Hoover/Bush or FDR/OBAMA type leadership?

[BigRob]

The camps did indeed have Jews, but 6 MILLION? Your entire penal industry could not handle such staggering numbers without difficulty, and we are talking about only a few camps here, so where did the number come from? EXPERTS have put the number of Jews killed in these camps at 100,000 plus. Not even quarter of a million, never million 6 million. Not only ridiculous, but IMPOSSIBLE.

A vast majority of world scholars and people who have studied the holocaust do not agree with this statement.

Why the concern for ONLY the Jew prisoners? WTF? So, the others were unimportant?

No one says that other groups did not die as well, most scholars estimate the total number between 12-16 million when they are added. However the largest group to be targeted was indeed the Jews.

Hitler attacked other countries that BELONGED TO THE GERMAN PEOPLE. territories that were taken frmo the Germany people via the Treaty of Versailles. I do recall the US not liking the idea of the Mexicans taking Texas, so they fought a war over that territory. Where's the difference? California rings a bell?

Hitler violated treaties and took aggressive action. "Other countries" do not belong to Germany.

There have been estimates by EXPERTS that between 100,000 to 500,000 Jews perished. I cannot state with complete accuracy as to how many were killed by the Nazis, but I believe the 100,000 count to be correct.
No one was 'gassed'. This theory has already been discredited by chemical experts who visited EVERY CAMP, only to find not a single shred of evidence to back this up. Not a trace of gas was found, as only such can be found in the walls of the 'gas chambers'.

So now you are a holocaust denier as well. However your claim ignores multitudes of evidence that contradicts every statement you just made.

 

[top gun]

Let me get this straight. For 6 years under the Roosevelt Administration, the United States spent money trying to address this problem and failed. It was not until the drought ended that things turned around.

FDR couldn't change the weather... but he by God could help PEOPLE... American PEOPLE! Hoover and his "let them starve if the free market can't fix it approach" condemned him to the stigma that lives on until this day...

The man and the Party that created Hooverville. (not a compliment... means he was Mr. Potter in It's a wonderful life)

People count Rob. Government is suppose to step in an help it's people in times of need. FDR did just that and it got hundreds of thousands of people through that otherwise would not have made it. There's valor to that whether you can see it or not.

What exactly was a success about 6 years of continued drought, other than the fact that loads of money was spent?

Well again... we're good I'll grant ya... but we don't control the weather. FDR did however get Americans through a disastrous period off the charts better than Hoover ever did or even said he might try to. It just didn't bother him enough to make helping PEOPLE... AMERICAN FAMILIES in desperate need a priority.

And FDR also put into place all kinds of agricultural restrictions and modern farming techniques & tree introduction that over time helped rectify many of the problems with dust storms on the Great Plains. You'll notice we have a lot of tornadoes out there still and we've had subsequent low rain years but not huge dust storms like in the dirty 30's.

Sadly.

There's nothing sad about the forming of Social Security. It was developed to give the elderly some small amount of security against poverty stricken old age. That's a good and admirable thing.

And it was safe, secure and self funding. So safe and secure that it was always there when other money wasn't and politicians raided it time & time & time & time & time again. If all that money was put back plus all the interest lost our Baby Boomer problem would not be anything near as severe.

Thank God Bush & the Republicans didn't get there way and dissolve Social Security and have everyone put their retirement life's savings in the stock market right before it crashed. They tried hard.

Social Security and Medicare are right up there with National Defense on things that are a must have priority.

 

[BigRob]

FDR couldn't change the weather... but he by God could help PEOPLE... American PEOPLE! Hoover and his "let them starve if the free market can't fix it approach" condemned him to the stigma that lives on until this day...

People will always need help. It is not the role of government to ensure that people live the lives that they want to live.

Well again... we're good I'll grant ya... but we don't control the weather. FDR did however get Americans through a disastrous period off the charts better than Hoover ever did or even said he might try to. It just didn't bother him enough to make helping PEOPLE... AMERICAN FAMILIES in desperate need a priority.

Hoover's policy was that cities and states should help their own unemployed and it was not up to the Federal government. You are misrepresenting his viewpoints.

And FDR also put into place all kinds of agricultural restrictions and modern farming techniques & tree introduction that over time helped rectify many of the problems with dust storms on the Great Plains. You'll notice we have a lot of tornadoes out there still and we've had subsequent low rain years but not huge dust storms like in the dirty 30's.

There are some things he did that turned out to be good ideas, and a long lit of others that have been disasters if you ask me.

There's nothing sad about the forming of Social Security. It was developed to give the elderly some small amount of security against poverty stricken old age. That's a good and admirable thing.

What is admirable is when people take it upon themselves to manage a budget a save for retirement themselves.

