(WPA poster, courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.)
The following were the locations of the largest WPA symphony orchestras:
Massachusetts State Symphony (Boston, MA)
Commonwealth Symphony (Boston, MA)
Springfield Symphony (Springfield, MA)
Hartford Symphony (Hartford, CT)
Bridgeport Symphony (Bridgeport, CT)
Rhode Island WPA Symphony (Providence, RI)
Syracuse Symphony (Syracuse, NY)
Buffalo Symphony (Buffalo, NY)
New York City Federal Symphony (New York, NY)
Brooklyn Symphony (Brooklyn, NY)
Philadelphia Federal Symphony (Philadelphia, PA)
Pittsburgh Federal Symphony (Pittsburgh, PA)
Huntington Symphony (Huntington, WV)
WPA Symphony (Detroit, MI)
Illinois Symphony (Chicago, IL)
Wisconsin Symphony (Milwaukee, WI)
Minnesota WPA Symphony (probably Saint Paul, MN)
Utah State Symphony (Salt Lake City, UT)
Los Angeles Federal Symphony (Los Angeles, CA)
Northern California WPA Symphony (San Francisco, CA)
Portland Philharmonic (Portland, OR)
Oklahoma City Symphony (Oklahoma City, OK)
(Information from the Final Report on the WPA Program, 1935-43, p. 63.)
(There were many other WPA music projects of course, such as this smaller orchestra project in Maryland. Photo courtesy of the University of Maryland College Park Archives.)
(This announcement appeared in the Baltimore Sun newspaper on May 31, 1942. Image from ProQuest Historical Newspapers; only partial image shown; shown here for non-profit educational purposes only.)
(A smaller WPA orchestra in Harlem, New York. Photo courtesy of the National Archives and the New Deal Network.)
(Infrastructure, GOP / Tea Party style. Photo by Brent McKee.)
(Infrastructure, New Deal style. Photo courtesy of the University of Maryland College Park Archives.)
In 2013, the American Society of Civil Engineers gave America's crumbling, pot-holed roads a "D" letter grade, noting that "Forty-two percent of America’s major urban highways remain congested, costing the economy an estimated $101 billion in wasted time and fuel annually" and also that "32% of America’s major roads are in poor or mediocre condition, costing U.S. motorists who are traveling on deficient pavement $67 billion a year, or $324 per motorist, in additional repairs and operating costs."
Unfortunately, our Congress is now controlled by the GOP / Tea Party, and their anti-government, no-taxes-on-the-wealthy ideology is making it very difficult to fund America's infrastructure (see, e.g., "GOP Lawmakers Divided on Highway Funding As Trust Fund Expiration Looms," Huffington Post, April 30, 2015). As Time magazine's senior national correspondent, Michael Grunwald, pointed out a year ago, "Republicans say nice things about infrastructure but haven’t shown any interest in paying for it. As a result, the nation has failed to take advantage of historically low interest rates to invest more in our overcrowded airports, outdated railways and flimsy bridges."
We also know that the GOP / Tea Party has repeatedly blocked infrastructure initiatives by President Obama, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, and others.
So absurd is the GOP / Tea Party's anti-tax philosophy that some Republicans in Congress have even suggested a tax cut to pay for infrastructure improvements. And--to add idiocy to the madness--at the same time Republicans are wringing their hands over how to pay for infrastructure improvements, they're working hard to eliminate the estate tax on the wealthiest of the wealthy, thereby depriving the nation of hundreds of billions of dollars of revenue over the course of the next several years. Things are no better at the state level where, for example, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback (a Republican, and a Tea Party favorite) is raiding his state's highway fund to subsidize tax breaks for the wealthy.
Not every conservative has jumped down the rabbit hole of course. Matthew Dowd, a prominent Republican strategist had this to say several months ago: "...we need to have a well-paying jobs program tied to infrastructure improvements administered locally by cities, counties and states where people still trust government to get the job done. And this should be funded by tax policies at the federal level which put a much bigger burden on the wealthy in this country." But most conservative politicians have jumped down the rabbit hole, so Dowd's advice has been, and will be, completely ignored.
During the New Deal, things were far, far different. For example, the WPA built, repaired, or improved 650,000 miles of roadway, enough roadwork to go around the planet 26 times. Throw in the Public Works Administration, the Civil Works Administration, and other New Deal programs and we're talking about a million miles of roadwork in 11 years - most of it federally funded, and a good deal of it still being utilized today - often by the very same conservatives who are telling us that federal government spending is wasteful.
