IT WASN'T HERBERT'S FAULT!
There was a front-page story in the March 26, 2009 edition of the New York Times, (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/us/26tents.html) which documents a growing phenomenon in the United States of America, a phenomenon that is attracting international media attention. The report, entitled Tent Cities Arise and Spread in Recession’s Grip, profiles America’s new homeless problem, born of the deep and deepening economic crisis. It’s the reincarnation of a similar phenomenon seen all over American during the Great Depression—hovel communities of homeless people called “Hoovervilles.” Here we go again. Poor Herbert Hoover. As our nation’s 31st President, he was blamed for the Great Depression, even though it was the fault of the policies of his predecessor, Calvin Coolidge. Calvin was the George W. Bush of his day, at least in terms of fostering, if not fathering, corporate scandals and voracious greed that gave birth to the stock market crash of ’29 and the collapse of the nation’s economy. Yet, it was Herbert who got tagged with the blame (although Hoover did serve in the Coolidge Administration as Secretary of Commerce).Now we have poor Herbert’s name being dragged through the mud again. We must put a stop to it here and now. You see, what’s sprouting up in vacant lots all across America—tents, lean-tos and scrap wood huts—are not “Hoovervilles.” No, these new and expanding homeless communities are “Bushburgs.” The economic mess we’re in, which is forcing Americans out from under their roofs into shantytowns under the stars, is unequivocally due to the multiple disasters bequeathed by our 43rd President, not our 31st.
George W. Bush created the conditions that have brought us to the brink of economic collapse. His administration severely weakened federal oversight agencies, allowing for lax or no enforcement of rules and regulations that govern the business, investment and banking communities. From the Bernie Madoff and “Kenny Boy” Lay (Enron) Ponzi schemes to the subprime mortgage crisis—from the $1 trillion Iraq and Afghan Wars put on Uncle Sam’s credit card to the giveaway tax cuts for the rich—it is George W. Bush who should be blamed for the loss of your jobs America. It was W’s administration that not only created, but also encouraged the conditions for greed to run just as rampant now as it did in the “Roaring 20’s,” spawning the perfect economic storm we’re now all in.In affixing blame where it squarely belongs, let’s also make sure that the allusions to it are as well. Let’s retire, once and for all, the “Hooverville” moniker, at least for the shantytowns where many out of work Americans now find themselves. It wasn’t Herbert’s fault then, and it certainly isn’t now. It’s the fault of the man who ran three small Texas oil companies into a ditch and capitalized on that experience to run the entire country into the ground. As Bush once proudly said: “I understand small business growth. I was one.”
Incidentally, we keep using the “R” word to describe the economic fix we’re in, when increasingly it appears that conditions (including the tent towns) seem to embody the definition of the dreaded “D” word. Woe be unto the economist who uses it first. At the very least, we are certainly in a Great Recession.
Anyway, as you make your way to work (if you still have a job), or to the unemployment or outplacement office if you don’t, and you notice a new tent town that sprang up overnight somewhere, just remember—it’s not a Hooverville.
IT'S A BUSHBURG!
John Wydra