What Was the Value of the CCC and WPA

“An old English judge once said: “Necessitous men are not free men.” Liberty requires opportunity to make a living—a living decent according to the standard of the time, a living which gives man not only enough to live by, but something to live for.” — Franklin Roosevelt, 1936 Democratic Convention.

In his speech to the Democratic Convention in 1936 presidential candidate Franklin Roosevelt stated:

“Here, and in every community throughout the land, we are met at a time of great moment to the future of the Nation. It is an occasion to be dedicated to the simple and sincere expression of an attitude toward problems, the determination of which will profoundly affect America.

I come not only as a leader of a party, not only as a candidate for high office, but as one upon whom many critical hours have imposed and still impose a grave responsibility.

For the sympathy, help and confidence with which Americans have sustained me in my task I am grateful. For their loyalty I salute the members of our great party, in and out of political life in every part of the Union. I salute those of other parties, especially those in the Congress of the United

States who on so many occasions have put partisanship aside. I thank the Governors of the several

States, their Legislatures, their State and local officials who participated unselfishly and regardless of party in our efforts to achieve recovery and destroy abuses. Above all I thank the millions of Americans who have borne disaster bravely and have dared to smile through the storm.

America will not forget these recent years, will not forget that the rescue was not a mere party task. It was the concern of all of us. In our strength we rose together, rallied our energies together, applied the old rules of common sense, and together survived.”

Roosevelt made this speech in defense of the numerous policies he and Congress had instituted during his last four years in office. These policies were enacted as measures to mitigate the effects of the Great Depression and the Dust Storms that plagued the Great Plains and farmers.

In my last blog post, Reflections on the Dust Bowl, I made brief mention of the Works Progress Administration (renamed during 1939 as the Work Projects Administration; WPA) and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). Both of these programs were instituted during the early years of the Roosevelt Administration with the support of Congress as federal government funded and managed programs to mitigate the effects of the Great Depression.

Both Roosevelt and his powerful advisor Harry Hopkins did not believe in handouts without work and wanted programs that would not only provide money for the millions of unemployed, but that would provide dignity through useful work. Hopkins argued that although the work relief program was more costly than direct relief payments, it was worth it. He asserted, "Give a man a dole, and you save his body and destroy his spirit. Give him a job and you save both body and spirit."

Before I get into the subject of the value of the CCC and WPA let me tell a personal story of my association with the CCC and how it may have affected my life.

Upon my graduation from high school I took a full time job as a surveyor’s assistant. After working for the firm that had allowed me part-time work while in high school I was induces to take on a position with a civil engineering and land surveying firm closer to my home. The firm was owned by three partners and had a staff of about 25 persons working in the office and field. The person who managed the field staff, Otto Slabe, was the professionally registered land surveyor in the State of Ohio.

Otto told in interesting story about his entry into the profession of land surveying. According to Otto he grew up in a very rough neighborhood on the southwest side of Cleveland and was in involved in gang activities. One day, in 1938, after a gang shooting Otto was arrested and charged as a member of the gang, but not a part of any shooting activity. Otto stated that his part of the crime was hiding the gun for the gang.

At his sentencing the judge gave Otto a choice to do jail time or enlist in the CCC. Of course Otto elected for the second choice. Within a few days Otto, with his suitcase, boarded a train at the Cleveland terminal and was headed west. In a few days he disembarked from the train in Jackson Hole, Wyoming where he was assigned as a brush cutter for a survey crew doing surveys for telephone lines over the mountains to the state of Washington. According to Otto he enjoyed the work in the wide open spaces and took advantage of the opportunity to learn surveying. When World War Two broke out Otto joined the Navy and was assigned as a surveyor to the Navy’s Construction Battalion (Seabees) where he served out the duration of the war. After his discharge from the Navy he took a position with the Cuyahoga County’s surveyor’s office. After several years working for the county Otto and two other partners founded their own civil engineering and land surveying firm of Burden, Slabe, and McKay, a firm the is still in existence to this day.

Otto was not only my boss, but in many respects a mentor to me. He taught me much about the surveying profession, encouraged me to go to night school for the education I needed, and gave me the opportunity to grow in my profession.

After eight years I moved to California where I eventually, along with two partners, founded my own civil engineering and land surveying firm. Over the ensuing years my firm grew and was merged with another similar firm to where, when I retired several years ago we employed 850 persons on a global basis.

