Think your taxes are high now? A list of the top ten salaries in the US in 1941, and the taxes they paid (spoiler: 65-73% tax rate! but, still doesn't include total compensation, though, which makes it a little sketchy). Interestingly, the NYTimes couldn't figure out two of the names, C.S. Woolman (who is probably
C.E. Woolman, one of the founders of delta airlines) and another mysterious name, J.C. Owsley, that seems to be
unidentifiable...
posted by yeoz
on Dec 1, 2010 -
91 comments
The United States was engaged in the largest two-front war of its, or any nation's history. Though victory was not yet certain, there were discussions on a multi-national level regarding the future peace, and on the President of the United States was looking to the post-war prospects for the nation. With that in mind, the annual address of the President to Congress and the nation was summed up in one word: Security. "And that means not only physical security which provides safety from attacks by aggressors. It means also economic security, social security, moral security -- in a family of nations." This was Franklin D. Roosevelt's third-to-last
Fireside Chat, presented on Tuesday, January 11, 1944, which included what he proposed to be the
Second Bill of Rights.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Jul 16, 2010 -
67 comments
He was elected at the nadir of the worst depression in history; 25% of the workforce was unemployed, two million were homeless. Yet in the face of this, he made us an optimistic and far-reaching New Deal, creating among other programs a federal minimum wage, social security, and the FDIC. He pulled us out of dire financial straits and, when our country was called upon to fight in World War II, he brought us to the cusp of victory. In his unprecedented thirteen years in office, he cemented his undisputed legacy as one of the greatest presidents in American history. But before he could achieve any of this, Franklin Delano Roosevelt had a promise to keep — a promise to the "wet vote," whose indispensable support he had
called upon in 1932 during his first presidential campaign when he promised to repeal the
18th Amendment and end
Prohibition. And thus, as legend has it, immediately after his
first fireside chat from the White House in March 1933, Roosevelt turned to his two top aides and said, "
I think it's time for a beer." And
yes, indeed,
it was.
[more inside]
posted by churl
on Dec 5, 2009 -
32 comments
More than 600 Universal Newsreels at Internet Archive, both whole and partial reels (the same collection, with a few more newsreels is
also on YouTube but it's in lower quality). Newsreels were short collections of current events that ran before feature films. They ran from the start of the film era up into the 1960s. This collection goes from the early 30s through the mid 60s. Here are a few interesting ones:
Eleanor Roosevelt tells a joke,
1935 car industry workers strike,
Australian who was orphaned in China and raised by Chinese parents returns to Australia,
FDR inaugurated,
Enos the chimpanzee goes into space and returns to Earth,
Vietnam War protest marches in New York, San Francisco and Rome,
Busby Babes plane crash,
Gagarin hugged by Kruschev,
Truman brings the funny,
Seattle be-in and
Nuremberg trials.
posted by Kattullus
on Mar 20, 2009 -
19 comments
Oh those vaunted "
first 100 days," they are finally upon us. Roosevelt's legendary time period has long been applied to new administrations, but never so emphatically or with such hope as to the Obama administration. And now you can follow them! For commentary, there's
The First 100 Days, for mainstream media there's
Obama's First 100 Days, for a comparison between old and new there
100 Days: Starting the Job, From FDR to Obama, for new media there's
Obama's First 100 Days, and finally, for a government perspective there's
First 100 Days.
I smell an idea for an ironic t-shirt...
posted by Cochise
on Jan 22, 2009 -
13 comments
On the Oct. 7th Daily Show , Sarah Vowell mentioned that she is so desperate for Presidential leadership that she listened to FDR's Fireside Chats (from the Great Depression of the 1930s) and felt a little better. Beginning March 4th, 1933, and running through March 1st, 1945 FDR's fireside chats were a staple in American Homes. The news of the day, brought to you directly from the commander in chief himself.
