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Dave Fitzwilliam – FDR’s Folly and Success


Posted on January 15th

Dave Fitzwilliam – FDR’s Folly and Success

Dave’s talk was drawn from thee resent books. Though FDR was not much of a thinker, he mastered the new media, radio, with his “fire side chats” and was a great politician. In spite of isolationist head wins in both parties, FDR won the 3rd term 1940 election against Willkie, partly because Willkie was poor on radio and depended on old media ( TIME, LIFE, FORTUNE, and the NY TIMES). With the advice of his Harvard Progressive “Brain Trust” FDR replaced free market capitalism with government monopolies such as Smoot-Hawley Tariff, NRA, AAA, TVA etc. The unemployment in March, 1933 was 25% and after 7 years of the “New Deal” it was still 15% in 1940. The NRA and AAA were declared unconstitutional in 1935, and the Tennessee Valley Authority was for the benefit of 2% US people (mostly small farmers) with the tax support 98% of the people and was not completed until the 1950’s.




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