The National Industrial Recovery Act of ’33 created the Public Works Administration (PWA). Yesterday, I enjoyed going to the 100th (or so) Hamburger Summit in Montpelier at recreation field/pool build by the PWA in the 30s. My kids go to camp there now and I spent many a summer day at that rec. field and pool in grade school growing up in the 70s.
There is a plaque commemorating the PWA work which generated this valuable public & community asset. It was built four generations ago when my kids’ great grandparents lived in that neighborhood and witnessed the infrastructure being built. It has served the community well for 7 decades generating everything from employment to memories to teaching kids how to swim and play baseball.
I recommend BP’s Post, which made me think about this. BP writes about Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire. Gregg apparently cannot stand truth in advertising or being honest with taxpayers about where government is spending their money. Gregg is a fiscal radical who has spent a political lifetime feverishly searching for treasonous acts of class warfare to inflict on anyone who works for a living. When I read BPs post, it made me think of all the social, community and economic benefits generated by this valuable Montpelier project; and how these economic success stories upset Gregg more than anything else democracy does for us.
The PWA and my grandparents’ generation were rightly proud of the work performed by the PWA and other programs. Their work pulled this country out of the Depression and out of the United States’ and world’s worst (prior to the Bush administration’s) financial meltdown. Like today, their Depression was caused primarily by allowing corporations to over-regulate the democratic sector of U.S. society.
More on the “Hamburger Recovery” later when I update this post. I gotta’ go to work — hope everyone had a good weekend.
wait; you lost me – what does “caused primarily by corporate over-regulation of the democratic sector of U.S. society” mean?
because it looks like there was not only a lack of regulation, but perhaps even more importantly, a lack of enforcement of existing regulation/oversight.
and what’s “the democratic sector of U.S. society”?
Were both put to work digging ditches along roadsides under that program. It kept food on the table. Their mom had died in childbirth (most likely sue to malnutrition), and their dad was a low-wage factory worker. My Dad eventually became a Rhodes Scholar and physicist, and his brother became a VP in a large multinational corporation whose name you would definitely recognize.
You can have as many economic engines as you want, but without the wheels on which everything rolls, the car isn’t going very far. We’re the wheels.
Supporting the “little” people is the fastest way to create economic recovery, and a sure way to create the next generation of innovators and leaders for the industries of the future.
When the economy hits the next hiccup (and it’s likely to be a doozy, between California – the 5th largest economy in the world – going bankrupt, and the next wave of mortgage resets – which dwarfs the sub-prime debacle), we will need orders of magnitude more projects that simply put people to work.
Almost as much as the event itself, lots of us look forward to the post-Summit photos. Did JD give anyone the skeptical eye?
I couldn’t come — I spent the afternoon shining up my biz plan for a Monday deadline.
Nate