Socialist GOPers defend New Deal

[Star]

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Excerpts below C&Ped from Republican Role Reversal: Defending TVA (once it was 'creeping socialism") | Humphrey on the Hill | knoxnews.com


Then:
"Indeed, proposals to sell TVA date back to soon after the agency was created in 1933 to reduce the risk of flooding in the region and bring electricity to rural communities in poor areas of Appalachia. It was a key part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal program, which used government spending to help the nation recover from the Great Depression."

"President Dwight Eisenhower called TVA "creeping socialism," while President Ronald Reagan criticized it as an example of big government. Republicans from Barry Goldwater to Newt Gingrich have pointed to the TVA as an example of where the private sector could provide services more cheaply and effectively than bureaucrats."


Now:
"Obama's 2014 budget proposal calls for a strategic review of the TVA, the nation's largest public utility with 9 million customers in seven states from Virginia to Mississippi."


"Privatizing TVA has been proposed before "and been determined to be a very bad idea," added Rep. John Duncan, R-Tenn.

"There is no assurance that selling TVA to a profit-making entity would reduce electric bills in the Tennessee Valley, and it could lead to higher electricity rates" for customers in Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia, Alexander said.

Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., vowed to "carefully study any proposals to restructure TVA" to ensure it continues to deliver affordable electricity throughout the region."



Republicans are a strange lot -- Republicans claim privatization via the invisible hand will bring competitive prices but-----but when President Obama proposes to save taxpayer money by selling the TVA to private investors, Southern GOPers start whining about how their constituencies will have to pay higher rates - WTF?
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[Lakhota]

It's nice to hear a Republican who doesn't want to privatize everything without objective and subjective cost/benefit analyses.

 

[Agit8r]

I have to hand it to them on this one. Conserving the status quo is actually conservative.

If only they applied the same logic to all the FDR/Truman/LBJ/Nixon reforms

 

[editec]

To understand the motives of the players one needs to know the details of their relationship to TVA.

 

[konradv]

Is the TVA being subsidized by the taxpayers or are rates meeting expenses? If it's being subsidized they have a point about rates going up, but would be hypocrites as far as standard GOP dogma goes.

 

[ScienceRocks]

I'd just give everything to the states. A federal government should never be trusted with power over 300 million people.

It's insanity.

At the state level the voters can vote what ever. They can give themselves a millions a piece with all I care!

 

[Star]

Is the TVA being subsidized by the taxpayers or are rates meeting expenses? If it's being subsidized they have a point about rates going up, but would be hypocrites as far as standard GOP dogma goes.

Bingo!
Way to often, Republicans allow their ideology to overule their common sense. (I may be wrong about giving Republicans credit for having common sense.)


Reason.com:"Although the TVA no longer receives congressional appropriations, it continues to receive large subsidies. The TVA pays none of the federal, state, and local taxes that private businesses pay. A 1993 study by Putnam, Hayes & Bartlett, a consulting firm retained by investor-owned utilities, estimated that annual cost-of-capital subsidies exceeded $1.2 billion, including the taxes that the TVA avoided. As a government-backed entity similar to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the TVA can borrow money cheaper than private businesses. Currently, the TVA has about $26 billion of debt."
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[Agit8r]

Gee, if it wasn't fer th' TVA, how woulddey watch'em NASCAR races onneh TV down yonner?

 

[t_polkow]

Gee, if it wasn't fer th' TVA, how woulddey watch'em NASCAR races onneh TV down yonner?

Yep the TVA was instituted so the southern crackers could be brought into the 20th century by FDR, that along with the WPA who built paved roads so those hill billy hayseeds would come into the 19th century. Where there was the biggest problem was when they were made to wear shoes. They are still mad over that ( even more angry then when an attempt was made for them to speak English without the hill billy accent)

 

[Agit8r]

Gee, if it wasn't fer th' TVA, how woulddey watch'em NASCAR races onneh TV down yonner?

Yep the TVA was instituted so the southern crackers could be brought into the 20th century by FDR, that along with the WPA who built paved roads so those hill billy hayseeds would come into the 19th century. Where there was the biggest problem was when they were made to wear shoes. They are still mad over that ( even more angry then when an attempt was made for them to speak English without the hill billy accent)

Is that why the southern states voted for FDR four times? Because he promised them "extraordinary gifts"?

 

[Crackerjaxon]

Gee, if it wasn't fer th' TVA, how woulddey watch'em NASCAR races onneh TV down yonner?

Same way you watch RuPaul's Drag Race.

 

[Agit8r]

Gee, if it wasn't fer th' TVA, how woulddey watch'em NASCAR races onneh TV down yonner?

Same way you watch RuPaul's Drag Race.

I hadn't heard of that name in probably 20 years.

Makes me wonder why it's hanging around in your subconscious