Sunday Reading: Cutting Our Way Back to the Depression

This Sunday's must-read is an article in the Kaplan Daily by historian Robert S. McElvaine, "Want to Avoid Another Depression? Try Understanding the First One" (sorry, no link). His point is that recovery from the Great Depression was stalled and nearly torpedoed in 1937 by the same policies Rethugs are pushing in today's economic environment - "slashing spending, concentrating ever more wealth and income at the top, and blocking effective regulation." McElvaine writes:

"The 2009 stimulus staved off a second Great Depression, but it should have been much larger to produce a genuine recovery. Subsequently, even with majorities in both houses, the Democrats let the GOP define the argument and failed to force through needed programs to get the economy back on its feet... The goal of Republicans today, though, is to use the claim that we cannot afford social programs as an excuse to go back to the halcyon days of Calvin Coolidge."

It's somewhat understandable why the facts-averse, low-information, history-on-its-head numbnuts on the right want to pursue the same ideologically rigid policies that led to disaster nearly 75 years ago. They can't help themselves. But why otherwise intelligent, rational people who are nominally Democrats feel they have to go along with this remains one of the great political mysteries of the decade.