How Social Security was Born: Not a Bonus, But a Guaranteed Retirement for all Americans Michael Streich

 

Formally known as the Wagner-Lewis-Doughton social security bill, the Social Security Act was passed by Congress June 19, 1935 and signed into law as immediate legislation by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Old age benefits were discussed by Roosevelt and key supporters who would hold positions in his administration before his 1933 inauguration. His Secretary of Labor, Frances Perkins, writes that Roosevelt, “…always regarded the Social Security Act as the cornerstone of his administration…” Not all Americans supported the measure, referring to the act as “socialism.” It is still considered controversial and falls under Congressional scrutiny whenever Republicans make significant gains in Congressional representation, as happened most recently in the 2010 midterm elections.

 

The Social Security Act Begins as an Unemployment Insurance Measure

 

During the heady days of FDR’s first Hundred Days, New York Senator Robert Wagner and Rep. David J. Lewis of Maryland approached Roosevelt with a rudimentary bill to provide unemployment insurance. Roosevelt, however, wanted to include social security. Concerns over benefits for America’s seniors arose out of the popularity of the Townsend Movement. This movement proposed generous old age pensions at federal expense.

 

The 1935 bill was the product of many lengthy committee hearings, unending hours of research, and continual brainstorming by FDR’s brain-trust. The initial measure included a health care plan, but this part of the bill was dropped as Roosevelt knew the medical establishment would oppose it, and the rest of the bill was not to be opened to the danger of failure.

 

Passing Social Security and Unemployment Insurance

 

Combining Social Security and unemployment benefits was the recommendation of Harry Hopkins, one of FDR’s key advisers. Unlike other New Deal programs, it was to be a permanent program and not deficit funded. Roosevelt stated, “We can’t sell the United States short in 1980 any more than in 1935.”

 

Roosevelt might have been astounded that in 1980, Ronald Reagan was elected President, beginning the tide of conservative ascendancy in the Congress. By 1985, into his second term, the Senate Budget Committee, led by New Mexico Senator Pete Domenici, recommended a one-year freeze on Social Security benefits.

 

As passed in 1935, Social Security was limited. During Committee hearings, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau opposed a universal system, suggesting that rural farm workers be exempted as well as small businesses that employed less than ten people. Frances Perkins recounts in her memoirs, none of the provisions would completely solve the nation’s poverty, but it was the first step in solving future depression-condition problems.

 

Opposition to Social Security during the New Deal and Beyond

 

No emergency legislation will make an immediate difference without the necessary funding. Before Congress adjourned in the summer of 1935, Louisiana Senator Huey Long, one of Roosevelt’s most ardent critics, mounted a filibuster to stop any funding legislation. His filibuster lasted until adjournment and Roosevelt was forced to creatively look for temporary workers to help set up the newly independent agency.

 

Others, like Oklahoma Senator Thomas Gore, asked Secretary Perkins during a hearing “isn’t this like socialism?” The entire notion of “cradle to grave” federal entitlement reeked of socialism for stalwart GOP lawmakers. These views were vocally resurrected every time Congress expanded Social Security.

 

In 2010 and again in 2011, Social Security recipients received no cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) yet their Medicare contribution costs rose. In the 2010 midterm election, most seniors voted Republican.

 

Senator-elect Rand Paul of Kentucky campaigned on the promise that he opposes “any cuts in benefits for seniors” and “raising the Social Security retirement age…” Days after the election, however, he said “everything is on the table” to balance the budget. (ABC News, November 3, 2010)

 

National Health Care Tied to the Social Security Bill

 

Although Roosevelt cut health care from the 1935 bill, when Congress revisited Social Security in 1939 Senator Wagner attempted to add amendments, including a disability benefit. Congress voted down these expansions.

 

Wagner’s 1939 Health Bill was designed to expand unemployment benefits and Social Security. This was not a universal, federally mandated health plan such as found in other nations. Opting into the plan was not mandatory nor did his bill include forcing Americans to purchase health insurance.

 

Nevertheless, it was severely attacked, most notably by the American Medical Association and the pharmaceutical industry. Universal health care had been attempted since 1915 and was deemed a progressive measure. Not until March 2009 would Congress enact a health care bill that provided affordable coverage for all Americans.

