Remembering New York's Al Smith

Al Smith 42nd Governor of New York

The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy...Al Smith

More Democracy does not mean less regulations but more fairness for all.  More Democracy does not mean capitalism without any regulations at all.

I'm reminded of how New York City was back in the early part of the 20th century.  When no regulations on employers and factories existed.  When children and women with children worked in factories 7 days a week until the labor reform movement in which Al Smith from the lower east side headed.  When men ran factories with locked doors so the workers couldn't escape and were killed when fires broke out like in the shirtwaist fire in NYC in 1911.  If it weren't for regulations, working conditions like that would still exist.  It's through regulations that the country advances itself socially.  Laws that restrict against things like racism are regulations.

The republicans equate lack of regulation as democracy, but it's not.  Lack of regulation is barbarianism.  If Democracy can't provide fairness for people in all walks of life and on every level of income, then what good is it?

Rich Republicans like Gingrich and  Romney find regulations stifling, because they think it keeps people from making money, but that isn't true.  Look at them.  They're millionaires.  It only keeps opportunists like them from running amok over everyone else.  Regulations provide rules that have to be followed in making money in order to keep fairness in the marketplace.   Romney proves that success and great wealth is still very possible and still have regulations.  We need more regulations in the marketplace, not less, and especially in the financial sector.  It's lack of regulations on Wall Street that brought about the recession and the present financial mess in the country, not too many regulations.

The difference between the poor and the rich is too great.  That isn't what Democracy is ideally suppose to be about.  We need regulation in order to bring society closer together.  It's not true that the rich are better people.  They mostly are people who just care more about money and less about other things.

This Republican idea that making the rich even richer, by getting rid of taxes and have less regulations, will create jobs simply isn't true.  The President who created the most jobs was Franklin D. Roosevelt.  He did it through the government providing public works projects.  When we were in the Depression of the 1930's, the rich people did nothing to provide jobs and they had even less regulations and lower taxes   than we do now.  When Bush lowered the taxes on the rich, unemployment went up.  It didn't go down.  Nothing happened except for the gap between the rich and the poor widened and more people fell into poverty.