Cheney: Son of the New Deal
Former Vice President Cheney would agree that he is about as right-wing as an American politician can be, openly hostile to the federal government’s intervention in society. But one surprise from his memoir, In My Time, is that Cheney recognizes that his personal success was made possible by Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and the fact that Cheney’s father managed to land a steady job with the federal government.
“I’ve often reflected on how different was the utterly stable environment he provided for his family and wondered if because of that I have been able to take risks, to change directions, and to leave one career path for another with hardly a second thought,” Cheney writes.
Former Vice President Cheney
In that sense, Cheney’s self-assuredness may be as much a product of the New Deal as the many bridges, dams and other public works that Roosevelt commissioned in the 1930s to get Americans back to work. By contrast, the insecurity that afflicted Cheney’s father was a byproduct of the vicissitudes from laissez-faire capitalism.
So, it is ironic that as an adult, Cheney has contributed as much as almost anyone to dismantling the New Deal, the social compact that pulled his family into the American middle class and opened extraordinary opportunities for him.
In sketching his family’s history, Cheney depicts the hard-scrabble life of farmers and small businessmen scratching out a living in the American Midwest and suffering financial reversals whenever the ans of Wall Street stumbled into a financial crisis and the bankers cut off credit.
After his ancestors would make some modest headway from their hard work, they would find themselves back at square one, again and again, because of some “market” crisis or a negative weather pattern.
Bert Cheney’s son, Richard, ventured off in a different direction, working his way through Kearney State Teachers College and taking the civil service exam. He landed a job as a typist with the Veterans Administration in Lincoln, Nebraska.
“After scraping by for so long, he found the prospect of a $120 monthly salary and the security of a government job too good to turn down,” his son, Cheney, writes. “Before long he was offered a job with another federal agency, the Soil Conservation Service.
“The SCS taught farmers about crop rotation, terraced planting, contour plowing, and using ‘shelter belts’ of trees as windbreaks – techniques that would prevent the soil from blowing away, as it had in the dust storms of the Great Depression. My dad stayed with the SCS for more than thirty years, doing work of which he was immensely proud.
“He was also proud of the pension that came with federal employment – a pride that I didn’t understand until as an adult I learned about the economic catastrophes that his parents and grandparents had experienced and that had shadowed his own youth.”
Like many Americans, the Cheney family felt it had been pulled from the depths of the Great Depression by the New Deal efforts of Franklin Roosevelt, cementing the family’s support for the Democratic president and his party.
Now in his 70s, Cheney is widely recognized as a right-wing Republican icon, inspiring a new generation of conservatives to dismantle what’s left of Roosevelt’s New Deal and shrink the federal government.
It doesn’t seem to matter that those were the two social factors that created “the utterly stable environment” which gave Cheney his chance in life.
http://consortiumnews.com/2012/08/20...he-new-deal-2/
Yep, Repugs hate and want to destroy govt when it helps "other, black, brown" poor people, but when it helps white, Christian, Euro-Americans, they absolutely love it and want to sustain and abuse it for their own enrichment.
Shrink the federal government? You in' serious? How does expanding the military, nation building overseas, spending ass loads of money on wars that go nowhere and aren't necessary and basically make countries hate America, etc... shrink the federal government?
Cheney and Bush aren't conservatives.
Repugs' and conservatives' HUGE LIE, their FRAUD, is that they want to shrink govt than helps the 99% while maintaining, increasing, rigging the govt that enriches the 1%.
eg, Ryan's budget sociopathy cuts safety net spending and programs and uses any savings to cut taxes for the 1% and corporations, increasing their hated deficit by $6T+ in 10 years. 100% PLAIN AS DAY, and goes back 35+ years.
No, that's just Republicans' huge lie..... conservatives hate corporatism and aspire to use Cons utional limits to create a small, trustworthy government that serves every American, tbh....
You really need to learn the difference between Republican and conservative, especially since that difference becomes more pronounced with each passing year......
ah yes, the saintly conservatives, theorectically perfect in their ivory towers, who ALWAYS vote Repug, and never object to Repug spending.
Conservatives don't have a very good track record when it comes to small government. Ronald Reagan, the conservative icon, was about as big government as it gets. Before 2010, and the rebranding of Republicans as the "Tea Party" they always preached small government while expanding government just as fast or even faster than Democrats. Now they expect anyone to believe they have had a change of heart? After seeing Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney's budgets, which explode the deficit even more so than President Obama's proposed budget, color me skeptical.
No, conservatives don't "always vote Repug," nor do they "never object to Repug spending"... if you pulled your head out of your partisan ass for two seconds, you would quickly learn this, tbh....
Shades of Grey. Confirmation bias precludes anything other than a binary solution set.
my ass isn't partisan, it's anti-Repug, anti-tea-bagger, anti-conservative.
If conservatives don't nearly always vote Repug, then who do they vote for? (excluding wasting their vote by not voting or voting 3rd party)
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/partisan
1par·ti·san noun
\ˈpär-tə-zən, -sən, -ˌzan, chiefly British ˌpär-tə-ˈzan\
Definition of PARTISAN
1
: a firm adherent to a party, faction, cause, or person; especially : one exhibiting blind, prejudiced, and unreasoning allegiance
2
a : a member of a body of detached light troops making forays and harassing an enemy
b : a member of a guerrilla band operating within enemy lines
I don't FIRMLY ADHERE to the non-Repugs, I'm strictly anti-Repug
TB
You adhere to a strictly anti-Repug action plan. That you can't parse this lends credence to
"one exhibiting blind, prejudiced, and unreasoning". A comprehensive description of your adherence.
"blind, prejudiced, and unreasoning"
not at all.
The Repug/conservative's 1% first/last/always and the 99% strategy is clear for anybody who wants to see it, no prejudice, and not much reasoning involved just simple observation.
Your broad brush betrays your lack of reason.
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