I tell this tale because in a way I am indebted to how Otto turned his life around by enlisting in the CCC and how what he did eventually affected my growth and career.

America was in the grip of the Great Depression when Franklin Roosevelt was inaugurated in March of 1933. More than twenty-five percent of the population was unemployed, hungry, and without hope. The New Deal programs instituted bold changes in the federal government that energized the economy and created an equilibrium that helped to bolster the needs of citizens.

Out of this economic chaos emerged the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). Its purpose was two-fold — conservation of our natural resources and the salvage of our young men. The CCC is recognized as the single greatest conservation program in America and it served as a catalyst to develop the very tenets of modern conservation. The work of America's young men dramatically changed the future and today we still enjoy a legacy of natural resource treasures that dot the American landscape.

Eighty years ago the nation was plunged into the Depression when the excesses of the 1920s caught up with society. Like the current recession, the economic bubble and collapse was the result of excessive debt spending by consumers and excessive risk taken on by investors. At the worst depths of the Depression 25% of the workforce was unemployed.

With such high unemployment and people with jobs suffering major pay cuts, many across the country suffered. Out in the Plains States years of poor farming practices, coupled with a severe drought, led to massive soil erosion and the Dust Bowl, leaving millions of fertile acres a wasteland.

The depression hurt young men especially. They had the fewest skills and the lowest earnings and savings, and many found themselves coming of age in a decade with high unemployment. They were at the greatest risk for poverty and starvation. Any sociologist will tell you that restless young men without a purpose will usually lead to social instability and skyrocketing crime rates.

President Franklin Roosevelt saw all these problems and sought ways to fix them. One of his “100 Days” programs he passed was the Emergency Conservation Work Act (ECW), a temporary program that would become the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). Roosevelt described the goals of the CCC when he introduced the legislation:

“I propose to create a civilian conservation corps to be used in simple work, not interfering with normal employment, and confining itself to forestry, the prevention of soil erosion, flood control, and similar projects. I call your attention to the fact that this type of work is of definite practical value, not only through the prevention of great present financial loss but also a means of creating future national wealth…More important, however, than the material gains will be the moral and spiritual value of such work. The overwhelming majority of unemployed Americans, who are now walking the streets and receiving private or public relief, would infinitely prefer to work. We can take a vast army of these unemployed out into healthful surroundings.”

Formed in March 1933, the Civilian Conservation Corps, CCC, was one of the first New Deal programs. It was a public works project intended to promote environmental conservation and to build good citizens through vigorous, disciplined outdoor labor. Close to the heart of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the CCC combined his interests in conservation and universal service for youth. He believed that this civilian “tree army” would relieve the rural unemployed and keep youth “off the city street corners.”

The American public made the CCC the most popular of all the New Deal programs. Principal benefits of an individual's enrollment in the CCC included improved physical condition, heightened morale, and increased employability. Of their pay of $30 a month, $25 went to their parents. Implicitly, the CCC also led to a greater public awareness and appreciation of the outdoors and the nation's natural resources; and the continued need for a carefully planned, comprehensive national program for the protection and development of natural resources’

During the time of the CCC, volunteers planted nearly 3 billion trees to help reforest America, constructed more than 800 parks nationwide and upgraded most state parks, updated forest fire fighting methods, and built a network of service buildings and public roadways in remote areas.

CCC camps in Michigan; the tents were soon replaced by barracks built by Army contractors for the enrollees.

The CCC operated separate programs for veterans and Native Americans.

Despite its popular support, the CCC was never a permanent agency. It depended on emergency and temporary Congressional legislation for its existence. By 1942, with the war industries booming and the draft in operation, need declined and Congress voted to close the program.

The CCC operated under the army's control. Camp commanders had disciplinary powers and corpsmen were required to address superiors as “sir.” By September 1935 over 500,000 young men had lived in CCC camps, most staying from six months to a year. The work focused on soil conservation and reforestation. Most important, the men planted millions of trees on land made barren from fires, natural erosion, or lumbering—in fact, the CCC was responsible for over half the reforestation, public and private, done in the nation's history. Corpsmen also dug canals and ditches, built over thirty thousand wildlife shelters, stocked rivers and lakes with nearly a billion fish, restored historic battlefields, and cleared beaches and campgrounds.

