LETTER TO THE EDITOR – THE ROOSEVELT MYTH

THE NEWS & OBSERVER
Letter to the Editor
Aug 06, 2010

Roosevelt realities

A July 25 letter-writer said that President Roosevelt used the government to get this nation back on track during the Great Depression. He’s wrong.

A whole alphabet of federal agencies was established to dictate to private businesses how they could operate. Virtually all of FDR’s plans seemed to call for more government control. The results were stagnation and the prolonging of the Depression.

Finally, after the Supreme Court declared a number of FDR’s projects unconstitutional, he tried the biggest power grab of all. He sought to pack the Supreme Court by increasing the number of justices to as many as 15. FDR’s plan was to appoint more liberal justices so more of his projects could be passed. Even members of his own party saw the extreme dangers of this move and voted against him.

After two terms for FDR (eight years), unemployment was still in double digits, 14.6 percent in 1940. Only after the nation began to mobilize for World War II did we start to pull out of the Great Depression.

Recommended reading, “The Forgotten Man” by Amity Shlaes.

Bob Harper

Tarboro, North Carolina

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