 

The Role of Government during Periods of Economic Hard Times

 

Conservative Republicans led by President Herbert Hoover in the early years of the Great Depression abhorred federal intervention that amounted to any hint of welfare. Even Franklin Roosevelt rejected the government “dole.” But Roosevelt and the liberal Democrats believed that the role of the federal government was to stimulate the economy by putting people to work and providing safety mechanisms like unemployment insurance.

 

Advisers like Frances Perkins made the argument that even a minimal unemployment payout in the first weeks of unemployment would stop evictions and enable breadwinners to provide for their families.

 

Senator Wagner stated that, “Industry can not run with the mechanical perfection of a gyroscope and out of simple caution we must continue to devise methods of dealing with those who may be severed from their normal work despite our best efforts.”

 

Social Security provided one concrete method for ensuring the survival of American retirees. It continues to do so today. For most, the monthly payout represents a fixed income that covers the bare necessities. Any tampering with those benefits would be criminal to the millions who paid into the system all of their lives.

 

Sources:

 

Lewis L. Gould, The Most Exclusive Club (Basic Books, 2005)

J. Joseph Huthmacher, Senator Robert F. Wagner and the Rise of Urban Liberalism (Atheneum, 1968)

Frances Perkins, The Roosevelt I Knew (Viking Press, 1946 First Edition)

Old History Becomes New History Now

One hundred years ago historians might make amazing discoveries by reading old papers, memoirs, or newspapers. Today, the benefit of social media can cause immediate news coverage, for good or bad. During the Mexican-American War President James Polk Bamboozled Congress into secretly giving him one million dollars to offer as a bribe to Santa Anna, who was in exile in Cuba. The general took the money and returned to Vera Cruz aboard an American warship, ostensibly to end the war on Polk's expansionist terms. But the joke was on Polk. Santa Anna kept the war going and almost won.

Polk wanted to annex All of Mexico. That part of his evil plan was well known. But Mexico was predominantly  Roman Catholic, a "no-no" for most Americans. Also, Mexico opposed slavery, a huge "no-no" for Southern states. The press found out about most of the machinations but it was recorded in detail until decades later when historians like Harvard's Frederick Merck wrote a book about it.

Today, however, technology is so advanced that top government leaders can discuss bombing Yemen at length and in detail without noticing that there is a person privy to the discussion that is a journalist. The app they used wasn't approved or secure. After years of watching fictional TV shows like NCIS, viewers know what secret communication rooms and SCIF's are all about. Yet here are a group of so-called professionals not only giving away the plans but, as in the case of J.D.Vance denigrating our European allies, something he does with regularity.

And the President, with a straight face, says he knows nothing! Absolute BS, All of these men have lost the confidence of the nation and the congress and should resign or be fired. Drain the swamp!

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, if you have principles, then it is time to resign. 

Get History Mr. Vance

 Vice President went to Dachau upon arriving in Munich for the security conference and then proceeded to question Europe's Democracy and Spoke of the "enemy within..." How could he have seriously visited a Concentration Camp and not comprehend why it was left standing? My father, who was a school boy in Nazi Germany, came home with a red cheek because his teacher had slapped him across the face. He didn't greet her with the expected Heil Hitler salute. 

My saintly mother, before she died, warned that we could relive the 1930's very easily and she saw the signs of Hitlerism in this country and abroad. It had been illegal in Germany long after the war to possess Nazi paraphernalia including books and posters. The fear was that future generations needed to know what happened Under Hitler

Thankfully, my parents left Germany and immigrated to America.Vance's meeting with AfD, however, was an indirect endorsement of their right-wing beliefs. Germans should be concerned about migration. Angela Merkel had much blame in causing this situation. But free speech should not be mouthing neo-Nazi ideas. At one point Germany had many Turkish guest workers. Their children were born in Germany. They were skilled workers and even university educated professionals. I once met a Turkish shop ower in the Great Bazaar of Istanbul who spoke perfect German and had lived many years in Hamburg - the city my own family came from.

Germany of late has had numerous terror attacks on the civilian population. The perpetrators are usually migrants identifying with Islamist groups or radical ideologies. Germany has courts just as we do. But Germans may remember President Trump referring to Germany as a "fly over country." If it eventually turns out that J R Vance influence the German election, much as we accused Russia of meddling in our elections, then Vance should be severely reprimanded or asked to resign. His speeches are political blackmail to the German people.

