Tag: Great Depression

Crossposted at Daily Kos

What You Missed in Part I of This Diary Spain has been etched in the hearts of our generation… and carried around like a terrible wound.  Spain gave us our first taste of defeat, and because of her we discovered with an enduring shock that one can be right and still be defeated, that sheer force can trample the human spirit underfoot, and that there are times when courage goes unrewarded.  Without a doubt, this explains why so many people the world over have experienced the Spanish drama as their own personal tragedy. Albert Camus, Algerian-French philosopher and author, Source: Honoring Fascism’s Forgotten Fighters. Sketch Source: Existential Primer. “!No Pasaran!” – The Abraham Lincoln Brigade and the Spanish Civil War, Part I introduces you to the beginnings of the civil war between the Republicans and the Nationalists; a poignant letter written by Abraham Lincoln Brigade (ALB) volunteer Bill Bailey to his mother in New Jersey; the tense political, economic, and social conditions that existed in pre-war Spain; the response by the American government and its insistence upon assuming a neutral position in this conflict; the personal stories of a few Americans caught between economic depression at home and alarming developments on the international level; what eventually motivated them to secretly travel to and fight in Spain; and the ALB volunteers’ battlefield exploits in Spain. Link to Part I of This Diary

The story continues below the fold…  

Crossposted at Daily Kos

Part II of this diary will be posted on Wednesday, July 27th.

In July 1936, the Spanish Army staged a military uprising against the democratically-elected Republican government of Spain, which had been in power for less than six months. The revolt started in the Protectorate of Morocco under the leadership of General Francisco Franco and by the next day, had spread to the mainland. The rebels had badly miscalculated and not anticipated that several army units would side with the government nor expected that the working classes in towns and cities would be quickly mobilized and armed in a popular resistance against the rebellion.  In what would become a dress rehearsal for World War II, the struggle that ensued between Republican and Nationalist forces to determine the future direction of the country would rage on for the next three years.

In 1937, Bill Bailey (a son of Irish immigrants to America) wrote a letter from Spain to his mother in New Jersey.  Unbeknownst to her and defying a travel embargo imposed by his own government, he had secretly traveled to that country to become one of almost 2,800 American volunteers to eventually fight on the Republican side in a brutal war against the defenders of authoritarian conservatism

House will take up unemployment benefits extension Thursday

By Vicki Needham, The Hill.com — Nov 17, 2010

The House has put a bill on Thursday’s floor schedule that would extend emergency unemployment benefits for three months, according to the schedule released Wednesday night by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.).

House Ways and Means Chairman Sander Levin (D-Mich.) and Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), chairman of the Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support, introduced the bill today that would extend federal benefits — up to 99 weeks in some states for those who have exhausted their state unemployment insurance — through Feb. 28.

The measure is on the suspension calendar and will require two-thirds vote to pass.

A 3 Months extension, on that precarious lifeline, for Millions.

Just a 2/3 Vote needed.

Good luck, folks, looks like you could be “On your Own” — given the priorities of Congress, lately.

The ’99ers’ Share Their Stories

Paul Solman, PBS, MAKING SEN$E — August 6, 2010

I’m a 49 year old single mother of a 15 year old. I was laid off in September of 2008 and my unemployment ended in April of 2010. The way New Jersey calculates your base year made me ineligible for more than 79 weeks.

I apply to just about 50 jobs per week and I went to school and got some medical certifications that are just about useless. Everyone I speak with says “your certifications are great, but we’re really looking for some experience.”

I have been unable to pay my rent since June and expect to be evicted shortly. I have no one in a position to help, and can’t even imagine what it’s going to be like, telling my daughter that we have no home. […] Although I can’t consider suicide, I understand where these people are at!

That was just one of the personal stories out of the MILLIONS of fellow out-of-work Americans,

also known as the 99er’s …

Two days have passed since the 2009 election cycle ended and the second-guessing and arm-chair quarterbacking has quite predictably arrived.  Everyone has a theory or a unique explanation and each is in the camp of either imminent demise or nonchalant shrugs.  I suppose I lean much more to the latter than to the former.  I have no alarmist, chilling words of caution to impart to any Democratic candidate up for re-election or election in a year’s time.  When some are questioning whether we should let up on the gas pedal, I advocate strongly for pressing down firmly and keeping it there.  We have a right to push our agenda just as strongly as Republicans pushed theirs when they were the majority, and skittish popular opinion will always exist in times where discomfort reigns and its end is not clearly visible.  That’s how humans are, particularly when they have been led to believe that good times are a birthright.  

crossposted from Daily Kos … comments there after the “recent diary list” deadline has passed are also welcome.

Bonddad has YERRD (yet another reclisted Rosenberg diary) up, on the issue of whether the recession is coming to an end, or the sky is falling and we face an unending recession from now through to the visible horizon.

But the Great Depression was not made of a recession that did not end for ten years. It was, indeed, made up of one and a half complete business cycles … the post-Crash Recession, from late 1929 to 1932, the New Deal Recovery, from 1932 to 1937, the Roosevelt Recession of 1937/38, and then the recovery that merged with the start of WWII, which was the government spending program substantial enough to actually bring us back to a full employment macro equilibrium.

So the question of whether or not we face another Depression is not, “will this Recession ever end?” … but rather, “After this recession, what comes next?”

So over the fold, I turn to that, far more urgent, question.

But first, an Action Note: Transportation for America reminds us that its not too late to tell your Congressmen to increase support for clean transportation.

A new study has been released by Lancet, The public health effect of economic crises and alternative policy responses in Europe: an empirical analysis, written by Dr. David Stuckler PhD et. al., which contends that the current economic crisis is having an adverse effect on public health. The findings from their research show that increased unemployment rates correlate to “significant short term increases in premature deaths from intentional violence.” The study also shows that labor market protection through government programs can reverse this terrible trend.

This scope of this study was the European Union nations. A brief google search didn’t reveal any similar recent studies conducted in the US, though there was an informal study conducted by a Doctor from Johns Hopkins, who reported his findings at a “After Peak Oil” Conference in the spring of this year.

More detail below  

Writing in the the current print issue of Rolling Stone, journalist Matt Taibbi exposes Goldman Sachs, the “world’s most powerful investment bank”, for the “great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money” that it truly is.

In “The Great American Bubble Machine”, Taibbi outlines how Goldman Sachs has either influenced, shaped, or simply created five market bubbles since 1929 and how now, the bankers are planning to use the greenhouse gas emissions cap-and-trade scheme as their penultimate bubble.

While I do not agree with some of the conclusions he makes, there is enough in his 9,700 word essay that can make the blood boil.

“The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it’s everywhere,” he begins. But, “any attempt to construct a narrative around all the former Goldmanites in influential positions quickly becomes an absurd and pointless exercise, like trying to make a list of everything.”

This is a followup to my diary on Post Office Murals in the New Deal.  

Lewis Hine was a great photographer, and also an intrepid social activist.  Amongst his most famous works are pictures of child laborers in the early part of the 20th century, for the National Child Labor Committee.  The black and white slides with this music are mostly all by Hine.

Cross-posted from Daily Kos