No WPA to help clean up after Hurricane Sandy

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On NBC Nightly News, on Tuesday, October 30, 2012, in a flooded underground train station, anchor Brian Williams was shown interviewing New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. Williams states (30 seconds into the video): "So, let's talk infrastructure governor. Short of a WPA, short of a Rooseveltian undertaking to rebuild our cities, how do we rebuild our cities, because we can't have this?"

The rest of the interview highlights the notion that natural disasters, like Hurricane Sandy, are likely to become more frequent due to climate change. It seems to me that now is a great time to institute a new and permanent WPA to help prepare for natural disasters, help clean up after natural disasters, and help those affected by natural disasters...just like the old WPA did. Why not give the long-term unemployed meaningful and important work opportunities in this age of job outsourcing and high un- and under-employment?

Happy Halloween

A WPA poster, courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

1938 New England Hurricane

Interesting 11-minute video of the WPA responding to a powerful hurricane in New England in 1938.  Video produced by the WPA, provided courtesy of the Internet Archive.

West Virginia New Deal / CCC Historic Trail

The West Virginia Department of Commerce made this historic New Deal / CCC trail:

http://wvcommerce.org/travel/thingstodo/history/historic-trails/newdealtrails.aspx

Different Times, Same Cruelty

Here's an observation from the Great Depression that reminds me of today's cruelty towards the unemployed:

"The very employers who had thought highly enough of workers to use their services for four, eight, twelve or sixteen years, now began to talk of them openly as lazy fellows or spongers, willing to accept the taxpayers' money. The same persons who had once been moved to sympathy by the pitiful predicament of workers whom they had seen dislodged from regular jobs, now began to lump them all into a general category of the undeserving."

--Harry Hopkins, in "Spending to Save," p. 110, New York: W.W. Norton & Co. Inc., 1936.

The Waltons and the New Deal

The TV show "The Waltons" had numerous references and set designs related to the New Deal. Here, we see a WPA sign as John Boy, Grandpa, and the Baldwin sisters walk to a movie theater.

(Image is from the episode "The Reunion," air date December 14, 1972, Warner Brothers Television, series created by Earl Hamner, Jr.)

The New Deal In Color!

This picture is from the Great Depression Color Photograph collection at the Library of Congress (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/fsachtml/fsowhome.html). The caption reads: "Oyida Peaks riveting as part of her NYA training to become a mechanic at the Naval Air Base, in the Assembly and Repair Department, Corpus Christi, Texas." The photo was taken by Howard R. Hollem in 1942.

Notice the National Youth Administration logo on Ms. Peaks' uniform (click on image to enlarge).