FDR’s Folly
By Jim Powell
Three River Press, 336 pp. $14.95
Reviewed by Gem Smith
Powell’s thesis is that Franklin D. Roosevelt’s measures taken in the name of promoting recovery actually prolonged and worsened the Great Depression.
In page after page and chapter after chapter, Powell cites journalists, economists like Milton Friedman and in some cases the laws themselves to demonstrate how they thwarted economic recovery.
Sample chapter titles include: Why Did New Dealers Break Up the Strongest Banks? Why Did FDR Seize Everybody’s Gold? Why Did FDR Triple Taxes During the Great Depression? Why Was So Much New Deal Relief and Public Works Money Channeled Away from the Poorest People? Why Did the New Dealers Destroy All that Food When People Were Hungry? How Did the Tennessee Valley Authority Depress the Tennessee Economy? How Did FDR’s Supreme Court Subvert Individual Liberty?
His final two chapters discuss the effects of the New Deal since the 1930s and what we, as Americans, can learn from FDR’s mistakes.
If we believe that laws passed in the 1930’s have no bearing on today’s economy, he shows that some laws – specifically the Glass-Steagall Act (enacted in 1933) were not repealed until bankers lobbied to have it repealed in 1999. The Glass-Steagall Act restricted banking activity of large banks but according to Powell did nothing to save thousands of small banks from failure.
He also shows that for a time the Supreme Court stood firm for the Constitution. But, eventually that body caved to political pressure and approved unconstitutional laws.
From my reading of this book, I deduce that Roosevelt could easily have become a dictator but for the Supreme Court. I consider this book to be a warning to American citizens to be constantly vigilant against encroachments against the Constitution.
Infiltration
How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington
By Paul Sperry
Nelson Current, a subsidiary of Thomas Nelson, Inc.
360 pp $24.99
My first reaction to the 9/11 attack was anger. How had all the systems meant to protect American citizens failed?
To a large extent, Paul Sperry’s book, Infiltration, answers that question.
Sperry, a Washington D.C.-based investigative journalist, has written extensively about America’s vulnerabilities. He also wrote Crude Politics as well as articles for the Wall Street Journal, Investor’s Business Daily and other publications.
In Infiltration, he names agents of al Qaida, Hamas and Hezbollah as well as American-born agents and the organizations that support and fund them, to explain how they have been working covertly to undermine and destroy the Constitution of the United States.
He further explains how America’s well-known tolerance and politically correct attitudes inhibit action when it is called for. A case in point is the sniper attack in the Washington D.C-area by John Allen Muhammed and Lee Boyd Malvo. They shot 13 people, 10 of whom died. American-born, they are Muslim converts who spoke sympathetically about the 9/11 hijackers and showed no remorse over the people they killed during their spree.
According to Sperry, even though witnesses identified two black men in a dark sedan as suspects, police persisted in searching for a white man in a white box truck, resulting in the death of several more people.
Using author interviews, court documents, speeches, Congressional testimony, the 9/11 Commission Report and other sources, Sperry tells which mosques are a hotbed of subversive activity, how recruiting is done in the prisons, and the role Muslims play in U.S. elections.
I wrote this review because I believe it is the duty of American citizens to be informed about important issues facing the nation. I hope I have motivated you to read Sperry’s book.