Even Ronald Reagan, the conservative icon, recognized what most conservative politicians do not today - that infrastructure is important and worth the investment. Reagan wrote: "The WPA was one of the most productive elements of FDR's alphabet soup of agencies because it put people to work building roads, bridges, and other projects...it gave men and women a chance to make some money along with the satisfaction of knowing they earned it" (from Reagan's autobiography, Ronald Reagan: An American Life).
So, the next time you hit a pothole don't yell out in anger, "Jesus!" Instead put the blame where the blame belongs, and yell out "Republicans!"
(Ferdinand Pecora, circa 1933. Photo courtesy of the National Archives and Wikipedia.)
"Legal chicanery and pitch darkness were the banker's stoutest allies."
--Ferdinand Pecora, commenting on Wall Street's resistance to government oversight after the nation became aware of wide-scale fraud in the early 1930s (link).
Ferdinand Pecora was the chief counsel for the United States Senate Committee on Banking and Currency. In 1933 he led an investigation into the causes of America's financial downfall. His most famous activity during the investigation was the questioning of Wall Street big-wigs. According to the Securities and Exchange Commission Historical Society:
"Pecora was a pugnacious Sicilian-born New Yorker with a sharp mind and a quick tongue. Pecora made the hearings more than an investigation of the causes of the crash; he sought to discredit big business and Wall Street so much that fundamental reform would be possible. As an ethnic American and an outsider to the gentlemen's club that was American finance, he had no qualms about challenging his 'betters'...the high point of the hearings came when he looked at the House of Morgan. Pecora's investigators turned up a 'preferred list' of highly placed Americans allowed by the beneficence of J.P. Morgan and Company to buy low and sell high on insider information. Pecora succeeded in fanning public outrage, making it politically possible for FDR to make good on his promise of financial reform."
(Offices of J.P. Morgan and Co., circa 1900-1906. The company moved out of this building in 1989. In 1933, Ferdinand Pecora exposed an insider trading racket at the Wall Street behemoth. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.)
Pecora also questioned Charles Mitchell, chairman of National City Bank, the second largest bank in the U.S. at the time: "Under examination, Mitchell admitted that National City Bank gave bonuses to traders based on sales figures; the riskier the security, the higher the bonus. During the hearings, Mitchell also disclosed that National City bank sold off bad loans to Latin American countries by securitizing them and selling them to unsuspecting investors" (Corinne Crawford, "The Repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act and the Current Financial Crisis," Journal of Business & Economics Research, January 2011, Vol. 9 No. 1, p. 128).
Here's an interesting aside: National City Bank is now "Citigroup." Citigroup recently "agreed to pay $7 billion to resolve claims it misled investors about shoddy mortgage-backed securities in the run-up to the financial crisis" ("Citigroup to pay $7 billion to settle U.S. mortgage probe," Reuters, July 14, 2014).
(Charles Mitchell testifying before Congress in 1939 about a sketchy windfall profit he received. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.)
Thanks to Pecora, and other reform-mind figures of the New Deal era, the American financial system was stabilized and protected fairly well from greed and incompetence for many years. For example, before New Deal reforms, during the years 1921 through 1933, there were 14,807 bank failures. After New Deal reforms, during the years 1934 through 1980, there were 565. This is a reduction from about 1,100 bank failures per year to 12 bank failures per year. Additionally, thanks to the creation of FDIC in 1933, Americans no longer lost their savings when banks went under.
Things, of course, have changed a lot since 1981. Ever since Reagan and his Republican colleagues ushered in distrust of government, de-regulation, and gargantuan tax breaks for the wealthy, banking has veered towards its pre-New Deal way of doing things. For example, during the years 1981 through 2014 there were 2,906 bank failures, or about 85 per year - a 600% increase from the 1934 through 1980 period.
Attitudes have changed as well. During the Pecora hearings the public became incensed at the misdeeds of Corporate America. But today?...outside of a few concerned citizens, groups, and politicians? Neh, not so much. As Jeffrey Sachs, director of Columbia University's Earth Institute observes: "Our society increasingly values people and their behavior according to their wealth, not to their integrity. Many of our leading CEOs preside over companies that have committed massive financial crimes -- fraud, price rigging, insider trading, and more -- and have paid tens of billions of dollars in fines; yet these CEOs are still revered because they are rich, and they remain frequent guests at the White House for the same reason."