And let us not forget the deep friendship that Germany has had with the United States for decades. Germans in Illinois helped Abraham Lincoln get elected in 1860. And they fought in the Civil War. There are more Germans that came to America as immigrants that any other grouping, including the Irish and Italians. Germany influence goes back to the 1700's when they fought with George Washington and many Hessians and other ethnic Germans did not return to Europe but made their homes in the American colonies. This was even true of German soldiers taken prisoner at Saratoga.

So Mr. Vance has a lot of history to reread, if he ever read it in the first place. I was a college history professor. I should know. 

 

When my brother and I were still in middle school, my parents took us every summer for a week or longer to Canada. My dad drove the entire way, never stopping except to eat or get gas. Our goal was the Ontario city of Gananoque in Ontario. Here, we stayed for one night in a perfectly wonderful motel that was clean and manned by a friendly staff. In the morning we had a full breakfast, bacon and eggs, toast, and great coffee. It was, for us kids, a treat since every school day we ate farina or oatmeal.

We drove east, stopped at historical sights and eventually came to out destination: Nova Scotia. Here we spent a week with family friends who own a small knitting mill making sweaters. The first weekend, however, my dad and his old friend went into town to buy about dozens  lobsters. We all had fun cracking them open and piling the meat on the kitchen table. That's when I got my lifelong taste for lobster!

Another fun experience I recall was visiting Fort Niagara, where so many conferences had taken place in colonial times between the indigenous tribes, the British, French, and American colonial representatives. I recall seeing a sign that is was the "Rush-Baggot" Treaty line; the official border between Canada and the United States.

One year we took a popular Thousand Island cruise. Another year we stopped at Fort William Henry, a military outpost featured in the Hollywood fil, "The last of the Mohicans," a novel written in the 1800's by James Fennimore Copper. But I would also recommend Allan Eckert's "Frontiersman" and other books he's written about this time period, all very well written and footnoted for fact.

Walter Edmonds was another superb writer whose books like "Paint a very colorful picture of the colonial period of " Drums along the Mohawk'" That movie starred Henry Fonda as Gill and Claudette Colbert as his wife . Edna May Oliver plays a noteworthy role as well. But Canada was never seriously up for grab's 

The Techumseh conspiracy was defeated and things settled to Status Quo Ante-Bellum. And so it's been since we was a kids, marveling at the clear, exciting land we colorful neighbor to the north!

While we are at it, Let plus the book, "Night Probe" by Clive Cussler who recenly pass away. who recently passed away. The book is a lively James Bond type action story with the premises' that the US has always owned Canada by virtue of an old treaty that was lost long ago Or was it? One copy was aboard the Empress of Ireland,'the ship sank. There we only two copies of the treaty'. Another my have been lost on a ghost train. Clive was always prescient in many of his books. The Ghost train supposed plunged into a dep river bed abd then covered with mud for decades.

It is available in paperback and was published in1981.And so the saga continues. Who will own Canada? 

It makes perfect sense to Give Donald Trump a third term or perhaps even more. Why should a new president follow Trump and sign his or her own executive orders possibly undoing what Donald Trump is doing? Like the times of FDR, the world is in such a crisis that unlimited terms are almost a necessity. It is hard enough for a President to get much accomplished in four years.

The next four years will be Chaos in my regard. As Margo Channing famously said, "Fasten your seat belts, it's gonna be a bumpy night."  This is a period in Washington when the Term "Decorum" will be banned from all proceedings. And, sadly, the so-called Deep State, whatever that may be, will still be a mythical reality. 

Billionaires, for good or ill, will make the laws and enrich themselves off of a dystopian society.  And we will all clap and sing God Bless America. Let us Thank God for creating such a heaven on earth. Our kids in high school need to read 1984 and see where we are going. Colleges need to require American History survey courses, preferably taught by OLD SCHOOL Masters credentialed professors. 

Maybe then we will really get back to basics and be prepared to say, with Nathan Hale, that we only have one life to give for our country. And, please, give Mr. Musk a lesson on Nazism and racism. Something they obviously don't teach in South Africa. Isn't President Trump tired of him yet?

When I taught Freshman History in College we invariably became entwined in what is generally called "Western Civilization." The course begins with the ancient world and eventually lands on the shores of ancient Greece. Here we learned that there were various types of governments emerging with the various city-states, Athens, for example, is most often associated with early attempts at Democracy. Democracy  is itself constantly evolving. Under Pericles it seems to have reached it's zenith.

