Somewhat hard to imagine this week 47 years ago Barry Goldwater was considered the epitome of the right-wing fringe element of the Republican Party. The fringe element that hi-jacked the party at the convention and set in motion the changes that would make it the party it somewhat is today. But, truths to tell, listening to Goldwater in this 1964 Paid Political Campaign talk and hearing the insanity passing itself off as political rhetoric this past week, one almost imagines Goldwater as something of a moderate or, dare I say, Liberal in comparison.

Take, for example this extract regarding his views on Social Security:

Barry Goldwater: “During my twelve years in the United States Senate I have voted for every improvement in the Social Security Act. I voted against those amendments that I thought would be detrimental, which would have been detrimental to the Social Security. Now this year, the Senate and the House both voted nice increases for the recipients of Social Security. We added a great many people who have not been covered and I voted for these things. Now the real enemy in my mind, on Social Security is the man who didn’t allow this bill to become the law and that’s the President of the United States, who wanted his way and he didn’t get it, so he just said to the conferees ‘stop everything’. So those people on Social Security or who were receiving Social Security will not receive these improved benefits this year. And it’s not Goldwater’s fault. It’s Johnson’s fault.

No getting around it - Goldwater wasn't a saint. His views on Civil Rights were legendary and his stand on military spending and Vietnam were in lock-step with the John Birch Society. But you really have to wonder what Goldwater would be thinking about this current lineup of Republican hopefuls.

Perhaps the sound of engines we hear in Arizona are actually those of Barry spinning in his grave.

Possibly.

(LBJ in 1965 - Great plans, great ideas - eclipsed by Vietnam)

(Until we get back to normal, Newstalgia is reposting a series of articles on the Health Care issue, in case you missed them the first time around.)

When Lyndon Johnson gave his first State Of The Nation address on January 4, 1965 after winning the 1964 election, it was filled with hope and optimism. Every good idea and plan for the American people was on the boards and ready to go. Many of the programs were implemented - Medicare, The Civil Rights Bill, the War on Poverty - a lot of programs still in effect today.

LBJ: “We must open opportunity to all our people. Most Americans enjoy a good life. But far too many are still trapped in poverty and idleness and fear. Let a just nation throw open to them the city of promise. To the elderly, by providing hospital care under Social Security and by raising benefit payments to those struggling to maintain the dignity of their later years.”

But there was that one element which would eventually turn the focus from all the good programs to what had become one very bad idea: Vietnam.

By the end of 1965 our involvement went from "training and advisers for the South Vietnamese Army" to increased draft calls and escalating weekly casualty figures of our own. We were in it and we were stuck in it. And by the end of 1965 there looked like no turning back.

The domestic programs were great. The Great Society was a wonderful idea. It's often been said that, had there been no Vietnam, LBJ would have gone down in history as a truly progressive President. Vietnam would become the thorn in his side and his eventual downfall.

It's one of those quirks of history - the ones that often repeat.

The grumblings from Argentina over a disputed series of Islands under British possession boiled over on this day in 1982.

But that wasn't all that was going on, as was reported on this wrapup of the week. No, far from it. News from the elections in El Salvador gave the U.S. and most of Central America pause, since it was the largest turnout for an election in El Salvador's history. The counting was underway.

But news of the Falklands crisis was swift and plentiful. With Britain immediately sending a Naval taskforce, bringing promises of a shooting war within weeks. Calls for the Military government of Argentina to withdraw were rejected and diplomatic missions were running off the hook.

Meanwhile, it was noted that the Iran-Iraq War was lumbering into its 18th month with reports of an Iranian victory in the latest battle and some 8,000 Iraqi dead as the result

Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev was admitted to the hospital amidst rumors and speculation his health was deteriorating. Moscow's lips were sealed.

Back in the States - latest fears of Social Security running out of money by July of 1983 were echoing all over Capitol Hill. And we were still up to our eyeballs in Recession with a reported 9% unemployment rate looming. Closer inspection revealed the unemployment rate for Blacks was 18% with unemployed Black Youth up to 42%. No rosy picture anywhere for the Shining City On The Hill.

The big Oscar winners during the Academy Awards earlier in the week were Chariots of Fire and On Golden Pond.

And Irish extremist Ian Paisley was barred from coming to the U.S. to deliver an address to Bob Jones University. The move prompted Bob Jones Jr. to publicly call for Divine intervention and life-termination for Secretary of State Alexander Haig, who rejected the visa. East of the Suez they call 'em Fatwahs but here they call 'em Goofy Evangelists. Take your choice.

And that was our little slice of Paradise, this 2nd day of April 1982 as presented by CBS Radio and The World This Week.