Why is the public so complacent? Well, there are an awful lot of reality shows to keep up with, e.g., "Keeping Up with the Kardashians." So that takes up a lot of time. Also, the political right tells us that public school teachers and the unemployed are the real culprits behind our economic woes. Never mind that the middle class has shrunk in every state, and never mind that the Forbes 400 keeps adding billions to their private fortunes. No, the real economic catastrophe is that a public school teacher makes $60,000 and has her summers off. And food stamp recipients, my God, sometimes buy potato chips! The horror...the Horror!
(Richard Whitney, the president of the New York Stock Exchange from 1930 to 1935, in Washington, D.C. to testify before Congress in 1937. Whitney was a fierce opponent of government regulations, but had to stop his anti-regulatory lobbying when he was convicted of embezzlement in 1938. He spent three years in New York's Sing Sing Prison. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.)
And so, while the public's anger is being diverted by right-wing think tanks, advocacy groups, and mass media outlets (diverted to the "evils" practiced by teachers' unions and homeless people) the people wearing the suits in corner offices are getting away with murder. Many Americans, it seems, find a bag of nacho chips and salsa bought with food stamps to be infinitely more damaging to the economy than multi-billion dollar frauds, insider trading, collusion, price-fixing, money laundering for drug cartels, cheating soldiers on loans, cooking the books, tax evasion, predatory & illegal debt collection, etc. (activities, by the way, for which financial institutions have paid nearly $200 billion in fines and settlements in recent years - but don't shed any tears for them just yet, the executives and wealthy investors of these firms are still living in gated communities that you're not allowed in).
Bartlett Naylor, former Chief of Investigations for the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, recently commented on a settlement between U.S. regulators and big banks in the LIBOR interest rate-rigging scandal:
"[Law enforcement] discovered pervasive fraudulent practices where traders gave false information about rates at which they borrowed or loaned money with other banks. That established false benchmarks on which other rates were based. That harms average Americans when they agree to mortgages. Law enforcers also found that Deutsche Bank withheld and even destroyed information about the investigation. Yet, surprisingly, despite the severity of these offenses, the government concluded that these crimes should be punished only through a financial penalty...This settlement, which involves no jail time for any traders, seems out of sync with the problems identified. To make matters worse, many of the traders responsible for the frauds remain employed at Deutsche Bank. The DOJ claims that it may still prosecute individuals, and we hope it will pursue such work. To date, some traders at other firms such as Rabobank have been convicted, but no senior officers of any of the banks involved in the LIBOR case have faced charges."
Naylor has been sounding the alarm bell on financial wrongdoing for many years. In 2012, he noted of the LIBOR scandal: "I think what this scandal shows is that Wall Street is making this money, it's overtaking our economy, any way it can...and that includes cheating." Unfortunately, Naylor's logical analysis of the problem doesn't trump Fox News. And if Fox News says our nation's economic problems stem from a surfer on food stamps, then tens of millions will believe it. Indeed, the suits in the corner offices must be thanking God every day for the diversionary tactics of Fox News and other right-wing media.
U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren has observed, "Without criminal prosecution, the message to every Wall Street banker is loud and clear. If you break the law, you are not going to jail, but you might end up with a much bigger paycheck." And Warren should know. When she warned Jaime Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase, about possible lawbreaking he smiled and said, "So hit me with a fine. We can afford it." Dimon knows full well that, at least within the realm of financial activities, he's immune from criminal prosecution and that no civil penalty will ever make a dent in his company's profits.
(In the video above, from 2013, Cenk Uygar and Ben Mankiewicz of the Young Turks, analyze Elizabeth Warren's questioning of Wall Street regulators. Warren asks the regulators when the last time they took a big bank to trial for wrongdoing, and also expresses her concern about America's two-tiered justice system, i.e., a lenient system for the rich & powerful and a harsh system for everyone else. YouTube link at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQo9W7sRbKQ.)
At the end of the day, we're kind of stuck with white collar crime and fraud, aren't we? Because whenever we try to reign in Wall Street with common sense regulations, Republican and Tea Party politicians cry "socialism!," and tell us "You can't hinder the work of the Job Creators!" And whenever we ask the executive branch to prosecute white collar crime more harshly, it nods in charming but empty agreement, thereby letting us know that they consider some criminals to be too big to jail.
Thanks to weak leadership, timid regulators, campaign cash from super-wealthy donors, and mass media misinformation & blame-shifting, we are truly living in the "Golden Era of White Collar Crime." I mean, let's be honest here, we've essentially come to the conclusion that, "Hey, if you've made billions of dollars through corporate wrongdoing, it's okay as long as you pay us a certain percentage of that profit, some of the time, through fines." But what kind of cultural message is it, when we essentially say, "Certain kinds of crime are, well, sorta okay."
