FDR - President Franklin Delanore Roosevelt

In these times of how we look at and some say, disrespect our current US President, it is at times useful to look back at how some perceive our past US Presidents. Here are some items related to past US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, FDR, generally considered one of our great past Presidents:

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. (FERA acquired 25 million dollars of land by mid-1935; the Resettlement Administration later bought many millions of Acres; FDR called for national land redistribution in his 1st inaugural)

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. ("...the duty rests upon the government to restrict such incomes by very high taxes." FDR, PPA 1935:274; 1935 Wealth Tax Act; FDR imposed a 90 percent rate on corporations and issued a decree that no one could make more than $25,000 after taxes - overridden by Congress.)

3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance. (1935 Wealth Tax Act with its confiscatory inheritance taxes)

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels. (cf. 117,000 Americans of Japanese descent 1941 which the ACLU calls "the worst single wholesale violation of civil rights of American citizens in our history." FDR wanted to put ethnic Germans in concentration camps too, but there were too many.)

5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly. (Banking Act of 1935, gold confiscation by Proclamation 2039 in March 1933 and formalized in the 1934 Gold Reserve Act, etc.)

6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state. (Federal Communications Act of 1934, Railroad Coordination Act, ICC, FTC; FDR put private air mail carriers out of business and had the Army deliver mail in '34)

7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan. (TVA (FDR proposed 7 other TVA-like projects), Rural Electrification; the NRA was business and industrial planning; on 8/14/41 the House rejected FDR's Property Seizure Bill passed by the Senate which would have given him dictatorial power over all business and industry as well as confiscated all private arms; Resettlement Administration)

8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture. (CCC, CWA, PWA, WPA, etc)

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country. (Subsistence Homestead Division, Rural Rehabilitation Division of FERA, and the Resettlement Administration)

10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc. (NRA)

From: WRH Articles