The perfect day to stay in bed, this January 6th in 1983. And if you weren't comfortably snoring or sleeping it off you would probably have been knee deep in these tidbits of anxiety provoking news:

Pres. Reagan hinted there may be some new tax on the course ahead. Ironically, the new gasoline tax went into effect on this day, as did relaxation of regulations on trucking. President Reagan also promised substantial budget cuts while carefully avoiding the hot-button topic of Social Security.

Meanwhile, the nuclear powered Soviet Spy Satellite Cosmos 1402 was rumored to be out of orbit, spinning out of control and falling back to earth almost any day now. Moscow denied the rumors but kept a wary gaze skyward just in case.

Speaking of wary gazes, the Warsaw Pact proposed to NATO an agreement to renounce the use of military force and to outlaw or limit use of a vast array of weaponry including the infamous Neutron Bomb as well as deadly chemicals. NATO may or may not have stifled a chuckle.

Talks aimed at Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon entered Round 4, with the word stalemate stenciled on everyone's minds.

French authorities seized and boarded the ship Greenpeace as it entered Cherbourg harbor.

And a woman in Oregon succumbed to Cyanide poisoning thought to be delivered by an Anacin-3 capsule. In lieu of widespread panic, further tests were ordered to determine if the woman had committed suicide or if the capsules were in fact tampered with.

Collective breaths on this day were held, pending conclusion of all the above.

Just one of those days via Reid Collins and The CBS World News Roundup for January 6, 1983.

Former Connecticut Governor Abraham Ribicoff was the first cabinet appointee of the Kennedy Administration. Ribicoff became Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare in 1961. One of his first goals was to finally usher in a comprehensive Government Health plan for the aged and disabled. Medicare was one of those forward looking pieces of legislation much associated with The New Frontier, even though it had its roots back to the Truman Administration. It proved to be an uphill battle for Ribicoff and Medicare wound up being stalled and not passed until 1965, when it became something of a memorial tribute to JFK during the Johnson administration.

But in 1962, Ribicoff was heavily promoting the plan on various Public Affairs panel shows, including this episode of Meet The Press from June 19, 1962.

Maryann Means (Hearst Newspapers): “Philosophically, this (Medicare) represents a new area in which government is going to be involved in the lives of individuals. Don’t you think that the doctors have some justification in being concerned with this trend?

Abraham Ribicoff: “No, I don’t agree with you Miss Means, because it is not a new trend. The government is already in the field of medicine in the so-called controversial Kerr-Mills bill. The government is in the field of medicine. The government is in the field of medicine in the Veterans Administration. The government is in the field of medicine in giving medical care for people on relief and people on old-age assistance. So the government today is very much in medicine. The government is in medicine under the Hill-Burton Program with grants to hospitals. The government is in medicine in a fantastically large research program. So the United States Government has been in medicine for a long time and very heavy Miss Means.”

(FDR - HR 7260 saved a few million people and still does)

Lest we all forget, August 14, 1935 was the day HR 7260, The Social Security Act of 1935 passed into law, after a series of knock-down drag-out battles.

FDR: “If the Senate and the House of Representatives in this long and arduous session had done nothing more than pass this Security Bill, Social Security Act, the session would be regarded as historic for all time.”

And seventy-fives years later, it's still around, still bashed, still attacked, and still saving the majority of Americans hitting 65 ever since.

Lucky, no?

(HR - 2893 - everybody agreed on it . . . well, mostly)

With World War 2 over, the focus was now on domestic issues. The Truman Administration sought to expand on Social Security, update it from its beginnings in 1935. America had changed in ten years and Social Security needed to keep up with the change. Everyone agreed it was a good idea. But what Truman tried to do was finish what FDR had pledged to do - make a National Healthcare plan part of the Social Security system. And that's where things began to slide off the rails.

Paul Sifton (UAW): “The principle provisions of the Old Age and Survivors Insurance Bill is now being marked up by the House Ways and Means Committee, a call for the doubling of the benefits paid to aged persons or their survivors it also calls for bringing in some twenty million persons not now covered including the farmers and the hired farm hands, and by the way the news of the Grange’s attitude is great news, I may say, to the CIO and I’m sure to the AF of L that that oldest farm organization is now raising itself in support of this idea of systematic compulsory coverage in this program. In addition to that, it calls also for establishing temporary and permanent disability benefits as systematic coverage. If there is a justification and there certainly is for unemployment compensation and there is even more justification for disability benefits because it costs more to be idle and sick than it does just to be idle. And that is certainly long overdue.”

It's interesting that during the early incarnation of Social Security, farmers and farm hands weren't considered eligible (one wonders why) for Old Age and Survivors Insurance. Benjamin Kendrick from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was adamant that expanding Social Security was a good idea but any notion of having a National Health Plan meant disaster for the country.

