Franksgiving
In the depth of the depression, before Thanksgiving was on a fixed day, it was declared by Presidential proclamation, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt was convinced by retailers to move it from its usual date to help the Christmas shopping season. Some states celebrated the usual day, others on the presidentailly declared day, and some on both. Critics derided it as "Franksgiving". Well 75 years on, we have much to be frankful for.
I am frankful for the bailing out of a failing bank system and deposit insurance, which has allowed people to save and the economy to work.
I am frankful for the Securities and Exchange Commission, which made Wall Street a more trustworthy place to put money.
I am frankful for federal unemployment insurance, which has saved millions of families from falling through the bottom.
I am frankful for government regulation that ended child labor, and began making the workplace safer.
I am frankful for the Wagner act which made unions more effective and broader based.
I am frankful for the WPA, which built hospitals, roads, sidewalks, bridges and schools.
I am frankful for the agricultural reforms which slowed the bleeding of family farms.
I am frankful for liberal supreme court judges who took Americans 9th and 14th amendment rights seriously.
I am frankful for Social Security, which stabilizes America's economy and protects people from poverty in their old age.
I am frankful for WIC that helps struggling families feed their children.
I am frankful for investments in education.
I am frankful for the government producing a wide range of numbers and measures which tell us where the economy is.
I am frankful for the farm roads that helped break the railroad stranglehold over getting goods to market.
I am frankful for winning the second world war.
I am frankful for a vision of a world free of fear and want, and free to believe and speak.
I am frankful for an America that is no longer in the hands of the privileged.
I am frankful for the United Nations, and other alliances which FDR and Churchill set on the course to reality.
I am frankful for government programs to loan money to businesses, students and home buyers.
I am frankful for an end to boom and bust economics.
I am frankful for the TVA and rural electrification, universal telephone access and other mandates to make the advantages of modern society open to all.
I am frankful for an America that believes in open trade, open diplomacy and open borders.
I am frankful for a more inclusive America which began the process of opening all doors to talent.
FDR left much undone, and made many mistakes, but he left behind the tools which another two generations would use to fight poverty, exclusion and fear.
The right wing wants to replace FDR on the dime with Ronald Reagan. We have much to be rankful about some 25 years on.
I am reankful over a huge budget deficit that is effectively an entitlement for the rich.
I am reankful over a wasteful military budget that has consumed productivity without returning prosperity.
I am reankful over enriching arab autocracies rather than facing our energy problems.
I am reankful over an increase in poverty and in income and wealth disparity.
I am reankful over falling real wages, exporting of opportunity and inequality.
I am reankful over a polarized political process.
I am reankful over an American foreign policy that neither obeys our laws, nor the treaties we signed.
I am reankful over using free trade as a tool to impose poverty on others.
I am reankful over those who died because of failure to fund AIDS research in a timely manner.
I am reankful over those that died under autocracies that we imposed in Latin America, and the poverty that they created.
I am reankful over restrictions on basic human rights and our 9th and 14th amendment rights.
I am reankful over a partisanized supreme court, and nominees who routinely lie about there intentions.
I am reankful over pardons for cabinet officers who committed felonies in pursuit of illegal policy.
I am reankful over the use of racism in political campaigns, myths of welfare queens while the corporate welfare kings have gotten off scot free.
I am reankful over the decline of American manufacturing.
I am reankful over the erosion of environmental laws, and the plundering of our natural resources.
I am reankful over supporting Saddam for years, and giving him WMD capabilities which he used on his own people, and then to invade another nation.
I am reankful over rise of superstition in public life.
I am reankful that the prince of peace and protector of the poor is now Jesus Christ, CEO of Raytheon.
Reagan didn't do everything, but he created a movement and a party which is criminal, corrupt and has ample money to accomplish the aim of a meaner and more closed America.
Truly we have much to be reankful over in these reancorous times.