And it was safe, secure and self funding. So safe and secure that it was always there when other money wasn't and politicians raided it time & time & time & time & time again. If all that money was put back plus all the interest lost our Baby Boomer problem would not be anything near as severe.

So safe and secure that its return rate could not even beat inflation. Sounds like a winner to me.

Thank God Bush & the Republicans didn't get there way and dissolve Social Security and have everyone put their retirement life's savings in the stock market right before it crashed. They tried hard.

You again misrepresent the entire Republican position. No one said you had to put your savings in the stock market. The idea was that you could take more of your own money and put it in private accounts. How about putting it in a CD? Even today that will get you around 3%, which is 200% higher a rate of return than you would get sticking with the government.

Social Security and Medicare are right up there with National Defense on things that are a must have priority.

National defense should be a priority because the Constitution all but says as much. Social Security should not be. As it stands now, I will pay into it my whole life and see less than I put in or nothing at all. What kind of plan is that?

 

[top gun]

People will always need help. It is not the role of government to ensure that people live the lives that they want to live.

But government does have a role to step in in times of great distress of it's people. The Dust Bowl and Great Depression was just such a time.

Hoover's policy was that cities and states should help their own unemployed and it was not up to the Federal government. You are misrepresenting his viewpoints.

The states simply didn't have the resources and Hoover knew that. He stood idly by as families starved to death or died of dust pneumonia. He was the top elected official in the land and he sat on his hands and didn't help his own people when he easily could have.

Sad... very sad.

President Herbert Hoover, underestimating the seriousness of the crisis, called it "a passing incident in our national lives," and assured Americans that it would be over in 60 days. A strong believer in rugged individualism, Hoover did not think the federal government should offer relief to the poverty-stricken population. Focusing on a trickle-down economic program to help finance businesses and banks, Hoover met with resistance from business executives who preferred to lay off workers. Blamed by many for the Great Depression, Hoover was widely ridiculed: an empty pocket turned inside out was called a "Hoover flag;" the decrepit shantytowns springing up around the country were called "Hoovervilles." Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the rich governor from New York, offered Americans a New Deal, and was elected in a landslide victory in 1932. He took quick action to attack the Depression, declaring a four-day bank holiday, during which Congress passed the Emergency Banking Relief Act to stabilize the banking system. During the first 100 days of his administration, Roosevelt laid the groundwork for his New Deal remedies that would rescue the country from the depths of despair.

There are some things he did that turned out to be good ideas, and a long lit of others that have been disasters if you ask me.

The 1932nd psalm went:

'Hoover is my shepherd, I am in want,

He maketh me to lie down on park benches,

He leadeth me by still factories,

He restoreth my doubt in the Republican Party.'

What is admirable is when people take it upon themselves to manage a budget a save for retirement themselves.

That's fine if you make a lot of money. If you're poor you only survive day by day. Social Security gave regular people some small bit of security against poverty stricken old age.

Hooverville

I wasn't supposed to go where the homeless lived,
But I could see their houses made out of crates
And tin cans hammered flat, out of tar paper
And cardboard boxes, the doorways curtained with rags.

I watched them wash their clothes and their underwear
And their bodies in cold Lake Michigan for a mile
Between us and South Chicago. Freight engineers
Would whistle and wave at me, but not at them.

My mother fed some almost every morning,
So I knew they'd ridden boxcars from somewhere else
And were going somewhere else sooner or later
But meanwhile had to stay here and be hungry.

So safe and secure that its return rate could not even beat inflation. Sounds like a winner to me.

Well compared to the Bush (lose it all) scheme right before the stock market crash a couple guaranteed percent in interest is home vs. homeless better.

And before you say it I know people wouldn't be forced to put money in the stock market but that was the sales pitch at the time and there are thousands of other ways to get scammed out of your money. Bernie Madoff types could easily clean out millions of innocent elderly Americans.

National defense should be a priority because the Constitution all but says as much. Social Security should not be. As it stands now, I will pay into it my whole life and see less than I put in or nothing at all. What kind of plan is that?

Social Security was one of if not the most important moves our government ever made. You weren't around before Social Security. If you were (or really studied it in depth) you'd have a completely different view.

You could lose your life savings, job and your health insurance right before retirement. But luckily for you America doesn't throw it's elderly out on the streets with nothing anymore because they were poor or fell on hard times.

 

[GenSeneca]

Social Security was one of if not the most important moves our government ever made. You weren't around before Social Security. If you were (or really studied it in depth) you'd have a completely different view.

It was designed as, and continues to be, supplemental income. Since you're definitionally challenged, that means its not enough to live off of.

You could lose your life savings, job and your health insurance right before retirement. But luckily for you America doesn't throw it's elderly out on the streets with nothing anymore because they were poor or fell on hard times.

