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Apparently Upton Sinclair is running for President this year...

... or at least that's what it sounds like when I hear some campaign speeches.

Senator Barack Obama said in Sarasota FL yesterday:

We will reopen old factories, old plants, to build solar panels and wind turbines.


Coyote Blog responds thus:

LOL. Barrack is going to open some of those old GM plants in Flint, Michigan and build solar panels. Seriously, is this a rhetorical flourish or does he really believe that factories are generic production facilities that can make anything...?


While insightful, I think this rejoinder misses the point. More and more the rhetoric of the Democratic campaign seems to be coming directly out of Upton Sinclair's 1934 run for the governorship of California on his EPIC platform (End Poverty in California Now), in which he promised more spending [even if the money had to be printed without anything behind it], and a massive new State bureaucracy that would take over supervision of industry, agriculture, and trade--including the reopening of idle factories to produce goods for the workers themselves.

Ironically, the easiest place to find the full text of one of Sinclair's pieces of campaign promotional literature is ... on the History page of the Social Security Administration website.

Go, take a look, and on careful reading you'll find out that there's really nothing new in politics.

[Oh, as a footnote: Sinclair ran as a Democrat, but FDR and the national Democratic Party left him high and dry while a GOP smear campaign destroyed his chances--seemed he was too radical for the authors of the New Deal.]

Comments

Delaware Watch said…
"a massive new State bureaucracy that would take over supervision of industry, agriculture, and trade"

Where do you find any evidence in Obama's statements indicating that he intends for the government to supervise these new industries? I have always taken him to mean that the government will do a lot more to incentivize the creation of these by the private sector. You seem to be falling into the "Obama is a socialist" cant.
The Last Ephor said…
I guess there's a magical retooling fairy that will wave her wand and poof! We'll make solar panels

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