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Thursday, March 10, 2011

Does anyone pay attention to history

About a half hour ago, I happened to be watching Special Report on Fox News since I enjoy the panel discussion that comes during the second half of that show. On a commercial, I jumped down one station to CSPAN for the House to see what was going on there. I caught a speech by representative Jesse Jackson Jr. He was explaining what ought to be done to bring prosperity and jobs back to this country. Jackson had a chart showing historical unemployment and he started talking about what Roosevelt had said and done in 1944. According to Jackson, this was key because it was in 1944 that unemployment which had been so high during the great depression had finally started to decline.

That was all I could take. Jackson obviously does not know what he is talking about. In 1944, the USA was in the third year of World War 2. We had about 12 million men under arms. The industrial plants of the country had all been converted to war production and they were going seven days a week, twenty four hours a day just to produce the maximum output for the war effort. Labor was so scarce that women were being employed in factories, something that had never happened in the past. Obviously, Jackson never heard of Rosie the riveter. Unemployment in 1944 was no longer a problem in the USA; rather, labor scarcity was the problem. In other words, Jackson had no idea what he was talking about.

I realize that there were probably only a handful of other Americans who saw Jackson's speech to the House. What he said is of no importance. What is important, however, is that a member of congress is so uneducated about American History that he stands in the House and spouts misinformation.

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