It's been amazing to witness the rich & powerful treated with kid gloves, after so much criminal and civil wrongdoing while, at the same time, those who lost their jobs because of such wrongdoing have been scolded as lazy good-for-nothings and have faced a relentless attack on their social safety net programs (unemployment benefits, food stamps, expansion of Medicaid, etc.).
This upside-down ethical system we've embraced inspires me to ask, in desperation, "Ferdinand Pecora, where are you?"
In light of these problems, I would think that the last thing Native Americans need is another challenge, but that's exactly what the White House has in store for them with "Generation Indigenous Native Youth Challenge." The idea seems to be to engage youth ages 14-24 in volunteerism, brainstorming on issues, making videos of their accomplishments, and sharing stories online.
I wish the participants of Gen-I, as it is called, success. However, I can't help feeling that something more is needed - much more.
Instead of a challenge, for people already in a very challenging situation, how about more concrete, straightforward action - for example, a direct job creation program along the lines of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), the Works Progress Administration (WPA), or the National Youth Administration (NYA)? Or, better still, all of the above.
During the New Deal, over 85,000 young Native American men enrolled in the CCC, working on agricultural, conservation, and infrastructure projects. The U.S. Office of Indian Affairs (now called the "Bureau of Indian Affairs"), highlighted the value of the program - both to Native Americans and the nation as a whole:
"The work accomplishments were impressive, and have contributed directly to the rebuilding of the reservations and the National Domain...The improved economic condition of the Indians has definitely influenced their morale. They were participants in the planning, they did the work, and they directly benefited by the results. Thousands of enrollees became skilled workers as a direct result of their participation in the Corps and are now contributing to the war effort as members of the armed forces, as skilled workers in war industries, and as producers of food...The program revitalized Indian life; it gave wage work where and when it was needed. It made possible the building up of reservation resources" (from Perry H. Merrill, Roosevelt's Forest Army: A History of the Civilian Conservation Corps, 1933-1942, 1981, pp. 44-45).
("Indian and Soldier," a mural created by artist Maynard Dixon in 1939, located in the Department of the Interior Building in Washington, DC. According to the Living New Deal, Dixon created this mural "with funding from the Section of Fine Arts," a New Deal arts program. Photo by Carol M. Highsmith, provided courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.)
According to historians James S. Olson and Raymond Wilson, "Under the Civil Works Administration, thousands of Native Americans were employed during the winter of 1934...The Public Works Administration, the Works Progress Administration, the National Youth Administration, and the Resettlement Administration provided more relief in the form of jobs and improved reservation conditions. The PWA, for example, employed Native Americans in building or improving reservation hospitals, schools, and sewage systems. The WPA hired over ten thousand Native Americans a year to index and file records for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, while the NYA provided six dollars monthly to each student enrolled in day school for clothing, supplies, and lunches [NYA participants worked in part-time jobs]. The Resettlement Administration assisted Native Americans in North and South Dakota by constructing needed water wells. The agency also purchased nearly one million acres of grazing land for the Pueblos and Navajos" (Native Americans in the Twentieth Century, University of Illinois Press, 1986, p. 111).
Call me silly, but if Native Americans are facing unemployment, poverty, and despair--and there are infrastructure problems on top of this--I would think that the best policy approach would be a jobs program - of the type President Franklin Roosevelt and his colleagues created during the 1930s. In other words, Native Americans need a New Deal...more than they need another challenge. However, with a Republican-led Congress, determined to give tax breaks to the wealthy and punishment to the poor, I guess a challenge is about all they're going to get.
(Did you know that "trees prevent wind erosion, save moisture, protect crops" and "contribute to human comfort and happiness"? WPA poster, courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.)
How many trees were planted by New Deal programs? Estimates and reports of CCC tree-planting range from 2-3 billion. According to the Final Report on the WPA Program, 1935-43, WPA workers planted about 177 million trees. The Final Report of the National Youth Administration, 1936-1943 lists nearly 19 million trees and shrubs planted. And then there were other New Deal activities related to trees. For example, the Soil Conservation Service managed nurseries.
I'm not aware of any comprehensive report regarding the totality of New Deal tree-planting, but I think 3 billion+ is a safe assumption.
Anyway, today is National Arbor Day. Go out and plant a tree...and remember the 3 billion+ trees of the New Deal.
