Political master deception: Part III

Racial issues were low profile entering the 20th century. World War I and Prohibition issues received most attention for 20 years. Segregation in the Southern states and news of lynchings were known but produced little activity to correct.

Recognition of America’s failure to terminate discrimination of the Black citizens finally arrived 90 years after the Civil War ended. The Supreme Court ruling of May 17, 1954, that segregated schools are “inherently unequal” inspired nationwide interest in racial issues.

Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus ordered his National Guard to keep nine Black students from entering the Little Rock High School; President Dwight D. Eisenhower countered by ordering the 101st Airborne to safeguard the students. The champion leader of the integrationists, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., was intense but would not tolerate violence.

The Great Depression focused political activity in the 1930s. From 1929 to 1933, manufacturing output decreased by one third. Unemployment in the United States increased from 4% to 25%. One-third of all employed people were downgraded to working part-time.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s response led to the introduction of the New Deal. That is included in this column, not because it recognized discriminatory racial laws, but to illustrate that federal programs only treated economic and unemployment issues.

The Industrial Revolution had introduced an unanticipated world phenomenon – massive unemploy- ment as industrial factories confronted declining markets. Economic insurance had never been deemed appropriate, but the states recognized the new situation and while Roosevelt was conceiving Social Security, two-thirds of the states had responded and developed welfare programs by 1935.

New Deal projects provided $8.5 billion to 15 million people to build public roads, buildings and parks, subsidize farmers, establish banking regulations, etc. Temporary relief was achieved; however, Roosevelt’s objective of achieving permanent solutions failed. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. reported New Deal progress to Congress on May 19, 1939: “We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work . . . we have never made good on our promises . . . we have just as much unemployment as when we started. . . . And an enormous debt to boot.” (Unemployment in 1931 was 16.3%; it was 17.2% in 1939).

Only the wartime expenditures of World War II restored the America’s economy.

President Lyndon B. Johnson, in his 1964 State of the Union address, asked Congress to declare an “unconditional war on poverty.” Congress produced the 1964 Economic Opportunity Act with rhetoric of fighting poverty and racial discrimination.

Martha Bailey, a professor of economics at UCLA and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, published a lengthy study comparing the Economic Opportunity Act with Roosevelt’s New Deal of 1933-1939.

Fighting poverty and building political coalition were competing objectives determining the Johnson administration’s funding choices. One hypothesis is that Johnson used the War on Poverty to forge a new electoral consensus; perhaps he identified his intentions as he signed the Act: “This will keep those n----- voting Democrat for 200 years.” He may have learned from Roosevelt’s alleged claim to “tax and tax and spend and spend and elect and elect.”

America’s poverty has remained at 11% plus/minus 2% since 1965 despite spending more than $30 trillion. Every evaluation of Project Head Start, part of the War on Poverty for low-income kindergarten families, documented that children entering elementary classes have a small advantage for first grade and none by the third grade. The current annual budget is $10 billion, or $10,000 per child. The most serious social failure is another program providing financial aid to single mothers that unintentionally increased the Black illegitimacy birth rate from 25% to 80% within 25 years.

Unlike New Deal officials, no War on Poverty official has admitted total failure, though no other title defines its results. Poverty remains unimproved while crime and racial conflict have increased.

The concluding column will review the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s concept for racial solutions.

Earl Heal is a retired Air Force officer, Vacaville resident and member of The Right Stuff committee formerly of the Solano County Republican Central Committee. Reach him at healearl niki2@gmail.com.

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Tribune ConTenT AgenCy

Dame Judi Dench made an appearance Friday on the “The Graham Norton Show” and revealed that her degenerative eye condition is making it increasingly difficult to act.

The 88-year-old Oscarwinning actress, who has spoken about her macular degeneration before, says now it’s making it “impossible” to continue acting.

“It’s become impossible and because I have a photographic memory, I need to find a machine that not only teaches me my lines but also tells me where they appear on the page,” she said, according to People. “I used to find it very easy to learn lines and remember them. I could do the whole of ‘Twelfth Night’ right now.”

Dench, who was first diagnosed with AMD (age-related macular degeneration) in 2012, had said as recently as 2021 that she still thinks of herself as a young woman.

“In my mind’s eye I’m 6 feet and willowy and about 39,” she told the Guardian in an interview that year.

Even though her eyesight has worsened, Dench is finding other ways to stay active.