would take the supplies with or without authorization. This event was reported in the Hearst newspapers as: “Farmers Riot.”

There was no riot. There was unity, but no violence. The people stood together and made promises that threatened to overthrow the bureaucracy.

War spending had forced government expenditures to exceed three times tax revenues, and the government responded by calling for austerity and cutting the Federal budget, which in turn prompted a major economic recession.

Was this in 2007, or is this our current economy? No, this was in 1920. The war economy had fostered and expanded industrial manufacturing and spurred a 43 percent growth in worker productivity. By 1929, the top 1 percent of wage earners controlled 40 percent of the nation’s wealth, while the bottom 93 percent saw a 4 percent decline in real disposable income.

By the time the decade ended, the bottom 80 percent of wage earners disappeared from the tax roles, while tax rates for the wealthy fell to 25 percent. The number of people with incomes over $500,000 jumped from 156 in 1920 to 1,489 by 1930.

Citizens United? As Eugene Debs once advised nearly a century before:

“Who appoints our federal judges? The people? In all the history of the country, the working class have never named a federal judge. There are 121 of these judges, and every solitary one holds his position, his tenure, through the influence and power of corporate capital. The corporations and trusts dictate their appointment. And when they go to the bench, they go, not to serve the people, but to serve the interests that place them and keep them where they are.”

1922 -- The Supreme Court struck down laws against child labor.

1923 -- The Supreme Court struck down the minimum wage for women in Washington D.C.

1924 -- Wall Street stocks began to climb astronomically without any correlation to the economy as a whole. Wall Street speculators paid financial writers under the table to place positive news stories about specific companies in major newspapers. From May 1928 to September 1929, stock prices rose 40 percent.

Throughout the decade of the 1920s the number of unionized workers fell dramatically, the United Mine Workers lost more than 80 percent of their membership and the American Federation of Labor lost more than 40 percent of its members. By 1929 more than half of all Americans were living below subsistence levels. It was in this climate, Herbert Hoover was elected President.

“The outlook of the world today is for the greatest era of commercial expansion in history," Hoover said July 27, 1928. "The rest of the world will become better customers.”

“Any lack of confidence in the economic future or the basic strength of business in the United States is foolish,” he said in November, 1929.

In 1929, business inventories rose to three times the level of the previous year. By August, the economy was in recession as industrial production dropped 20 percent. Wholesale prices fell 7.5 percent, and personal income dropped 5 percent.

Oct. 24th, the Stock Market crashed with the famous headline in Variety, “Wall Street Lays an Egg.” Total stock market loses for the month equaled $16 billion, or more than half-a-trillion in current dollars.

In February, the Federal Reserve cut interest rates from 6 percent to 4 percent. Federal Reserve chairman Andrew Mellon stated categorically, “the Fed will stand by as the market works itself out: Liquidate labor, liquidate real estate ... values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up the wreck from less-competent people."

“Definite signs that business and industry have turned the corner from the temporary period of emergency that followed deflation of the speculative market were seen today by President Hoover. The President said the reports to the Cabinet showed that the tide of employment had changed in the right direction.” News Dispatch (Jan. 21, 1930)

The GNP fell 9.4 percent for the year as unemployment climbed to 8.7 percent. In 1931, the GNP fell another 8.5 percent as unemployment climbed to 15.9 percent. The President proposed no major legislation to address the crisis. Congress followed suit with no proposals of their own to address the growing crisis.

As 1932 began, GDP dropped an astounding 13 percent. Unemployment ballooned to 23 percent. The stock market had lost 80 percent of its value in 24 months.

"It could be so much worse that these days now, distressing as they are, would look like veritable prosperity." --Herbert Hoover

Forty percent of all the nations banks failed or were failing. GNP had fallen 31 percent since 1929. President Hoover forecast to the nation, “The worst effect of the crash upon unemployment will have been passed during the next 60 days.”

More than 13 million American’s lost their jobs in a population of 150 million. Agricultural commodity prices began to fall as the bubble in Agriculture deflated. Farm land once selling for $700 an acre had no takers at auction for prices under $50 an acre.

The collapse of farm prices hastened the collapse of the banks as record foreclosures depleted local bank reserves. In August 1930, Herbert Hoover addressed the American Bankers Association in Cleveland:

“During the past year you have carried the credit system of the nation safely through a most difficult crisis. In this success you have demonstrated not alone the soundness of the credit system, but also the capacity of the bankers in emergency.”

By October the President began to change his tune:

“The depression has been deepened by events from abroad which are beyond the control either of our citizens or our government.”

Okay, it’s bad, but it’s not our fault. No different than today, as government blames its citizens for the mortgage crisis.

Mellon pulled the whistle
Hoover rang the bell
Wall Street gave the signal
and the country went to hell. --Demonstrator’s placard from 1932.

The United States had no national system for unemployment compensation, no national system of social security and no national system of health care. By the winter 1932, two people an hour were dying of starvation on the streets of Detroit. America’s cities were going broke, unable to assist the starving and destitute.

November 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected President, but would not be sworn in until March.

“Values have shrunken to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone.

"More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.” --FDR March 4, 1933

***

“Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.

"True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.

"The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.” --FDR March 4, 1933

The parallels to our modern era are striking. The 60,000 members of bonus Army marched on Washington in 1932. They were the original “Occupy” movement, So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that this generation’s peaceful demonstrators are attacked with tear gas and gun barrels.

"The Hoover program -- a crust of bread and a bayonet." --Demonstrator’s placard from 1932.

Their generation had the “America First Movement” who were the original Tea Baggers. The “America First Movement” wrapped themselves in flags and were steeped in stale, rank, patriotic images of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson as they railed against FDR’s New Deal, calling it, are you ready? "Socialism."

Just as with the current incarnation of tea baggers, the America First Movement was nationalistic to the point of xenophobic. Xenophobic to the point of paranoia with a paranoia based largely on racism. Most importantly, the America First Movement was funded and backed by media and big business.

Sixty thousand struggling veterans with their families came to Washington on their own from all over America, as the media described them as dirty and disgruntled. Well-funded and heavily advertised America First rallies were covered live on national radio broadcasts.

Plato wrote, “Democracy ... is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder; and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequal’s alike.” There is nothing new under the sun. “I exhort you” Plato wrote, “also to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than every other earthly conflict.”

The world is in flux and the opportunity to make a difference in the world abounds. Tomorrow is filled with yesterday’s regrets. History teaches that there are two roads that we might travel from here. One requires effort and makes no promises. The other offers only a dark certainty: “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- for ever.” --George Orwell

The problems we face lie exposed, and so too, does the path home. The answer is in our unity.

Paulson pulled the whistle
Bush rang the bell
Wall Street gave the signal
and the country went to hell.