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LBJ, a man with gargantuan appetites and ambitions

Summary:
I stole this comment from a place from I read on a regular basis. An Incredible commentary. Having grown up in that era, I felt it had merit and believe the commenter gets it right. The programs mentioned here are under attack by Republicans. SCOTUS is using nondelegation as the basis to dismantle programs. Congress did pass these programs, allocated funds to support the programs, and established the means for administration. A program can be stopped by eliminating funding. If Congress allocates more funding, in itself it is affirming the legitimacy of such program by delegating funding to it. Congress does have the ability to legislate and provide funding for the program. Both are matters of delegation. I believe some of the Justices at

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I stole this comment from a place from I read on a regular basis. An Incredible commentary.

Having grown up in that era, I felt it had merit and believe the commenter gets it right. The programs mentioned here are under attack by Republicans. SCOTUS is using nondelegation as the basis to dismantle programs. Congress did pass these programs, allocated funds to support the programs, and established the means for administration. A program can be stopped by eliminating funding. If Congress allocates more funding, in itself it is affirming the legitimacy of such program by delegating funding to it. Congress does have the ability to legislate and provide funding for the program. Both are matters of delegation.

I believe some of the Justices at SCOTUS are just plain wrong. I thought I would share it at Angry Bear and see what you thought.

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“FDR, with the New Deal (First Hundred Days) and 2nd New Deal (1935) provided a basis for modern-day America at that time. LBJ, a man with gargantuan appetites and ambitions, sought to out do FDR with the Great Society.

Medicare, two monumental civil rights laws (he took tremendous personal satisfaction in accomplishing what JFK had failed to do), the Voting Rights Act of 1965, poverty programs, NEH, NEA, and hundreds of other transformative initiatives marked LBJ’s Great Society.

Johnson, whose ruthless political skills in Congress were superbly described in Robert Caro’s Pulitzer-winning MASTER OF THE SENATE, knew that he had a short window, after JFK’s assassination and his trouncing of Goldwater in 1964, to jam a panoply of far-reaching legislation through Congress.

This almost seemed like throwing massive globs of pasta at the wall to see what might stick. Johnson was in a legislative frenzy believing that ground-breaking legislation and a moderately open check book could transform the America society.

We are indebted for what President Johnson accomplished. By FDR’s rule of thumb (‘If I bat 70% with what I initiate, that’s pretty damned good’). Johnson scores well. The political push back caused by his Great Society steamroller came rather swiftly. As he noted, when signing his 1965 civil rights law, ‘We will lose the South for at least a generation.’

The Vietnam War proved his major political Achilles heel. Using his same Great Society overdrive in Vietnam, he escalated the war with phony claims (Tonkin Gulf Resolution), lying to the American people about ‘winning,’ and sending over 500,000 military where there was no light at the end of the tunnel.

It probably was as great a shock and personal humiliation for Johnson as his Watergate resignation was for Nixon, when Johnson announced in March, 1968 that he would not run for re-election.

On reflection, I give him poor marks on Vietnam (a Greek tragedy) and a vigorous shout out for his somewhat flawed, but still monumental Great Society. I wonder how the American society of the 21st century might have been transformed, if President Biden had been able to legislate a robust Build Back Better program?”

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