Letter to the Editor The Sun-Sentinel

September 29, 2010

Letter to the Editor
The Sun-Sentinel
200 E. Las Olas Blvd.
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301

RE: FDR myths updated. Would you be so kind as to forward this to Sidney Shapiro?

Sirs,

At the end of “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence” the reporter throws his notes into the stove and says “Print the legend”.

Thus it is with FDR and the New Deal.

It is an inconvenient truth but facts are hard things.

By any measurable standard – GNP [a term that later became GDP], employment, stock market indices, employment, bankruptcies, new businesses, construction permits, inter alia – the United States was worse off after almost 8 years of the New Deal. A strong case can be made for the Depression beginning to end when Boeing went to 3 shifts at their Wichita plant. It made B-17s.

This may surprise you but Herbert Hoover ran in 1932 on a platform promising more deficit financing. Roosevelt promised to balance the budget. You can look it up.

He didn’t like the way the Supreme Court scrambled his alphabet agencies so he tried to pack said Court.

He lied, as did one of his predecessors and one of his successors – Wilson & Johnson – about American involvement in foreign wars.

That Roosevelt was a superb war time leader there can be no doubt. He had no “exit strategy” when he sent Admiral Nimitz to Pearl Harbor in late December, 1941. His orders were simple and direct. Don’t come back until you have sailed into Tokyo harbor.

He hired George Marshall who hired Dwight Eisenhower.

Despite personal differences Eisenhower let Patton lead two very successful “surges” a la Sherman. 11 months and 2 days after D-Day Germany surrendered. Although he didn’t live to see it he sent 2 balls down the chute that ended the war against Japan. The United Sates and Great Britain were taking 1000 casualties a day up until August 6, 1945. His 1944 firing of Henry Wallace and his hiring of Harry Truman, a man who led other men in combat, guaranteed the greatly quickened conclusion of the war against Japan.
I say this because a distinction must be made between Mr. New Deal and Mr. Win the War, names that he gave to himself.

Mr. Shapiro says that “Republicans hated FDR and fiercely fought every one of his efforts to get things done”. The record says otherwise. Congressman Robert Kean, a Republican from New Jersey, shaped the final legislation covering Social Security and got it passed. FDR himself called him “Mr. Social Security”.

It is well to note that FDR was given to many private anti-Semitic comments and jokes. He let the St. Louis sail back to Germany. That gave its passengers a one way ticket to the ovens. He appointed Hitler loving Joseph Kennedy to become this country’s ambassador to Great Britain. Kennedy advised FDR to side with Germany against England.

In his tirade against Republicans Mr. Shapiro conveniently skips over the glory days of Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter.

The mantra in 1964 was that if Goldwater had been elected this country would have had 500,000 men in Vietnam and race riots all over America. Who did win that election? Jimmy Carter, a man attacked by a giant rabbit, a man who threatened to kick Teddy Kennedy’s ample ass, a man who couldn’t get 5 helicopters to work, was the worst President in the 20th century. He did one thing well. He made the country eager to elect Reagan.

Come to think of it if I were a Democrat I’d try to forget them too.

Mr. Shapiro’s view of the Clinton years suggests that he may be a leader in the fight to legalize marijuana. You have to be about 6 tokes over the line to believe in the Clinton “surpluses”.

First, the Federal budget has no recognition of capital items. Thus, the expenditures for food stamps and aircraft carriers are treated the same. Second, when responsible families come into a windfall the first thing they do is pay down debt. At no time during the Clinton Presidency did the Federal debt ever go down by as much a single penny. That is a matter of public record. He can look that up too,

Surprisingly he leaves out one of the great achievements of the Clinton years. Who can forget the many lasting benefits of “Midnight Basketball”? I can’t.

Mr. Shapiro anticipated “our next great miracle” with the election of Obama. What was the first one?


Kevin Smith