Rep. Michele Bachmann Needs A History of The United States for Dummies

First of all, let me say once more for the record that I hate liars. Now, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) might be misinformed. Perhaps she doesn't realize that she's wrong, but I somehow doubt that. You see, these people believe, and rightly so, that if they repeat a lie enough, it will be believed to be truth. If you are going to be in congress, and represent the people, you should at the very least make sure that what you are saying is true. Maybe you're busy and don't have time to research all the facts for yourself, but that's what unpaid interns are for.

FDR saved this country. And for her to act like he caused the depression and then made it worse, makes me very angry. There are already enough stupid people in this country that know nothing of history, and for her to spread lies like this, that unthinking chattel will go about spouting as truth, makes me even angrier.

I'll start with her first point, that the recession that Coolidge faced was worse than that faced by FDR. First of all, the recession caused at the end of the 1910's and beginning of the 1920's was caused by the end of World War I. Factories that had been pumping out items for war, all of a sudden had no market. It took them time to retool so they could start making domestic products again. There was also high unemployment because of returning troops who needed jobs. Second of all, Coolidge didn't deal with it! He didn't become President until 1923, after the recession was over, when Harding died in office. Indeed, it can be argued that all the lax regulation of the 20's that Coolidge and the other Republicans were responsible for led directly to the Great Depression. Another example of a Democrat cleaning up the Republican mess. Mass de-regulation (see the last two decades and the 1920's) leads to a massive crash (like now, like 1929).

Next, I'd like to address her Hoot-Smalley Act [sic] which is really the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. That was enacted by Republicans Reed Smoot and Willis C. Hawley and passed by the house, the Senate which were both controlled by the Republicans, and signed into law by Herbert Hoover, the Republican President. It has been argued by economists that it was responsible for exacerbating the Great Depression. It caused the taxes on many goods to go up by 60%. What was that about not raising taxes?

FDR created the Works Project Administration, a "Socialist" idea, which saved this fucking country from absolute poverty and possibly anarchy and annihilation. It put people who were out of work, to work on the government's dime. You ever notice the stone work on many bridges here dating to that era? That was done by stone masons put to work by the WPA. Ever noticed murals on post office walls, or in other government buildings? Artists were paid by the government to paint murals. People were put to work building things and improving our infrastructure. In fact, most of our modern infrastructure has been neglected since.

In fact, FDR didn't take office until 1933, four years after the Great Depression had begun. Michele Bachmann is either stupid, or a liar, or perhaps both.

"...as a matter of fact the recession that FDR had to deal with wasn't as bad as the recession Coolidge had to deal with in the early 20's, yet the prescription that Coolidge put on that, from history, is lower taxes, lower regulatory burden, and we saw the roaring 20s where we saw markets and growth in the economy like we'd never seen before in the history of the country. FDR applied just the opposite forumula, the Hoot-Smalley Act [sic], which was a tremendous burden on tariff restrictions and of course trade barriers and the regulatory burden and tax barriers. That's what we saw happen under FDR that took a recession and blew it into a full scale depression. The American people suffered for almost ten years under that kind of thinking."