Another aspect of Democracy was it's exportation to other regional areas where the Greeks were making cultural and political inroads. It was called Hellenization. All of this boded well for land owning males being able to participate in politics and determine their future.

But other City-States took different paths to express government, such as a system of monarchy. Still others were ruled by oligarchy. These rulers were part of the ruling elite. No elected, their power and wealth in the community gave them the tight to rule.

What are oligarchs? This definition comes from the Oxford dictionary as quoted in Wikipedia: a very rich business leader with a great deal of political influence (particularly with reference to individuals who benefited from the privatization of state-run industries after the collapse of the Soviet Union).

Today, America is poised to be run by oligarchs, chosen by Donald Trump, some to be in his Cabinet, others to act as an ad hoc" Kitchen cabinet" ala Andrew Jackson. No one of them have one iota sense of who the everyday American is. They have no idea I cannot buy eggs due to costs.

Historically, Oligarchs tend to be displaced by the masses, eventually. This is the evolution of society. So we, today, must toil through the Trump years and hope for a better day over the horizon.

A member of my family suggested to me that the firestorm in Los Angeles  was God's punishment for the "young people" living there. I'm not sure whom he exactly meant, But I reminded him that some evangelicals also said that years ago about the New Orleans Katrina disaster. It is so each to blame God for bad things. Did the Christians blame Nero when Rome burned? Throughout history, Christians have used God's vengeance as an excuse for bad things happening.

It is okay to obliterate Gaza and it's people because of what was done to God's chosen people. Early in the conflict, a hard-liner in the Israeli cabinet advocated dropping an atomic bomb on Gaza. There is great hated and it is on both sides. Do we blame God for the carnage? Do we blame Allah? Or do we blame Man's sinful nature? 

In the Old Testament book of Job, God allowed Satan to torment Job, kill his family, devastate his farm, until he had nothing. Job's wife said, "curse God and die." But Job rightly said, "the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord." That is an affirmation we should say whenever we wake to to a new day God has given us. Blessed by the name of the Lord!

In 1943 my mother and grandmother emerged from a bunker in Hamburg to see their neighborhood in flames. The bombing of Hamburg gave birth to the term, "firestorm." They rushed past their street and every house was burning. Everything they had was gone. All the new furniture that they had bought from extra savings, all her dolls save one were lost forever in the flames.

Los Angeles is only one recent example of horrific tragedy. The same rain that falls on the just fall on the unjust. God does not target neighborhoods. God is not sitting behind a computer board video game targeting areas of the world. That is not how God works. 

We are Americans and as long as we live we strive to do better and be better. We personally were immigrants who came to the New York area with just a suitcase. We were legal immigrants, having spent hours filling out forms and obtaining the necessary shots. It was up to my parents to excel. It was up to me to be a good son and do well in school. And I think I did.

If I lose my life work today, yes, I will cry but I will not blame God.

And we should not blame the Lord for the fires in California. Only ignorant people do that.

 What is the message of "Where have all the flowers gone"?

Where Have All The Flowers Gone is a powerful anti-war song. When reading the novel And Quiet Flows the Don by Mikhail Sholokhov, Seeger came across lines sung by a group of Cossack soldiers going back to the war about flowers being picked by girls who marry the men who join the army."Sag' mir, wo die Blumen sind" is a German translation of the anti-war song "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?". The song's message is about the transience of life and the ghosts of war. It's built on the association of nature, bridal wreaths, and men at war. 

Marlene Dietrich's version of the song broke the taboo against singing in German in Israel after World War II. She performed the song in German, English, and French, and the German version reached number 20 on the German charts. 

The song was inspired by lines from Mikhail Sholokhov's novel And Quiet Flows the Don. In the book, a group of Cossack soldiers sing about girls picking flowers for the men who join the army

the symbolism comes hauntingly back. I credit various  Wikipedia entries for the above explanation. We are  probably ...In Time of 'The Breaking of Nations'" by Thomas  Hardy,  the title itself is taken from the Book of Jeremiah in the Bible. 

War, Killing, always seem the answer when nations want to cull the flower of a 

.generation. We cry Peace Peace, but there is no peace.