In March 1933, within weeks of his inauguration, President Franklin Roosevelt sent legislation to Congress aimed at providing relief for unemployed American workers. He proposed the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) to provide jobs in natural resource conservation. Over the next decade, the CCC put more than three million young men to work in the nation’s forests and parks, planting trees, building flood barriers, fighting fires, and maintaining roads and trails, conserving both private and federal land.

After a decade of national prosperity in the Roaring Twenties, Americans faced a national crisis after the Crash of 1929. The Great Depression saw an unemployment rate of more than twenty-five percent in the early 1930s. Inner-city crime rates soared, and the government did not have any specific plans to intervene. At the same time in the Midwest, the nine-year drought that would come to be known as the Dust Bowl was just beginning. Farmers struggled to hold on to their crops and their livestock as more precious topsoil blew away in windstorms every day.

The CCC was President Roosevelt’s answer to the environmental and economic challenges facing the country. Enlisting 250,000 workers in just two months, the CCC was an ambitious undertaking that brought several government agencies together in the effort. The Department of Labor recruited men from the ages of 18 to 25; the War Department clothed and trained them for two weeks, and the Department of Agriculture designed and managed the specific work assignments.

With projects in every U.S. state and territory, “Roosevelt’s Tree Army” lived in camps under quasi-military discipline, and received a wage of $30 per month, $25 of which they were required to send home to their families. Typically, boys rose early for breakfast in the canteen before heading off for eight hours of manual labor. Lunch was often brought out to the work site. In the evenings ninety percent of enrollees took advantage of classes offered in subjects from literature to welding — courses which, over nine years, taught 40,000 illiterate men to read and write.

After planting 3 billion trees in nine years of service, the CCC dissolved in July of 1942. As the economy began to improve in the late 1930s, young men found higher-paying jobs at home, and the number of CCC camps across the country dwindled. President Roosevelt’s attempt at turning it into a permanent agency failed. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor and subsequent U.S. involvement in World War II, the CCC’s funding and assets were diverted as the nation’s focus shifted toward the war effort. The legacy of the CCC continues to live on in the hundreds of campgrounds, hiking trails and swimming holes still enjoyed by Americans today.

In The Civilian Conservation Corps, four alumni Corpsmen share their experiences of poverty, racism, hard work and brotherhood from their time in the CCC. From Producer Robert Stone (Earth Days, Oswald’s Ghost), the film tells the tale of one of the boldest and most popular New Deal experiments.

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You know…there’s a point in a Presidency when they “cut loose” those they brought in to “advise them” on the “thrill of victory.”

If Obama is as smart as I think he is…he will dig down and the political realities will give him boost that he won’t get re-elected when both his base “Progressives” and the “Mainstream Repugs” now consider him a “whore for banks and status quot.”

There will be pressures on Obama to “re-work his team.”

If he cares about re-election then there’s a possiblity that Geithner and Summers will have an “Epiphany” to “Resign” to take care of Family or “pursue other interests” …and they will be nudged out back to “Goldman” from whence they came to “game the system” like they did before. In Geithner’s case …he will be hired as the newbie to give his tremendous expertise to the followers with “stars in their eyes”…legacy kids of the annointed.

But, I’ll bet given the angst against Obama from his own supporters…Dem Mainstream and Left that this “FIRST YEAR” will come due in January…when those of us who BOUGHT HIM …want some PAYBACK..and we were told on the LEFT that if we supported him we would run him. LOL’s , LOL’s…

But as the FAR LEFT and the FAR RIGHT seem to be having more in common than the CENTER…I expect SPARKS TO FLY!

WE DISAGREE…but hey…..”Politics makes STRANGE BEDFELLOWS.”

Simple, he’s the insider who the banks want in that position.

Hyperinflation will be the ultimate fix for everything

“Fine. Come up with something better. And then…and this is the tricky part:

Get it through the Senate.

Not so easy, is it?”

That was rather my point old boy. The whole system is corrupt and broken. America and its values have changed irreparably, for better or worse. A moral crisis in my perspective..

Solutions? Make Volcker head of a Corruption commission with draconian powers to clean things up? Pitchforks?
It sure as hell seems like the average American either doesn’t understand or doesn’t give a s**t as long as there are still Cheese twiddlies in WalMart. The land of the free? Forget it.

Ah, yes. The classic liberal fall back of pragmatism. Get what you can while you can, because one shouldn’t lead his life by princples, but by action. Then if the people don’t like the action, tell them that it is “nuanced”; which is a big word that acadmics use to mean “I know what’s good for you. Besides it is complicated, and you wouldn’t understand anyway.” It may be complicated but most people know a lousy deal when they are on the losing end.

If we get out of this mess in a couple of years with interest rates still low, normalized growth with no government support and the dollar remaining the world’s reserve currency, I will become a card carrying democrat and Keynsian. At what point will you be willing to admit that what is going on won’t work if it goes the other way?

BTW, the Tea Party attendees are not going away. In my own neck of the woods, they are meeting regularly and planning ways to roll back local taxes and fees. They are no long hot-angry, they are cold-angry and getting in some practice out of the limelight. I suspect this is happening in many parts of the U.S. Just know that the world is run by those who show up.

One final thing – in spite of the rhetoric you read here and elsewhere, the middle class is here to stay and is not being crushed by the poor economy. They know how to tighten their belts. Many of the unemployed are starting their own companies and getting contracts, and feeding their families.

What “partial victory,” pray tell, are you talking about? Talk of “perfection” is somewhat premature. Seeing as we’re at rock bottom. Pretty much any alternative we offer, at this point, would represent an improvement. We do all feel bad about the buyer’s remorse, however.