Tag: New Deal

A New Conservation Corps?

Oh goody!

There are very few people left that remember the New Deal’s Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC)…..

Just a small reminder…..

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a work relief program that gave millions of young men employment on environmental projects during the Great Depression. Considered by many to be one of the most successful of Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, the CCC planted more than three billion trees and constructed trails and shelters in more than 800 parks nationwide during its nine years of existence. The CCC helped to shape the modern national and state park systems we enjoy today.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Civilian Conservation Corps, or CCC, with an executive order on April 5, 1933. The CCC was part of his New Deal legislation, combating high unemployment during the Great Depression by putting hundreds of thousands of young men to work on environmental conservation projects.

The CCC combined FDR’s interests in conservation and universal service for youth. As governor of New York, he had run a similar program on a smaller scale.

https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/civilian-conservation-corps

What brought about my history lesson was something I read that Pres. Biden was planning….

Now, as the ongoing pandemic has wrought the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression, Roosevelt’s public jobs programs are back in the spotlight. As part his recent climate policy spree, Biden announced the establishment of a “Civilian Climate Corps Initiative” that could harness the energy of the very generation that must face – and solve – the climate crisis by putting them to work in well-paying conservation jobs.

After Biden’s omnibus executive order, the heads of the Department of the Interior, the Department of Agriculture and other departments have 90 days to present their plan to “mobilize the next generation of conservation and resilience workers”, a step toward fulfilling Biden’s promise to get the US on track to conserve 30% of lands and oceans by 2030.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/09/biden-new-conservation-corps-new-deal

This could help save Americans from having to live in their car…..

But is it a good idea?

Just a thought….Pres. Obama had an idea to help this nation back in 2009……https://lobotero.com/2009/04/22/7071/

Sadly that plan was a flop.

Why was it a “flop”?

The young cannot tear themselves away from the Kardashians or social media to be in service to America.

Will Biden’s plan also meet with failure?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

The Green New Deal

Now here is one of those topics that can be lied about for political gain. Most conserv carve out one small piece and make it the center of attention…..

I will admit that it is intended to fight the effects of climate change but there is more to the “Deal” than just that…….there is an infrastructure bill in there as well…(remember that promise by our Supreme Leader?)

The Green New Deal is a 10-year plan introduced by Rep. Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Markey to mobilize every aspect of American society toward 100% clean and renewable energy, guarantee a good job to all members of our society, and create economic prosperity for all. The goals of the Green New Deal are:

  • to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions through a fair and just transition for all communities and workers;

  • to create millions of good, high-wage jobs and ensure prosperity and economic security for all people of the United States;

  • to invest in the infrastructure and industry of the United States to sustainably meet the challenges of the 21st century;

  • to secure clean air and water, climate and community resiliency, healthy food, access to nature, and a sustainable environment for all people of the United States for generations to come; and

  • to promote justice and equity by stopping current, preventing future, and repairing historic oppression of indigenous peoples, communities of color, migrant communities, de-industrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth.

You can bet that this proposal will be hit by all sorts of claims from both sides…the corporatists will fight it tooth and nail (watch who gets the most cash from corporations)…..

Soon to be released research from the United Nations is expected to place species loss, a/k/a mass extinction, as an environmental threat equal to or greater than climate change. Industrial agriculture— vast expanses of monoculture crops managed with chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides, will feature prominently as a cause. This plant agriculture supplies people with increasingly toxic and processed food and antibiotic and hormone dependent factory farms with animal feed.  Together, these link the model of capitalist efficiency economists have been selling for the last two centuries to environmental crisis.

Understanding the theoretical precepts of Western economics is crucial to understanding these crises. Capitalism is scientific economic production, a method in search of applications. Its object is to maximize profits, not to growth nutritious food sustainably. As industrial agriculture has demonstrated, these objectives are antithetical. Crop yields have increased as the nutritional value of the food produced has declined. But far more troublingly, the narrow focus on profits has led to a form of environmental imperialism where interrelated ecosystems are viewed atomistically.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/03/29/re-the-green-new-deal-first-shoot-the-economists/

(It is a shame that a disclaimer had to be inserted at the beginning of the above piece)

Are the media making a big deal out of the Green New Deal?

Nope!  They are not making much of something that is overwhelmingly desired by Dem voters…….

The global climate crisis and Medicare for All are top issues for a large majority of Democratic voters, according to new polling results published Tuesday by CNN.

The survey (pdf), conducted last week, asked Democrats and left-leaning Independents how important they considered certain policy items.

