Herbert Hoover
From RationalWiki
Herbert Hoover has a big concrete dam named after him. As president of the United States he was widely blamed for doing nothing in response to the 1929 stock market crash, leading to the Great Depression, so the dam was temporarily renamed Boulder Dam since there were enough people ticked off at him that they made damn sure no damn dam would be named after him, dammit.
The name reverted back to Hoover Dam during the Eisenhower administration. Some folks today still call it Boulder Dam.
Alas, the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport has not yet been renamed Boulder Airport, but hope springs eternal.
It is not exactly true that Hoover did nothing in response to the Depression. In 1930, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, in an effort to alleviate the effects of the...Anyone? Anyone? The Great Depression, passed the, anyone? Anyone? The tariff bill? The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act? Which, anyone? Raised or lowered? Raised tariffs, in an effort to collect more revenue for the federal government. Did it work? Anyone? Anyone know the effects? It did not work, and the United States sank deeper into the Great Depression. The Reconstruction Finance Corporation, later a key part of the New Deal, was also passed during the Hoover administration.
Also of interest--Herbert Hoover was the first Republican Party Presidential candidate to lose the African-American vote. This was due to a collection of factors, including the Depression. However, a larger factor was his behavior as the chief of reconstruction during the 1927 flood. He made many promises to African-American communities, including jobs in the reconstruction efforts and further civil rights reforms when he became president, and then backed away from all of them. This, plus FDR's progressive civil rights policies, led to the permanent realignment of the majority of African American voters.
[edit] The same old same old, back when it was original
Hoover may be the first former president to publicly criticize his successor on a live nationwide radio broadcast. On 7 March 1936, in a speech before the Young Republican League of Colorado[1], Hoover claimed the following:
- That Americans had a choice between the "old American system" that promoted "liberty and equality of economic opportunity"[2] and FDR's new American system which would create a regimented, bureaucratic "planned economy" that would include crushing tax rates.
- That "taxation enslaves as well as dictatorship."
- That FDR was moving America towards a dictatorship, which he compared to both fascism and communism.
- That the New Deal would grow the national debt to an unsustainable level, and that it would increase "inflation."[3]
- That FDR and the Democrats were "mortgaging" the freedoms and opportunities of American youth. [4]
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ Delivered in Colorado Springs, the future hometown of James Dobson and Ted Haggard. We're guessing that there are some serious heavy metals in the drinking water there.
- ↑ Not to mention class warfare and a growing divide between the haves and the have nots.
- ↑ Funny how, when ordinary people -- liberal and conservative alike -- talk about "inflation," they mean price inflation. But when conservative politicians talk about "inflation," they really mean increases in wages and benefits.
- ↑ "Hoover Declares Freedom in Peril, Life 'Mortgaged'", New York Times, Sec. 1, Page. 1, Col. 3. 8 March 1936.