(P.S. Did you know that when President Nixon--a Republican--created National Arbor Day he said, "...it is not too much to ask that each American assume a large, personal responsibility for renewing and preserving our environmental heritage." You won't catch too many Republicans talking like that today. They're too busy denying climate change, pooh-poohing regulations that promote clean air & water, apologizing to BP for not being allowed to pollute without scrutiny, kissing the feet of the Koch brothers, and so on.)
(Two bakers on a WPA project in Providence, Road Island, remove bread from an oven for distribution to schools in January of 1943. New Deal policymakers thought that all Americans should have an adequate supply of good food, regardless of income. Photo courtesy of the National Archives and the New Deal Network.)
In 1931, while governor of New York, President Franklin Roosevelt said, "It is clear to me that it is the duty of those who have benefited by our industrial and economic system to come to the front in such a grave emergency [the Great Depression] and assist in relieving those who under the same industrial and economic order are the losers and sufferers. I believe their contribution should be in proportion to the benefits they receive and the prosperity they enjoy" (Joseph J. Thorndike, Their Fair Share: Taxing the Rich in the Age of FDR, Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press, 2013, p. 65).
As president, a few years later, Roosevelt would usher in such ideas, in the form of New Deal tax policies that targeted the super-wealthy, i.e., those who benefit the most from the physical labor and military service of others. These tax policies, along with policies that broadened the income tax base, set the stage for the greatest expansion of the American middle-class in U.S. history.
Things have changed significantly today...
When Mitt Romney gave his infamous 47% speech to a group of wealthy Americans, he scoffed at the idea that low-income Americans have a right to food. Romney's attitude was in line with other right-wing politicians, officials, and candidates for office, who have, for example, called food stamp recipients "lazy pigs" and "wild animals," and have warned against feeding the needy because they might breed.
These sentiments are the inevitable product of the right's devotion to the ideas of Ayn Rand. Rand felt that a small group of elite men and women were superior to the masses of people who lived beneath them, in "hopeless ineptitude." Further, she felt that feelings of responsibility and sympathy towards the less fortunate were immoral and irrational. In 2013, Harry Binswanger, a member of the board of directors of the Ayn Rand Institute, wrote (after quoting Rand's "hopeless ineptitude" remarks): "Here’s a modest proposal. Anyone who earns a million dollars or more should be exempt from all income taxes. Yes, it’s too little. And the real issue is not financial, but moral. So to augment the tax-exemption, in an annual public ceremony, the year’s top earner should be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor."
(A WPA food distribution project in Maryland, circa 1935-1943. During the New Deal, there were large projects to distribute surplus commodities and unwanted items to the less fortunate, e.g., food, clothes, and toys. Photo courtesy of the University of Maryland College Park Archives.)
Rewarding the rich and punishing the poor is the central tenet of the modern conservative movement. They have fully embraced Rand's philosophies; and have placed one of her most strident followers in charge of the House Ways and Means Committee - Paul Ryan, a man who required his staffers read Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" and credited Rand with his interest in becoming a politician. The Ways and Means Committee is the most important committee in Congress with respect to tax policy. (See, "What Paul Ryan Learned From Ayn Rand," The Daily Beast, August 16, 2012.)
And now that Rand's philosophies have taken over the U.S. Congress, we are seeing the results: Republicans have recently voted to (a) make major cuts to food assistance programs and (b) eliminate the estate tax - a tax that only affects the wealthiest of the wealthy. And they are voting for these policies at a time when the number of homeless children in the United States has reached a record high and at a time when the super-wealthy are seeing their wealth reach record heights.
Yes, our Republican "leaders" in Congress want to reduce food assistance to low-income children, so that the children of the super-wealthy can have more billions of dollars in their bank accounts (and when these children grow up they will, of course, give a certain percentage of that money back to Republican politicians--in the form of campaign cash--to keep the aristocratic-plutocratic cycle going).
And we can be certain that while all this foolishness is going on, these very same Republicans will flaunt their "Christian values" and plead with America to "return to God."
Far from being offended by this behavior, tens of millions Americans continue to vote for right-wing politicians. Our Congress is now controlled by the right, and it's quite possible that the next president will be an Ayn Rand follower too. What kind of country will we have when all three branches of government are controlled by people who subscribe to the idea that American workers and low-income citizens are inferior people? What kind of policies will be generated by a government mesmerized by the Rand ideology of superiority?
Welcome to the Reverse New Deal: Reducing food assistance to those in need, to sate the greed of those without need.