These are those broadcasts. (#2 is his first, on the banking crisis.)
posted by spock
on Oct 9, 2008 -
57 comments
Keep Bush away from the press. Joe Scarborough (in the
news lately for asking rude questions about the President's intelligence) opines that "If George Bush has lost his ability to give a commanding presser, then stage manage him differently. Play to his strengths... Show him only in settings where he is in control." Curiously, while Bush's press conferences have become unsetllingly less coherent in recent days -- even for him -- the so-called liberal media and even the blogosphere have barely mentioned it (perhaps in the spirit of preserving the dignity of the office, like
FDR's wheelchair?) Example:
watch this video --
what happens at 1:34 or so, right before the President abruptly terminates the questioning? Will Bush in his twilight years, as Foxborough advises, become like Ronald Reagan, protected from public humiliation by his faithful staff?
posted by digaman
on Aug 22, 2006 -
156 comments
Corporate Interest Plot to Overthrow US Government. Approximately
72-years ago, the predecessor to
the House Un-American Affairs Committee, known as the
McCormack-Dickstein Committee, investigated claims made by
Marine Corps General Smedley Butler that a vast right-wing conspiracy funded by the
American Liberty League (
Wiki) (funded by US Steel, Goodyear, DuPont, Morgan-Stanley, Chase-Manhattan, Remington Arms, and others) with
backing from some of America's wealthiest citizens (such as Al Smith and Irene DuPont) and various Wall Street interests (
1930s American Business seemed to be pro-fascism as a hedge against communists and socialists to protect their own wealth in the face of the Great Depression). Their goal was to overthrow Franklin Delano Roosevelt and install a military dictatorship in order to stop FDR's New Deal and its "redistribution of wealth" and to enact fascist policies to protect the economy and their investments. [more inside]
posted by rzklkng
on Jan 18, 2006 -
51 comments
"Fear presides over these memories, a perpetual fear." He is
one of
America's
great novelists, but you don't expect
Philip Roth to be barreling up the best-seller list with
a book that hasn't even been published yet. And yet "
The Plot Against America" is in the
top 3 at amazon.com.
It spins
a what-if scenario in which the isolationist and anti-Semitic hero
Charles Lindbergh runs for president as a Republican in 1940 and
defeats F.D.R.
"Keep America Out of the Jewish War", reads a button worn by Lindbergh supporters rallying at Madison Square Garden. And so he does:
he signs nonaggression pacts with Germany and Japan that will keep America at peace while the rest of the world burns. The Lindbergh administration hatches a nice plan to prod assimilation of the Jews. Innocuously called Just Folks, it's a relocation program for urban Jews, administered by an Office of American Absorption fronted by an obliging and pompous rabbi of radio celebrity. The teenage Roth character is shipped off to a Kentucky tobacco farm, to finally live among Christians.
The
book is about
American Fascism, but while Roth is no fan of President Bush ("a man unfit to run a hardware store let alone a nation like this one"), he points out that
he conceived this book (LATimes registration: sparklebottom/sparklebottom) in December 2000, and that it would be "a mistake" to read it "as a roman à clef to the present moment in America."
(more inside)
posted by matteo
on Sep 28, 2004 -
10 comments
Happy Thanksgiving or Is It? In
1939, Franklin Delano Roosevelt responed to pressure from the National Retail Dry Goods Association to move the official date of Thanksgiving back one week to the next-to-last Thursday of the month. FDR hoped that this would enliven the economy by adding one week to the Christmas shopping season, but he received considerable
political flak for tampering with what many viewed as a sacred religious holiday. (Thanksgiving is considered sacred even though it only became a national holiday due to lobbying by
the editor of a 19th century woman's magazine.) New Deal-era Republicans were especially bothered by the calendar change and one essayist at the
American Enterprise Institute still seems to carry a grudge. Congress later resolved the issue by passing a resolution in
1941 that designated Thanksgiving as the fourth Thursday of November.
posted by jonp72
on Nov 26, 2002 -
11 comments
