NEWS ITEM FROM 1938….PAST AS PROLOGUE?
From my friend Andy Bostom…..
New York Timesman Arthur Krock provided the following unusually candid assessment of FDR/Obama statist rule, circa April, 1938 (“Congress Discovers Its Own Backbone,” Arthur Krock, April 10, 1938 The New York Times).
It is, of course, entirely fitting and proper, wholly in keeping with our form of government, that the President [FDR] should regularly discuss with the leaders of the Legislature the affairs of the nation. But the remarkable thing about these meetings is that they were virtually forced upon Mr. Roosevelt. He did not want them. He prefers the system he followed from March, 1933, until last January [1938]. Under its workings, the President decided what he wanted to do administratively, and did it, letting the leaders of Congress read about it in the newspapers. He also decided what he wanted to do legislatively, had a bill prepared to carry out the ideas, and sent it ready-made to Congress to be signed on the dotted line.
Often his leaders introduced the measure without reading it. The late Senator [Joseph Taylor] Robinson “introduced” a copy of the morning paper during the bank crisis of 1933 because the bill it was supposed to be was not fully drafted. Always the rank and file of Congress knew nothing of a bill’s contents until they read them in the newspapers. Sometimes they did not trouble to do that, voting “aye” on faith.
Clearly, now lame duck POTUS Obama repeated FDR’s machinations in forcing passage of the disastrous, liberty-crushing, Orwellian-dubbed “Affordable Care Act.” Good riddance—one fervently wishes—to yet another failed iteration of totalitarian “good governance.” Andrew Bostom
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