From the Dept. of "Letters We Wish We'd Written"

To the Editor [of the Valley News]:

The actions of the Republican Party ("the Party of No") have precedents. Having heavily contributed to the financial meltdown of 1928 and the Great Depression that followed, the GOP adamantly opposed Securities and Exchange Commission oversight of the corporations that had caused it. Sound familiar?

It fought against the WPA and Civilian Conservation Corps, both of which provided so many jobs and built America's infrastructure of schools, roads, parks and dams durring that Depression.

Republicans oppossed the Rural Electrification Agency that brought electricity to underserved rural areas and farms -- and generated unprecedented growth markets for electrical appliances, improved farm efficiencies, and produced new factories.

They resisted the TVA and Columbia River dam projects that later underpinned American's modern steel, aluminum, aircraft, and nuclear programs and saved the Allies in World War II. The GOP's "America First" wing vociferously opposed building up the U.S. military prior to World War II and the lend-lease programs programs that enabled Britain to survive. Oops!

Republicans opposed going off the gold standard which, if continued, would have devastated lend-lease -- and U.S. and world economic growth both pre- and cost-World War II. They repeatedly tried to dismantle the Food and Drug Administration, designed to keep ineffective or unsafe medicines off the U.S. market.

They harassed those who favored expansion of our national parks and forests, which were envisioned by their own Teddy Roosevelt and now provide recreation and safe water sheds for many important population centers.

They fought Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, which have saved so many lives and built our medical education, research and hospital infrastructures -- and provided millions with much-needed jobs and safety nets against catastrophe.

The GOP opposed labor unions, the Fair Labor Practices Act, the Civil Rights Acts, the 40-hour week, equal pay for women, and the programs that cleaned up American's waterways and air, while creating both $3.5 trillion a year in well-paid American jobs (until Bush 2001) and preventing our cities from becoming (literally) uninhabitable.

Think where our world would be if these earlier "tea baggers" had prevailed in their attempts to further line the pockets of their rich supporters.

James Brian Quinn
Hanover

[The above appeared in the Valley News on February 16, 2010. I don't know the author, though I note that the web site of the Tuck Business School at Dartmouth College identifies a James Brian Quinn as a professor emeritus.]