Most people polled said it is somewhat or very important that the Democratic candidate for president in 2020 support party priorities like stricter gun laws, tuition-free public college, impeaching President Donald Trump, paying reparations to slaves’ descendants, and restoring voting rights for all convicted felons.

But two issues stood out at the top.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/04/30/more-90-democratic-voters-want-2020-candidate-make-climate-action-and-medicare-all

And yet there are Dem reps that will not sign on to these bills and are always looking for ways to protect their donors in the corporate sphere (cowards in my book)……

Time for both these ideas to get the media they deserve and the media that the voter deserves.

One last thought…….

That “Radical” Green New Deal

To hear the GOP tell it the Dems Green New Deal is something out of the playbook of Stalin or some other “commie” despot……the problem is that not all Dems are on-board with the proposal and will join in the slandering of the plan with the GOP…..

…….calling the Left “antis” – people who are just against stuff but not for anything – is only one of the rhetorical mechanisms employed to slander and demean radicals and progressives.  Another set of false accusations come into play when progressive solutions see the light of day and threaten to garner significant popular support.  When that happens, it no longer suffices to say that the Left offers no alternatives. The slander shifts and portside activists and intellectuals are accused of calling for too much, not for too little.  They are charged with authoritarian, even totalitarian overreach. At the same time, Left proposals are smeared as “unrealistic,” “fantastic,” “pie-in-the sky,” “dreamy,” and the like.

As with the “no solution” slur, this different set of allegations come not just from Republicans but also and most dangerously from the reigning corporate and neoliberal wing of the Democratic Party, assigned the task of defining and policing the narrow leftmost boundaries of acceptable political and policy debate in the United States.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/02/25/slandering-the-not-so-radical-green-new-deal-a-bipartisan-operation/

Personally, there is nothing radical about the Green New Deal….most of it would be commonsense if it weren’t for stupid that has invaded the process and the science…..

But do not believe me….read an analysis for yourself……

https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/03/04/theres-nothing-radical-about-the-green-new-deal/

The idea is a noble one but by the time the neo-liberal twats in the DNC get through with it it will be a shadow of its previous self.

AS usual the GOP and its talking heads have attacked using the tired old meme from the 1950s……beware this is “socialism”…..well no it sounds more like an infrastructure bill than socialism….and did not this current president talk and promise something about a massive infrastructure plan?

Where is the plan from the GOP?  Once again they have NOTHING to offer but dragging the institutions of government down the toilet with their party.

And the problem will remain the same….as always…… problems in search of a solution.

Making America Great Again–Part 24

I have been posting this series written by Maj. Sjursen on the history of the US…..he has taken us from the first inklings of nation through the revolution to the Constitution fight to 1812 and the westward movement and has brought us to this point in our history….presidency of FDR and his New Deal….

In case my reader has not been keeping up with the post then you can get caught up……

Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5; Part 6; Part 7; Part 8; Part 9; Part 10;Part 11; Part 12; Part 13; Part 14; Part 15; Part 16; Part 17; Part 18; Part 19; Part 20; Part 21; Part 22; Part 23.

Now onto Part 24 and FDR and his New Deal…

A cropped version of Dorothea Lange’s iconic image of Florence Owens Thompson and some of her children, photographed at a California migrant camp in 1936. “Migrant Mother,” laden with trouble, would come to be seen as a depiction of the mood of a nation gripped by the Great Depression.

Part 24 of “American History for Truthdiggers.”

See: Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5; Part 6; Part 7; Part 8; Part 9; Part 10; Part 11; Part 12; Part 13; Part 14; Part 15; Part 16; Part 17; Part 18; Part 19; Part 20; Part 21; Part 22; Part 23.

* * *

FDR was neither radical nor conservative, no matter what his defenders and critics claimed, both then and now. One part “traitor to his class” and another part defender of capitalism, he was both dangerously power hungry and the savior of American-style liberal democracy. This man was—like his party’s co-founder, Thomas Jefferson—an enigma, an unknowable sphinx. And yet he was the man for his moment. Indeed, FDR and his “New Deal,” as both a response to economic depression and reorganization of society, represent one of the most profound transitions in U.S. history. FDR served as president (1933-45) longer than anyone before or since, elected four times by wide margins. His opponents feared the man, and his supporters canonized him with rare and remarkable passion.

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/american-history-for-truthdiggers-fdr-and-his-deal-for-a-desperate-time/
 
American history is fascinating….read more to learn more.
 
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