Category Archives: History

Ventilators

Nearly everyone put on them in New York died.

So much for “life saving.” Of course, the problem is that by the time it’s so extreme that they decide to put you on one, it’s probably too late. But this shows that the ventilator panic was probably pointless.

We’re learning rapidly how to deal with this, but we’ve unfortunately lost a lot of unwilling guinea pigs. It reminds me of what I say in the book: Every aviation regulation is written in blood. People always have to die or be injured for us to learn.

The Great Depression

The media continues to peddle BS history about it (unfortunately, because it was what they were taught in government schools).

It was sad to see Emily Compagno the other day on The Five say that FDR was elected to deal with Hoover’s “inaction.” So even conservatives believe this nonsense.

Hoover’s policies were disastrous, but they were the very opposite of inaction, and he was the furthest thing from laissez faire. If Coolidge had had a third term, likely the economy would have recovered within a year. Hoover created the depressions, but FDR made it great.

[Update a few minutes later]

Our garbage media.

[Update a while later]

A review of Amity Schlaes’s new book on how poverty won the war on poverty, including some of the history of the Depression.

[Late-morning update]

In reading that history, I had not known that Walter Reuther had sponsored the Port Huron Statement (I lived sixty miles west, in Flint) at the time. It reminded me of a post I wrote early in my blogging career, almost two decades ago now (where did the years go?) about my brief period as a junior-high campus radical.