What Does Government Do For Us?

I have been watching the Republican presidential debates with some sense of wonder. As in, I wonder what world the candidates inhabit.

When Ronald Reagan ran for president, he famously intoned: "government isn't the solution - government is the problem." The present batch of candidates takes this mantra to new levels.

It isn't true.

But we seem to have a national amnesia about the role of the federal government in fostering the degree of prosperity that we enjoy. The "Tea Party" and their adherents seem bent on destroying the structure that has built that prosperity.

An integral part of the attack on our general prosperity is an attack on the New Deal. This is nothing new. Republicans attacked the New Deal from the beginning and have been attempting to undo it ever since.

The attacks only began to achieve success in the late 1960's, after a generation came along with no personal memory of the Great Depression and the New Deal and no recollection of the poverty and backwardness of much of rural America before the New Deal.

I am old enough to have seen remnants of the poverty that preceded the New Deal and to have witnessed the transition to greater prosperity that the New Deal set in motion. Just last month I drove through rural Mississippi on highways built during the depression (my father worked on some of them), past schools built by the Works Progress Administration, along recreational waterways held in check by flood control projects. I drove past farms that wouldn't have electricity without the Rural Electrification Act of 1936.

Michel Hiltzik has published a timely book, The New Deal: A Modern History. Yesterday's edition of the on-line magazine, Slate, published a good review of the book and a summary, drawn from the book, of the New Deal's accomplishments. It is worth reading the review here.

It occurs to me that, by comparison to the visionaries who led America out of a very dark time in our history, today's Republicans have a cramped, crabby and very limited vision of our country.

But if we have eyes to see, here in Pamlico County, we see the New Deal at work. We have not been left to our own devices to recover from a major hurricane. Both as individuals and as a county and a state, we have been saved from total economic collapse by measures put in place by the New Deal. Without those measures, banks would have collapsed and even more jobs would have been lost.

Things could be a lot worse, and without the New Deal, they would be.

But the enduring accomplishment of the New Deal is that leaders of that effort had a vision of the future. That vision of Americans working together for progress and improvement dominated government planning and accomplishments for nearly half a century.

Let's not lose the vision.

Voter Registration

If you need to register to vote in next month's municipal elections, today is the last day.

Unless you live in Alliance, Bayboro or Oriental. Those three towns have absentee and one-stop voting, starting next week on the 20th. Residents of those three towns can register and vote the same day during one-stop. One-stop takes place at the County Board of Elections office at the court house in Bayboro. For details, call Lisa Bennett at 745-4821.

Mosquito Matters

The mosquito truck just drove by the house. I think I saw a flock of mosquitoes cavorting in the fog.

Do you suppose they have learned to eat the anti-mosquito stuff when they run out of human blood?

Layaway: Pay Now (And More), Get Later

Some time back, I mentioned the layaway programs of the thirties as a precursor of "buy now, pay later," the extension of consumer credit to those with modest incomes. Today's New York Times has an article putting layaway in its historical context. The article explains why Wal-Mart's recent announcement that they are reinstituting layaway is not good news for consumers.

Some economists are describing the recent economic downturn as a "balance sheet recession." This means that people are spending less not only because they are unemployed or underemployed (as last Friday's jobs report shows), but also because wages are declining, along with the value of the most valuable household asset, the home itself. So banks and corporations are rolling in dough, but won't lend to consumers. And consumers, in turn, are desperately trying to pay down debt instead of incurring new obligations.

So Wall Street's excesses are hurting Main Street and indeed contributing to the reduction in aggregate demand that is contracting the whole economy. No wonder demonstrators have decided to occupy Wall Street.

Voter Registration for Municipal Elections

Just a reminder: voter registration books in Pamlico County close this Friday, October 14 for municipal elections. Voters in three towns, however, will be able to register and vote during "one-stop" early voting, which begins October 20 and continues until 1:00 P.M. Saturday, November 5. Election day is November 8th.

Voters in municipalities that have opted to provide absentee voting (which includes "one-stop" or early voting at the court house in Bayboro) are allowed to register as well as vote during one-stop.. This applies to voters from Alliance, Bayboro and Oriental.

Voters who have been temporarily displaced by hurricane Irene need not change their registration, so long as they intend to return to the same abode.

Don't forget: there are no unimportant elections.

Voter Fraud?

I want to share an editorial in today's New York Times entitled "The Myth of Voter Fraud."

As the article points out, there are almost no occurrences of voter fraud in the United States. The George W. Bush administration unleashed their Justice Department to vigorously pursue voter fraud, even to the point of firing their own appointed US Attorneys who were unable to find evidence of such fraud.

There are instances of mistakes, but the numbers are so small that if the government were run like a business, the owners would spend no money trying to reduce the vanishingly small numbers further.

But that isn't the real agenda.

Wake County Board of Education Elections

Interesting article in today's News and Observer: "Wake Voters Should Check Districts." 

Tomorrow is the election in Wake County for the board of elections. The problem is that board of elections districts have been redrawn to reflect results of the 2010 census. Usually, the Board of Elections would have sent voter cards to registered voters notifying them of their new districts.

The Wake County Board of Elections asked the Board of Commissioners to appropriate sufficient funds to do the mail out, but the County Commissioners declined.

Part of the problem is that there would have to be another mailing, in any event, after redistricting is completed for state offices and the US Congress. No one knows how long that will take.

So many Wake County voters may show up tomorrow at the wrong polling place.

Fortunately, we have no such problems in Pamlico County.

Double Ten: China's Revolution

Today is the one hundredth anniversary of the beginning of the uprising that overthrew the Manchu Dynasty and established China as a republic under Sun Yat-sen.

The Republic of China (Taiwan) celebrates "Double Ten" as China's national day, as do many overseas Chinese in other countries. The event truly was crucial to China's eventual modernization and its transformation from a source of luxury goods (silk, tea and porcelain) to a modern industrial nation.

There were many obstacles and detours along the way, including the Opium Wars with England (1838-1842 and 1856-1860), the Tai Ping Rebellion (1850-1864), the Sino-Japanese War (1894-95) and the Boxer Rebellion (1898). These events led to the partition and control of China (at least the trading centers) by Western and eventually Japanese imperialist powers.

One of the goals of the 1911 uprising was for China to eventually reestablish control of her own territory and people.

It took a long time, but few can dispute that China has finally achieved that goal.