"Deal" Or "No New Deal" For Obama

(Just a quick note: after today, posting is going to be iffy for the remainder of the week.)

I think we can pretty much expect a cacophony of protest against the planned infrastructure spending by the incoming Obama Administration (the editorial page of the Murdoch Street Journal has already been in high dudgeon for some time with their comparisons to Japan’s deflationary troubles in the 1990s when they followed a similar approach, but it’s funny: I’ve heard not a word of protest from them or our other corporate media cousins over the non-oversight of approximately $700 billion in TARP funds and the effect that would have on deflation, to say nothing of that black hole of spending known as the Iraq war – I thought this was a good analysis of what happened in Japan during that time, for what it’s worth).

Update: Kudos to Media Matters for taking on the whole "well it didn't work in Japan so it can't work here" thing here.

Despite the howls of outrage by the Repugs and their acolytes, though, I should note that this story (h/t McClatchy) recalls how the New Deal (the massive public works project that helped to lift this country out of the Great Depression, though I’ll admit that the Depression didn’t officially end until WWII) helped throughout North Carolina; the story tells us that…

The New Deal programs poured an estimated $428 million into North Carolina from 1933 to 1938 (roughly $6.4 billion in today's dollars), according to historians Hugh Lefler and Ray Newsome.

The federal programs had an impact in ways you might not imagine. New Deal programs, for example, were instrumental in creating the state's two major cultural institutions -- the N.C. Symphony and the N.C. Museum of Art.

…

(President Franklin D.) Roosevelt, who was immensely popular in North Carolina, created a series of national programs to put people to work. They included the Works Progress Administration, the Civilian Conservation Corps and the National Youth Administration.

Armies of unemployed were set to work on public works projects that have helped define the modern North Carolina landscape.

The Blue Ridge Parkway was built. Costumes for "The Lost Colony" production in Manteo were made. Fort Macon was restored.

Public works projects included Mount Mitchell State Park and the migratory bird refuge at Swan Quarter. In fact, much of today's state and federal park system, including Pisgah National Forest, the Appalachian Trail, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Hanging Rock and the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, is a product of New Deal programs.

This takes you to California’s “Living New Deal” Project sponsored by the University of California at Berkeley, and this tells you that “Pennsylvania’s Little New Deal” sponsored by Dem governor and FDR confidant George H. Earle III was responsible for the 1935 Child Labor Act that raised the minimum working age to sixteen and regulated the number of hours teenagers could work (and in 1936, just one year after the federal Social Security Act became law, the state legislature, at Earle's prodding, established unemployment compensation for workers who had lost their jobs).

It should also be noted that the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission was authorized in 1937 “to build what soon became known as ‘America's First Superhighway.’ This state-of-the-art public works project remains among the most significant legacies of Pennsylvania's Little New Deal” (even though I’ll admit that the Commission has always been a patronage haven, try imagining the importance of the Turnpike to commerce in this state and where we would be without it).

Oh, and concerning the New Deal spending of North Carolina, please consider the following from the story…

Conservatives such as then-U.S. Sen. Josiah Bailey, a Democrat from Raleigh, worried about the cost of the millions being spent, whether the projects were boondoggles, whether it encouraged laziness and whether it produced shoddy work.

However, the following should be noted in particular…

Richard Nixon, a Duke law student, earned $30 a month working in the school library. Jesse Helms, a Wake Forest College student, made $18.75 per month doing sports publicity. At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Terry Sanford worked in the Swain Hall dining room. They were all federal New Deal jobs.

And because of conservative opposition, North Carolina received fewer New Deal funds than any other state (and based on this story, it looks like, as I noted earlier, the “right” is ready to pick up once more where their predecessors left off…more fool them - and here's another indicator that Obama is doing the right thing).