We listened to part of Joe Biden’s speech, did you? Everyone knows he’s accomplished quite a lot in his first 100 days, but free pre-school and community college sure sounds like a stretch. A guy named Tucker said so, I mean who needs a mom anymore?
No matter how much we’d like our government to function rationally and in a bi-partisan manner, it looks like the great divide between fact and fiction has deepened. And even if you happen to be a conservative who doesn’t believe in conspiracy theories, you still want to stay in power. And it almost always comes back to the Culture War.
Like calling parents who insist their children wear masks outside “child abusers.”
At our Cypress Tree Ceremony in the park last weekend, our L’il Pumpkin said he’d rather wear his mask even though all the adults were vaccinated and we were all outside. Why? Because our friend Yoko’s granddaughter was there, an eight month old baby, and he was being considerate of her. Imagine, a 6 year old with more grace than half the country.
The latest National Geographic is all about whales, and even they have culture wars! Depending on where they live, some whales will only eat salmon while others like to catch baby seals. And some orcas love to roll around on the beach! “Beach rubbing is routine among this population, called northern residents because they ply inland seas during summer and fall between the Canadian mainland and Vancouver Island. Not so their neighbors to the south. The orcas around the border with Washington State, where I live, have never been documented performing this ritual.”
It’s funny to think that there are northern and southern whales. And although Biden and FDR grew up on the east coast, comparing them isn’t quite fair. FDR came from a patrician New York family; Biden’s family was salt/of/the/earth/middle/class Delaware via Pennsylvania. Yet Roosevelt created new policy, in order to fund our response to the Great Depression, that angered his wealthy peers. And yet, he wasn’t taxing anybody – he appointed Jesse Jones to the Reconstruction Finance Corporation – to create a synthesis between government and banking.
His main mission was to restore trust in capitalism; to help turn around a risk-averse banking industry.
Under Jones, the RFC worked across economic scales, from local construction contractors to giant corporations. It did not try to fulfill a particular utopian vision of how the economy “ought to be” but worked within the system to fix the system. It relied not on abstract economic ideas like socialism or capitalism, but on practical business methods. And it worked. There was no single magic bullet, but a portfolio of opportunities.
Under Jones, the RFC did not ask Congress for money. It could borrow billions from capital markets or banks. And borrow it did. But with Jones at the helm, overall, it made money. The RFC developed different projects that turned cutting-edge technology into self-sustaining commercial enterprises. Nervous businessmen said it couldn’t be done. Jones—and the rest of the RFC agencies—did it anyway.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/03/surprising-truth-about-roosevelts-new-deal/584209/
Biden must restore our trust in government after the last administration. Reading this article in the Atlantic helped me understand the other big lie of “big government spending.” Sure taxing the rich will help, but so would public and private partnerships. If Biden does want to create a Green New Deal, help women get back to work after this past year, and do something about police reform and gun violence – while the Supreme Court will be simultaneously dealing with a citizen’s ‘right’ to carry a gun around outside of his or her home – he’d better get busy in the NEXT 100 days.
Because I’d like to hang Joe’s picture in my kitchen, just like the Flapper hung FDR over her sink!
MountainMornings 