History holds economic warnings

In recent months the policies of President Barack Obama have been touted as the greatest effectors of change in the role of government since the New Deal. Mr. Obama was even pictured on the cover of Time Magazine as an embodiment of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Perhaps, the enthusiasm of Mr. Obama’s supporters would be tempered if they had actually researched the effects of FDR’s New Deal. Far from being a harbinger of hope and change, as Mr. Obama claims to be, FDR merely extended and expanded on the policies of President Herbert Hoover, who is often blamed for allowing the 1929 recession to turn into the Great Depression.

The interference of Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt in industry and agriculture led to corruption, waste and economic failure. Both froze wages at pre-crash levels and raised taxes, discouraging businesses from expanding and forcing them to lay off workers.

Investors became hesitant to venture capital because they feared what the government might do next — sound familiar?

Both presidents subsidized agriculture to the point that the government was actually paying farmers not to produce. Under the leadership of FDR, at a time when millions of people were starving, the government annihilated six million pigs and 10 million acres of cotton in an effort to fight deflating prices.

We may expect our current recession to turn into a depression equally as or more devastating than the Great Depression if Mr. Obama’s policies of change — change, that is, along the lines of that wreaked by Hoover and FDR — are not opposed.

Although Mr. Obama has not yet tried to stack the U.S. Supreme Court in his favor as FDR attempted to do (by adding six justices to the original nine) in order to counteract opposition to his government enlarging policies, I urge all American citizens to be-come vigilant in guarding against similar and even greater abuses of power.

I hope and pray that Americans will cease to rely on the sycophantic media for news re-ports and will instead seek the truth for themselves about their history and their current president.

Jenna Adamson
Albemarle County