Harry Truman And The Fair Deal

Anti DEI Gone Mad: Removal Of All References To Race And Gender On Government Websites

The vicious attack on DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) by Donald Trump’s administration has gone totally bonkers, with removal of all references to race, gender, nationality, only allowing information that promotes white straight male dominance.

So the Navajo Code Talkers of World War II and the Tuskegee Airmen are removed from the Defense Department website.

There has been wiping out of Jackie Robinson and other African American contributions and accomplishments on various websites.

The Enola Gay Aircraft (Hiroshima Atomic Bombing in World War II) was removed from the website because it has the word “gay”!

Demeaning of women’s role in government agencies and organizations is full steam ahead.

There is total repudiation of gay or transgender personnel in the military and elsewhere.

Donald Trump is accomplishing the total wipeout of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and since, and also the federal government’s major role in promoting equality and fairness.

This beginning with the Progressive Era of Theodore Roosevelt, the New Deal and Fair Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman, the New Frontier of John F. Kennedy and the Great Society of Lyndon B. Johnson, and the advancements under Presidents from Richard Nixon through Joe Biden!

Trump’s War On Federal Government: Young Civil Servants, Higher Education, Veterans, And More! :(

Donald Trump’s war on the federal government is an attack on the future and on so many other areas of life.

It is a war on young people who have and wish to enter public service, with many thousands of probationary workers now unemployed, due to major cutbacks in many federal agencies.

It is a war on higher education, cutting funding for training and educating an intelligent work force in the sciences, the humanities, and all other areas of public knowledge.

It is a war on our patriotic veterans, who are losing many government jobs, and a cutting of programs to help veterans who risked their lives, and now are being denied adequate consideration of their health and welfare needs.

It is a war on protection of our national security, with mass purges of dedicated intelligence, foreign policy, and defense personnel who have dedicated their lives and careers to protecting the homeland from foreign threats of authoritarian government, including Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran.

It is a war on health care, science, and medicine, and endangers all Americans when it comes to threats from many diseases worldwide, that now will not be dealt with in an efficient matter, and will cost a multitude of lives.

It is a war on the environment, conservation, and the realities of climate change, guaranteeing worldwide disasters that will threaten human existence in the future.

It is a war on our long held alliances with democracies in Europe and in Asia, and antagonizing, unnecessarily, our neighbors, Canada and Mexico, and inciting anti Americanism in Latin America. It is causing our closest allies in NATO and in Asia to reconsider sharing intelligence information.

It is a war on public virtue, with a certainty that we will witness the greatest level of corruption and concentration of wealth in the hands of a few evil individuals, ever seen in American history, far surpassing the earlier corruption that took place under Presidents Ulysses S. Grant, Warren G. Harding, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and even the first term of Donald Trump.

The Trump Presidency is setting America back to an earlier time before all of the great reforms that took place from the Progressive Era of Theodore Roosvelt and Woodrow Wilson; the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt; the Fair Deal of Harry Truman; the New Frontier of John F. Kennedy; the Great Society of Lyndon B. Johnson; the movements forward under Republicans Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon; the accomplishments under Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton; and the advancements under Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.

FDR Death, And Harry Truman Succession To The Presidency Commemorated!

Sixty nine years ago, in the midst of late stages of World War II, the longest serving American President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, passed away at the age of 63 in Warm Springs, Georgia.

The impact of FDR in his years in office, and the continued significance of his policies and actions, reverberates in America seven decades later, and he is usually ranked second or third among all Presidents in polls and surveys of Presidential scholars.

Serving more than 12 years and starting a fourth term in office, he had a far greater impact in many ways than Abraham Lincoln, who is usually ranked as the greatest American President.

FDR’s “New Deal” still affects America, and his leadership in World War II was crucial for the survival of democracy in the nation and the world.

The death of FDR also led to the Presidency of Harry Truman, tremendously underrated throughout his Presidency and for a generation after his retirement.

But once Truman passed away, recognition of his courageous, principled leadership emerged, and now he is ranked in the top five or six of all Presidents!

His continuation and expansion of the New Deal through the Fair Deal, and his strong leadership in the emerging Cold War made his Presidency extremely significant!

The 80th Congress (1947-1949) Vs. The 118th Congress (2023- )

It has often been claimed that the 80th Congress (1947-1949) under President Harry Truman was unproductive, or as Truman claimed it in his 1948 Presidential campaign, a “Do Nothing” Congress.

While it is true that the Republican dominated 80th Congress worked against Democratic President Truman and his “Fair Deal” proposals, most notably passing the anti Labor Taft-Hartley Act over the President’s veto, in reality a lot was accomplished in that Congress.

The following actions were accomplished:

The Truman Doctrine
The Taft-Hartley Act
The Presidential Succession Act
The National Security Act–including the Defense Department at the Pentagon in Virginia, the National Security Council, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, separate Department of the Air Force, and the Central Intelligence Agency
The Marshall Plan
22nd Amendment to the US Constitution

At the same time, NOTHING significant has been passed into law in the present first session of the 118th Congress, making it the least productive in modern times since the Great Depression 1931-1933 72nd Congress, split between a Democratic House of Representatives and Republican Senate under President Herbert Hoover!

Lyndon B. Johnson And Medicare: 58th Anniversary!

It has been 58 years since President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Medicare Act, a pathbreaking turning point in health care, after much resistance for a half century.

Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, as the Progressive (Bull Moose) Party Presidential nominee, was the first President to suggest health care should be a national commitment.

His distant cousin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, considered the issue, but had enough of a battle over Social Security being legislated into law in 1935, as part of his “New Deal”.

Harry Truman promoted, as part of his “Fair Deal”, the consideration of some sort of national health care, but it went awry in the divisive politics of the “Red Scare” and the Cold War.

John F. Kennedy also pushed the issue, but did not have the clout to get it past House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Wilbur Mills of Arkansas.

Lyndon B. Johnson pushed the issue of national health care as part of his “Great Society”, and got it done, and it has been a godsend to millions of elderly people and disabled people, and added to the following year by the adoption of Medicaid.

Most Republicans opposed it then and since, and continue to call it “Socialism”, and ten states, including Texas and Florida, refuse to expand Medicaid, denying the poor the care they need, and this by a party that claims to be “Pro Life”! 🙁

And Barack Obama, in promoting the Affordable Care Act or “ObamaCare”, expanded health care, and it continues to survive despire blistering Republican and conservative attacks!

So this is a time to salute LBJ, as the savior of the promotion of national health care!