You don't have faith in Americans to do the right thing, if you did... You wouldn't be demanding that government force them to do the right thing.

You don't have faith that friends and family stick together in times of crisis.

You don't have faith that neighborhoods and communities will pull together and weather any storm.

You don't have faith that people who can afford to donate to [GASP!] private charity will do so to help out their fellow Americans.

You don't have faith that the [GASP AGAIN!] Churches will practice what they preach and take care of the least fortunate among us.

Oh ye of little faith...

 

[top gun]

It was designed as, and continues to be, supplemental income. Since you're definitionally challenged, that means its not enough to live off of.

Well since I've posted FDR's actual statement on the matter several times now including the line (to give SOME amount of security against poverty stricken old age) I guess not nearly so definitionally challanged
as you are just plain brain dead.

You don't have faith in Americans to do the right thing, if you did... You wouldn't be demanding that government force them to do the right thing.

You don't have faith that friends and family stick together in times of crisis.

You don't have faith that neighborhoods and communities will pull together and weather any storm.

You don't have faith that people who can afford to donate to [GASP!] private charity will do so to help out their fellow Americans.

You don't have faith that the [GASP AGAIN!] Churches will practice what they preach and take care of the least fortunate among us.

Oh ye of little faith...

True I have no faith that our elderly in huge disastrous numbers would by the combination of ever revolving bad economic times and swindlers not loose everything and we'd have a huge new class of elderly & infirm homeless people.

And true the charity system was not enough to take care of the elderly issues before social security... hence why it was called for in the first place... and so now with a huge amount of more elderly I know charity could probably only even partially address 10 to maybe 20%. Say there's another 30 to 40% that could live off saved money, friends and family (theses would be better off families for the most part) that still leaves 40 to 50% of America's elderly just out of luck.

True... I'm against all of that.

 

[GenSeneca]

And true the charity system was not enough to take care of the elderly issues before social security...

Its not charity alone...

and so now with a huge amount of more elderly I know charity could probably only even partially address 10 to maybe 20%.

Does your anus hurt? ...I mean you're pulling these numbers out of there, I hope you at least gave yourself a reach around.

Say there's another 30 to 40% that could live off saved money, friends and family (theses would be better off families for the most part) that still leaves 40 to 50% of America's elderly just out of luck.

More of these anally contrived numbers....

True... I'm against all of that.

I think government is the absolute last resort.

You think its the first and only, without which there would be mass suffering.

 

[top gun]

Its not charity alone...

You act like we didn't have the Republicants Social Security System before... don't you remember it? It was called NOTHING!

And NOTHING was a DISASTER! Churches & Charities couldn't begin to handle the need back then and there was a ton less people.

Does your anus hurt? ...I mean you're pulling these numbers out of there, I hope you at least gave yourself a reach around.

I differ to your intimate knowledge, love & expertise in regard to the anus.

I was estimating! I was looking at the history of the estimates on the numbers of elderly desperately poor and/or homeless back before Social Security and extrapolating that out to today's circumstances with charities, churches and current population to get some kind of a ball park number.

I see about half of seniors doing somewhat ok by other means, and it decimating about 35 to 40% of seniors, with 10% on the bubble. But hey if only 10 or 20% were to become destitute without Social Security it would be the a tragedy for all times. Do you have any idea just how many old people that is?

I think government is the absolute last resort.

You think its the first and only, without which there would be mass suffering.

What we both KNOW is that before Social Security it was a clusterfock and that was in a time when it was a lot more common that families of multiple generations lived together... that's what we know!

Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Speech Upon Signing the Social Security Act
delivered 14 August 1935, Washington, D.C.

Today, a hope of many years' standing is in large part fulfilled.

The civilization of the past hundred years, with its startling industrial changes, had tended more and more to make life insecure.

Young people have come to wonder what will be there lot when they came to old age.

The man with a job has wondered how long the job would last.

This social security measure gives at least some protection to 50 millions of our citizens who will reap direct benefits through unemployment compensation, through old-age pensions, and through increased services for the protection of children and the prevention of ill health.

We can never insure 100 percent of the population against 100 percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life, but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-stricken old age.

 

[GenSeneca]

What we both KNOW is that before Social Security it was a clusterfock

Social Security IS a clusterfock....

The federal government recorded a $1.3 trillion loss last year — far more than the official $248 billion deficit — when corporate-style accounting standards are used, a USA TODAY analysis shows.

The loss reflects a continued deterioration in the finances of Social Security and government retirement programs for civil servants and military personnel. The loss — equal to $11,434 per household — is more than Americans paid in income taxes in 2006.

This article was written in 2007, prior to the bailouts, prior to the fed monetizing our debt, and prior to the hyperinflation of our monetary base. Add these compounding problems together and the amount of unfunded liabilities we face has skyrocketed in just one years time.

