The NRA?

No, NOT the National Rifle Association. Yes, I am a member of the National Rifle Association - that goes along with being a Southerner raised Baptist by a Marine veteran, as I have discussed many times. Today's NRA is the National Recovery Administration, established by the National Industrial Recovery Act. In case you have forgotten, or never had the opportunity due to lack of time in most curricula to cover the 20th century in history classes (always got lost in the Civil War, maybe got as far as the start of World War I), here is the Wikipedia link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Recovery_Administration
{and, while you are at wikipedia, consider contributing for their support. What is for you a pittance through Paypal is their lifeblood}.

I was reminded of the NRA when I was on eBay looking at Shirley Temple dolls to see if any were actually selling (Peg wants to sell some of hers to make Christmas money, and I told her it probably was not worthwhile*). One of the dolls had a dress with an NRA tag, and the seller said they had no idea what that stood for:




The NRA was the fundamental basis of President FD Roosevelt's "New Deal". If you don't know about New Deal, you really DO need to go back and read a little history if not study it. Just as today, the nation was in need of economic and social recovery due to the depths of what was, then, The Great Depression. My folks talked about the Depression, and it was pretty ugly. They both made it through okay because my Grandfather Riddle was a country doctor and my Grandfather Moore was a very good farmer. Neither was in debt, neither was invested in stocks that crashed, neither one panicked. The neighbors all chipped in to help each other when and as they could - Mom used to talk about how their school had soup at lunch every day and everyone had to take their cup of soup and eat it, even if they brought their own lunch from home. For some kids that was their only meal, of course - kind of like free and reduced today, which has been carried on to the penultimate panacea of food stamps. :-\   My grandfather and uncle were directed by the NRA/government to grow potatoes. I suspect they may have been a bit subsidized, but I never really have known for sure. I know that things were bad enough that Grandpa paid for three refrigerated boxcars to carry his potatoes to Chicago, and then once they arrived there were no buyers and he had to pay for a day labor crew to unload the cars and throw the potatoes away.

That could have made a lot of potato soup, you know?

Anyway, back to the NRA. In principle it was great. Kind of like arbeit macht frei - sounds great, but what happens in the real world. Government control of unions and companies ... well, you can predict where that headed then, just as you can guess where it is heading now. In 1935 the Supreme Court found that the NIRA was unconstitutional in that it failed to maintain the separation of powers. The all powerful party in control managed to push through many of its provisos in the National Labor Relations Act, though (the legislation that "allows" auto makers to pay a cadre of replacement workers to be on site in case they are needed due to absence - $65 an hour to sit in the cafeteria and do nothing. Really. They are required to do nothing while waiting the full shift to see if they are needed. Anecdotally I heard that once they actually called for one of them to go to the line and could not find one skilled in the tasking they needed ... ).

Those who cannot remember the past (or never knew it) are destined to repeat it. As Leon Uris said of the Ireland-North Ireland conflict  in Trinity, there is no tomorrow, no today, just yesterday repeating itself over and over. One of the things my dad successfully taught me was that if something ain't broke, don't fix it; but, if something is broke, fix it and fix it right, once and for all.

We are broke as a country. We need to fix it right, once and for all. Pulling a play from the 80-yr-old playbook that didn't work and was illegal is hardly the way to fix it right.

They always say if you pick on some idea have a better suggestion. My suggestion is always free enterprise. The shortcoming is that it takes equally well informed producer and consumer groups, so our consumers have some waking up and some learning to do. Either that, or we are headed for idiocracy! Fiscal cliff? Bring it on. We will have to bite bullets eventually, and we had just as well do it now. Punt the NRA and its latter-day equivalent and go for full rebirth of the nation.

jim

* - Shirley Temple, Beanie Babies, Cabbage Patch Kids, collector plates of all types, doll series from Franklin and Danbury Mints, music boxes, medals, teacups; Precious Moments and Memories of Yesterday -- all are cute to beautiful and sold famously when they came out. We have more than our share around here. The thing is, anyone who was interested bought more than their share when these items first came out. The price was fixed by the distributor at a level that impressed the buyer as being a bit above junk, which may or may not have been true, but was still low enough for pa to buy ma one or two on birthday/anniversary/

Christmas/Valentine's Day. And he did. So everyone has relatively a similar stack in their basement or storage area, akin to ours. They have what they want, and more, and they are in no position to buy anything else due to the present economy AND due to the fact that they do not need or want any more Shirley Temple, Beanie Babies, Cabbage Patch Kids, collector plates...