Maybe it’s because I’ve quoted* him recently, or a couple weeks ago I had the opportunity to visit the Little White House in Warm Springs GA or maybe it’s because of the comparisons in the media since the election last November.
In any event, one particular program of the New Deal strikes me as an apt parallel to the Health Care “debate” we are witnessing right now.
In 1935 the Rural Electric Administration (REA) was created to bring electricity to rural areas. At that time nearly 90 percent of urban dwellers had electricity by the 1930s, but only ten percent of rural dwellers did.
FDR directly attributed this legislation to a 1924 visit to Georgia for treatment of his polio at Warm Springs. Staying at a small cottage, Roosevelt couldn’t believe it when he saw his first month’s power bill. Residents of Warm Springs were being charged approximately four times the rate per kilowatt-hour as charged in New York. Roosevelt credited this shocking discovery as the reason he became interested in power rates and the need to provide electricity to rural America.
Privately owned utility companies, which provided power to most of the country, were not eager to serve the rural population. These companies argued that supplying rural areas with electricity was not profitable.
Many groups opposed the federal government’s involvement in developing and distributing electric power, especially utility companies, who believed that the government was unfairly competing with private enterprise (See the Statement of John Battle ). Some members of Congress who didn’t think the government should interfere with the economy, believed that TVA was a dangerous program that would bring the nation a step closer to socialism. Other people thought that farmers simply did not have the skills needed to manage local electric companies.
Sound familiar? Well it sure did to me. In the case of the Health “Scare” debates, it’s still boils down to a tug of war between haves and have not’s, big business interests vs that of the profit margin and ongoing rural vs. city meme. This selection of cartoons likely reflects the tone of Anti-WPA media coverage of it’s time.
It (Rural Electrification Act 49 Stat. 1363) allowed the federal government to make low-cost loans to non-profit cooperatives (farmers who had banded together) for the purpose of bringing electricity to much of rural America for the first time.
Isn’t this really what small business and some states have been asking for with health care?
The REA also helped farmers develop assembly-line methods for electrical line construction with uniform procedures and standardized types of electrical hardware. The result was that more and more rural Americans could afford electricity. By 1950, 90 percent of American farms had electricity.
How well our sisters and brothers know how hard it is to find health care in rural GA. In Bernita’s post below, the Senator is dismissive of trauma care and affordable choices resorting to side trip on “personal responsibility”, whatever the hell that really means.
Being against the New Deal helped launch the career of none other than, Ronald Reagan. Hollywood film actor; strong New Dealer in 1940s; started opposing New Deal programs in the 1950s as a corporate spokesman for the General Electric company. His speech on Health Care socialism is making all the rounds-from Facebook to my mothers in box. No doubt some “swiftboatbirthbagger” has it, and a wet towel to keep him happy till Dick Armey comes to town tomorrow.
When you have a minute, read this whole transcript of FDR answering reporters questions in Warm Springs, all the elements are there- education, big business, even a tip on where to buy corn liquor.
Snark alert~It doesn’t say if he faced jeering crowds, or cries of “we want our country back”, no doubt the folks existed then, but they seem to be written out of this account. I can only hope the same will be done in typical arugula eating liberal media elitist fashion for readers/viewers of this burp in our history.
This was my quote to a recent class I gave on lobbying.
*”Okay, you’ve convinced me. Now go out there and bring pressure on me.” President Franklin D. Roosevelt, (In response to a business delegation)
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