Bottom line: Taxpayers are now on the hook for a record $59.1 trillion in liabilities, a 2.3% increase from 2006. That amount is equal to $516,348 for every U.S. household. By comparison, U.S. households owe an average of $112,043 for mortgages, car loans, credit cards and all other debt combined.

Unfunded promises made for Medicare, Social Security and federal retirement programs account for 85% of taxpayer liabilities. State and local government retirement plans account for much of the rest.

This hidden debt is the amount taxpayers would have to pay immediately to cover government's financial obligations. Like a mortgage, it will cost more to repay the debt over time. Every U.S. household would have to pay about $31,000 a year to do so in 75 years. -- USA Today

You Progressives and your welfare states....

 

[BigRob]

But government does have a role to step in in times of great distress of it's people.

You can step in without creating a welfare state that never ends.

The states simply didn't have the resources and Hoover knew that.

Well there is a case to made, especially in the day, that the Federal Government did not have the Constitutional ability to step in for anyone.

President Herbert Hoover, underestimating the seriousness of the crisis, called it "a passing incident in our national lives," and assured Americans that it would be over in 60 days. A strong believer in rugged individualism, Hoover did not think the federal government should offer relief to the poverty-stricken population. Focusing on a trickle-down economic program to help finance businesses and banks, Hoover met with resistance from business executives who preferred to lay off workers. Blamed by many for the Great Depression, Hoover was widely ridiculed: an empty pocket turned inside out was called a "Hoover flag;" the decrepit shantytowns springing up around the country were called "Hoovervilles." Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the rich governor from New York, offered Americans a New Deal, and was elected in a landslide victory in 1932. He took quick action to attack the Depression, declaring a four-day bank holiday, during which Congress passed the Emergency Banking Relief Act to stabilize the banking system. During the first 100 days of his administration, Roosevelt laid the groundwork for his New Deal remedies that would rescue the country from the depths of despair.

I would hardly place all the blame of the Great Depression on Hoover. Tariffs played a large role, not to mention, under FDR our recovery took longer than others, and really it took a world war to get us out.

 

[top gun]

Social Security IS a clusterfock....

You Progressives and your welfare states....

The problem with your analogy is Social Security isn't welfare. Workers pay into it while they're working and when the worker retires he draws from it.

It's more like a bank's Christmas fund that you can't get into and blow until Christmas. So you are sure to have something at Christmas.

 

[Pandora]

The problem with your analogy is Social Security isn't welfare. Workers pay into it while they're working and when the worker retires he draws from it.

It's more like a bank's Christmas fund that you can't get into and blow until Christmas. So you are sure to have something at Christmas.

I think people who are currently old are getting far more out of it than they put into it.

People on SSI never put into it or put little into it and get a lot out of it. To the point it wont be there when I am old enough to get it and the way things are going neither is my 401k.

 

[top gun]

You can step in without creating a welfare state that never ends.

Well it's my belief that Social Security and Medicare were great and tremendously needed things. And it was set up to paying for itself just fine... but politicians Knowing that money was there when other money wasn't raided the fund to death.

We'll just have to agree to disagree on this one.

Well there is a case to made, especially in the day, that the Federal Government did not have the Constitutional ability to step in for anyone.

Well then I guess that would have to be case made case lost. Because it did pass and has been in place for a really, really, really long time now.

I would hardly place all the blame of the Great Depression on Hoover. Tariffs played a large role, not to mention, under FDR our recovery took longer than others, and really it took a world war to get us out.

I'm not totally blaming Hoover for the Great Depression. There were other factors beside some of his failed policies. What I blame Hoover for is not changing course on those failed policies when Americans by the hundred of thousands or millions were suffering terribly.

He sat on his hands and looked the other way. Like I said if Hoover were President during Katrina those people would still be living in the Super Dome or on rooftops... and that's a crime in my book.

 

[GenSeneca]

The problem with your analogy is Social Security isn't welfare. Workers pay into it while they're working and when the worker retires he draws from it.

It's more like a bank's Christmas fund that you can't get into and blow until Christmas. So you are sure to have something at Christmas.

You support the Progressive solution of using Means Testing as a "fix" for Social Security, this turns it into a mandatory wealth transfer program: Welfare.

 

[top gun]

I think people who are currently old are getting far more out of it than they put into it.

People on SSI never put into it or put little into it and get a lot out of it. To the point it wont be there when I am old enough to get it and the way things are going neither is my 401k.

Hi Pan!

I don't think that's actually the case but I think I know what you're thinking.

There are so many baby boomers starting to retire that there will be more people receiving Social Security benefits than current workers paying into the system.

But the people who are retiring have worked their whole lives paying in and have paid their way in the system.

Take care...