Ruth Paine IDs March 20 as the Day Oswald ordered the rifle

[Kenneth Drew]

Well Glenn:

If you are for economic globalization, then Reagan and his crew of economists are your cup of tea.

Kennedy was not for globalization. As Donald Gibson so ably instructs us in his fine book on the subject called Battling Wall Street.

Kennedy was a nationalist. Both concerning our economy and those in the developing Third World.

IMO, Kennedy was correct on this. Globalization has been a disaster for everyone except the upper classes. Trickle down turned out to be trickle up.

https://consortiumnews.com/2012/02/29/the-winners-take-everything/

Globalization has been a disaster for everyone except the upper classes. Which, of course, is the very ones that are in control and are still pursuing globalization, that's why we have Barack Obama.

[Kenneth Drew]

See, back then, the states were flush with money for various reasons.

For one, the federal government had not gone bankrupt yet and therefore had not passed back various unfunded mandates to them.

So it was no big deal to pick up these kind of tuition bills. The great thing about it is that they picked up private colleges as well as state schools.

This whole crisis about budgets began slowly under LBJ when he escalated the war and tried to hide its cost, which introduced stagflation. The Nixon years were an utter disaster for the US economy, with the continuing war, with his price controls and the Arab oil boycott. Carter then tried to squeeze out the stagflation, but it hurt him politically. Then came the crusher: Reagan and supply side economics.

The American economy has not been the same since.

See, this is what i was trying to keep away from, 'cause I knew I'd not be strong enough to leave well enough alone.

So.

what i meant was that it's not the Federal govt's job to put me through college. it never was.

and with all due respect, for every 1 financial genius who blames Reagan for an economic failure, there are 3 who claim he ended it.

and since this is a forum on the assassination of John Kennedy and not on present day politics, that is the last thing i will say along those lines except as it may pertain to Dallas in 1963.

[oh, and Ken: exactly]

Yes, Glenn, we did go astray....

[Kenneth Drew]

If anyone is interested in the above comparison between FDR and JFK, this is a good book to follow up with:

http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9524.html

Thanks, will check it out. Already downloaded.

[James DiEugenio]

By the way, at the gym today I thought of another program that I was part of growing up in the sixties.

About two blocks from my house, there was an elementary school, which was the first public school i attended.

During the late fall and winter months--which took up a lot of time in Pennsylvania--that school opened it first floor doors at night. If I recall it was about 2-3 nights per week. They had a recreation/sports program going. This included basketball leagues. Our team would play another team at a neutral court. Lots of kids participated.

This was complemented in the summer by recreation activities in the park adjoining the school in which we had a soft ball team which also participated in a league. The summer program was really something. At its peak it took up almost two blocks, the school ground and the park across the street.

I don't know who funded these programs. But they were run through the city parks department. I knew the guy who administered it, Teddy Amendola.

Anyway, looking back, they were valuable. Not only were they fun for kids, but as I see now, they kept kids off the streets at night. I grew up in a lower middle class neighborhood and I can see now how important that was. Because back then we had little if any gang activity. As I recall, these programs were first cut back and then phased out. (BTW, Arnold Schwarzenegger tried to revive those for awhile in California before he became governor.)

Let me add one more thing, even though it was a fairly decent sized park with benches and trees etc., I don't ever recall seeing any vagabond ever sleeping there.

Today, you cannot go anywhere in LA, or any large to medium sized city, without seeing homeless people. They have become part of our culture.

That is how much this country has changed.

Edited August 2, 2015 by James DiEugenio

[Kenneth Drew]

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Edited August 2, 2015 by Kenneth Drew