Hoovervilles Give Way To Bushvilles

When glancing at the images that capture the Great Depression, the infamous "Hoovervilles" are very much a part of what was captured by Ansel Adams. The desperation in the faces of both young and old are evident. Hope is lost, misery remains. Although their makeshift towns were named after Hoover, policies that helped bring them to that degree of poverty began many years before Hoover beat Al Smith in 1928. The same is true of George W. Bush, who's name is enshrined not on airports or high schools, but the tent cities across America that are growing here and now in 2009. Everyone knows that times are tough, but seeing these Bushvilles makes it all the more real.

From DailyKos:

Well sadly those shanty towns, those Hoovervilles, have now become Bushvilles, thanks to the do-nothing policies of the Bush Administration and the continued elitist "let them eat dirt" policies of the Republican Party. These are the images of the new Bushvilles:

These are from the new and growing tent city in Sacramento, one of America's new Bushvilles. This tent city has an estimated population of 1500 people and is growing at a rate of 50 people per week.

Seen above is Karen Hersh. She's a newly unemployed truck driver and now she's doing her best to keep her new home clean.

This is Tammy Day, with her husband, preparing their dinner over one of the Bushville's campfires. The unemployment rate in Sacramento reached a depressing 10.4% in January and the city has one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country.

Here Ben Cardwell, a resident of this Bushville is helping carry supplies to the camp.

And despite the fact that their country and government has failed them, there's still clearly a faith and hope that America's greatest days are still ahead and they will soon see a better day:

This isn't some elaborate hoax, this is real life for an increasing amount of Americans today. This is what happens when government is destroyed from the inside and greed is allowed to flourish for the select few. Like 1933, Obama is left to clean Bush's mess as FDR had to pick up after Hoover, Coolidge and Harding. FDR, save for 1937, spent enough money to erase much of the damage done by the "Roaring 20s." Obama must realize that even with the stimulus act more must be done to get this country out of our economic rut. For no other reason, we must not be a nation that leaves its' citizens to live in makeshift tent cities.

Congressman Austria Clearly Never Took An American History Class

Sadly, Steve Austria of Ohio sets the bar awfully low in order to get into Congress. You would hope that a person sent to represent hundreds of thousands of Americans might know something about the country's history, but not in Mr. Austria's case. You see, the Republican spin campaign against the stimulus has been in overdrive and that means bursts of revisionist history are bound to be seen all over the place. In this instance, the Congressman from Ohio tries to move the date of the Great Depression ahead by four years.

From The Columbus Dispatch:

U.S. Rep. Steve Austria said he supports a scaled-down federal economic-stimulus proposal, but the Beavercreek Republican told The Dispatch editorial board that the huge influx of money into the economy could have a negative effect.

"When (President Franklin) Roosevelt did this, he put our country into a Great Depression," Austria said. "He tried to borrow and spend, he tried to use the Keynesian approach, and our country ended up in a Great Depression. That's just history."

Um, no, that isn't history, that's your own deluded version of it. After a decade of Republican encouragement (see Presidents Coolidge, Harding and Hoover) of unregulated financial greed and land speculation, the stock market collapsed on October 29, 1929. The nation's GDP plummeted for the next four years, and only began to rebound when FDR started to spend money on the nation's (gasp) infrastructure to get it going again. This isn't fiction Mr. Austria, it is historical fact. Now I know you want to say that FDR failed to get us out of the Great Depression and that only WWII saved us, but that is pure myth.

The facts of the 1920s through the 40s are what they are and here in the first decade of the new millenium, they may not be the same but the similarities are apparent. Unregulated financial markets created unmitigated greed, blowing up a bubble in the housing market (among other sectors, such as the somewhat newly created Credit Default Swap market) and it was only a matter of time before it blew up in our faces. Now we have a giant Republican (and some Democrats who tried to emulate them) mess that Obama has to clean up. And trust me Mr. Austria, it won't be by trying to blow that bubble up again.