On the Bookshelves.

We’ve done a little batch of summer updates on the current political and economic books during the last couple of weeks – and here’s the message:

2012 – a bleak picture.

• It’s the Middle Class, Stupid (Carville & Greenberg): We’ve failed. The Middle Class is broken.
• Our Divided Political Heart (E. J. Dionne): Polarization, Extremism and drift from the founding principles and values.
• Twilight of the Elites (MSNBC Chris Hayes): Meritocracy is lost.
• End the Depression Now! (Paul Krugman): Unemployment ruins lives. We are actually in a Depression.
• It’s Even Worse Than It Looks (Mann & Ornstein): Congress is defunct, politics is tribal, most of the blame lies with the GOP.
• The Betrayal of the American Dream (Barlett & Steele): Social mobility is gone, the Dream is an Illusion, the Middle Class is systematically ravaged.

So now we’re reading this:

It’s been fixed before.

For some inspiration.

MSNBC’s Dylan as TR Progressive.

The Observer runs a story on MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan today – making references to Teddy Roosvelt:

Illustration in The Observer.

 

One happy Dylan Ratigan.

Full story here.

TR Documentary – for inspiration and perspective.

Here are three hours of great documentary on the life of Teddy Roosevelt:

And there’s so many things to say about this impressive man and his work, that it’s really hard to know where to start.. But to stick to just one side of his achievements and efforts, that of within politics, he kind of reinvented the whole US Presidency and laid the framework and set the example for a full American Century – later followed up by FDR and LBJ.

Other interesting sides of TR were the naturlist, the writer, the trust-buster, the cowboy, the adventurer, the historian and the safari hunter.

And he built the Panama Canal.

And he’s the founder of the Progressive movement – a useful blueprint for fixing America in the 2010′s.

And the list goes on…

A Speech for 2012 – By Teddy Roosevelt.

This speech pretty much sums it up – the roots and remedies for the problems today, one hundred years later. Same old, same old.

Keep watching.

More thoughts about the events this week.

NyTimes endorses the deal this morning – and the reasoning is strong and valid. We got jobless benefits, tax cuts for the middle class and a surprise pay roll tax – at the cost of giving a little something to the top 2% with borrowed money.

It was the best we could get – and just in time.

But it still adds to the deficit, and it fails to address the big picture problems – which is one of values and attitudes. The domestic story of kleptocracy for thirty years has some very concrete and real consequences. We get poverty, depression, abandoned youth and a country falling apart. As well as economic enslavement to foreign countries, slowly but surely each year that passes by.

The conservative, progressive president Teddy Roosevelt (1901-09) started off his first term with very slowly doing small adjustments and measurements towards beating the cartels and holding companies enjoying monopoly and ruling the country at the dawn of the last century. The saying was that Wall Street was the executive operator of the US economy, with legislative co-operation from Congress and judicial support from the Supreme Court. TR felt that the Presidency should be on top – bigger than the industrial owners – and worried about the inherent extortion that comes with too much power in big money and corporations.

If only the current president showed some signs and hints of the same.

Sometimes the fights are on isolated issues, sometimes the fights are about bigger things like trust and confidence in the leadership. It’s still not too late, but time is running out. In a few weeks the next general election is “next year” – and lots of people will be asking – if this president is capable of fixing the country.

Teddy Roosevelt – first inaugural.

After the loss of William McKinley – T.R. took the Office with these words:

“Mr. Secretary – I will take the oath. And in this hour of deep and terrible national bereavement, I wish to state that it shall be my aim to continue, absolutely without variance, the policy of President McKinley, for the peace and honor of our beloved country.”

More.