In this segment of the radio series America United, Paul Sifton of the UAW, Representative Andrew Biemiller (D-Wisconsin), Lloyd Halvorsen of The Grange and Kendrik discuss the various aspect of the proposed expansion in 1946.

And sixty four years later . . . .

(Sen. Paul Douglas D-Ill. - Stuck in the middle of warring factions)

By 1949 Social Security had become hopelessly out of date, with no cost of living increases since before World War 2 and a system that had largely in place since 1935. While a general revamping and updating the system was before Congress, there was also a movement to make Social Security and Pensions private, one which appeared to be favored by management and certainly not favored by labor.

On October 6, 1949, the program America United featured a panel discussion on the Social Security and Pensions funding issue with Senator Paul Douglas (D-Ill), Emerson P. Schmidt of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, James B.Carey of the CIO and Lloyd Halvorsen of The Grange.

Douglas acknowledged that something needed to be done.

Sen. Paul Douglas: “I think the demand for private supplementary pensions has arisen because the public old-age pension and old-age insurance laws give very inadequate sums to aged people. For example; men who have been employed in private industry are only entitled to $26.00 a month, on the average, under the federal Social Security law. And with the additions for a wife the total for a man and wife is only brought to $40.00 a month. This was inadequate in 1935 with the 70% increase in the cost of living which has occurred since then, it is still more inadequate now. And it is this inadequacy of the public system, which in my judgment has forced the unions to demand a larger amount of private insurance.”

But the solutions were anything but unanimous.

(Ernest Lundeen - talked an interesting talk . . but)

I don't think there is any historic shortage of populist movements being undermined and subverted by people of skeptical motives. I say that due, in large part to the Teabagger Movement where, what appear to be sincere motives on some peoples parts, being hijacked by people of less than honorable motives to satisfy an agenda, a warped ideology or a grudge.

I was listening to a broadcast of a program, popular in the 1930's called "Peoples Lobby" which feature Congressman Ernest Lundeen as featured speaker from January 18, 1936. The subject was Social Security, Unemployment Insurance and Health Care (yes, talked about even then). Lundeen was author of the Lundeen-Fraser Bill, which was widely supported in Congress as an anti-poverty measure.

Lundeen makes an interesting set of points:

Ernest Lundeen: “ Two hundred giant corporations control over half the corporate wealth of the country. And at the present rate of concentration, by 1950 over eighty percent of the corporate wealth of the country will be controlled by two hundred giant corporations. Each year we read of the huge salaries and dividends drawn by bankers and captains of industry Recently, the top salaries of 1935 have been published. In 1929 Eugene Grace of Bethlehem Steel Corporation received one million, six hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars in salary and bonus. In 1935 the Chairman of Bethlehem Steels’ board received two hundred and fifty thousand in salary alone. Coca-Colas President received One hundred thousand three hundred and fifty dollars. Woolworth’s Company President received three-hundred thirty-seven and a half thousand. The country’s largest publisher William Randolph Hearst drew five hundred thousand dollars, and so on down a long list of executive salaries. And that is not mentioning the House of Morgan and other money lords of the American financial aristocracy . . . as long as these great American natural resources continue to fill the greedy coffers of the super-rich, the corporations continue to function, corporate surpluses are piled high for the rainy day. But let business become slack and profits be reduced, a great cry goes up from the corporations that they cannot afford to do business and employ labor. And that is why the American people do not derive full benefit from our enormous natural resources because they have no control over their operation and the distribution of the wealth they produce. We, the people have lost the ownership of the country in which we live.”

It all sounds very good - a sympathy heard a lot today.

But in Lundeen's case it had something of a hollow ring to it. Lundeen, it turns out, had a lot of connections to the Nazi Party in Germany. So much so, that he was actively tailed by the FBI all the way until his mysterious death in a plane crash in 1940. The controversy surrounding his death has never been explained, as were the extent of his connections to Berlin.

His motives on the surface looked good. Beneath the surface, another story.

It reminds me a lot of the current argument about Health Care and who is really running the argument against reform.

(LBJ Signing Medicare Bill - hysteria conspicuously absent)

On July 28, 1965, the Senate passed by large margin the Medicare bill. Despite grumblings from the right of "socialized medicine" and other fear-based rants, common sense prevailed and one of the milestones of 20th century social programs became law.

Dallas Townsend: “Now awaiting Presidential signature in Washington, is the milestone program of Social Security expansion and health care for the elderly, or Medicare. The Senate passed it yesterday, 70-24 thus completing Congressional action.”

Proof it can happen.