Although professing a nondiscriminatory policy, the CCC failed to give a fair share of work to blacks, especially in the South where local selection agents held sway. But in spite of rigid segregation and hiring quotas, black participation reached 10 percent by 1936.

In all, nearly 3 million young men participated in the CCC The army's experience in managing such large numbers and the paramilitary discipline learned by corpsmen provided unexpected preparation for the massive call-up of civilians in World War II.

A few of the notable alumni of the CCC are:

• Hyman G. Rickover, 4-star Admiral, former Corps Area Commander
• Raymond Burr, actor, former enrollee
• Archie Moore, the Light Heavyweight Boxing Champion of the World, former enrollee
• Robert Mitchum, actor, former enrollee
• Edward R. Roybal, politician, former enrollee
• Chuck Yeager, test pilot (first human to break the sound barrier), former enrollee
• Stan Musial, baseball player, former enrollee
• Walter Matthau, actor, former enrollee
• Red Schoendienst, baseball player/manager, former enrollee
• Conrad L. Wirth, U.S. administrator, National Park Service supervisor of CCC Program.

A sample of the accomplishments CCC are:

• Between 2 and 3 billion Trees Planted,
• 800 State Parks Developed,
• 52,000 acres of Public Campground Developed,
• 125,000 of Miles of Roads Built,
• 89,000 miles of Telephone Lines Strung,
• 13,100 Miles of Foot Trails Built,
• 40 Million Acres of Farmlands Benefited from Erosion Control Projects,
• 154 Million Square Yards Stream and Lake Bank Protection,
• 814,000 Acres of Range Re-vegetation
• More than 8 million Firefighting Days

For its brief period of existence the CCC not only served the nation by providing conservation and public works, it also served those who took advantage of the opportunities it offered. Unlike today, where everyone believes they have a right to go to college and accumulate thousands of dollars in debt for an education that in many cases is not worth the money spent the youth who enrolled in the CCC were given the opportunity to learn through working and develop habits and skills that would last the rest of their lives.

The CCC taught discipline and personal responsibility, and generated the type of camaraderie that is only found in the military today. It is estimated that the CCC was responsible for a 55% decline in crime during this period. When Pearl Harbor happened, most of the workers of the CCC joined up and found that they already had most of the training they needed.

On May 6, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order creating the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The WPA was just one of many Great Depression relief programs created under the auspices of the Emergency Relief Appropriations Act, which Roosevelt had signed the month before. The WPA, the Public Works Administration (PWA) and other federal assistance programs put unemployed Americans to work in return for temporary financial assistance. Out of the 10 million jobless men in the United States in 1935, 3 million were helped by WPA jobs alone.

The Great Depression stands as an event unique in American history due to both its length and severity. With the unprecedented economic collapse, the nation faced an emergency some said more serious than war. The Depression was a time of tremendous suffering and at its worst, left a quarter of the workforce unemployed. During the twentieth century, the annual unemployment rate averaged double-digit levels in just eleven years. Ten of these occurred during the Great Depression.

A confused and hungry nation turned to the government for assistance. With the inauguration of Franklin Roosevelt on March 4, 1933, the federal government’s response to the economic emergency was swift and massive. The explosion of legislation — which came to be collectively called the “New Deal” — was designed, at least in theory, to bring a halt to the human suffering and put the country on the road to recovery. The president promised relief, recovery and reform.

Of all of Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) is the most famous, because it affected so many people’s lives. Roosevelt’s vision of a work-relief program employed more than 8.5 million people. For an average salary of $41.57 a month, WPA employees built bridges, roads, public buildings, public parks and airports.

Although the Civil Works Administration (CWA), the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), and the National Recovery Administration (NRA) were all begun two years earlier, the Works Progress Administration (latter renamed the Work Projects Administration) became the best known of the administration’s alphabet soup agencies. Although the CWA provided much employment there were many taxpayers who saw leaves being raked but nothing of permanent value. Roosevelt told his cabinet that this criticism moved him to end the program and replace it with the WPA which would have long-term value for the society, in addition to short-term benefits for the unemployed.

Indeed, for many the works program is synonymous with the entire New Deal. Roosevelt devoted more energy and more money to the WPA than to any other agency. The WPA would provide public employment for people who were out of work. The administration felt that the creation of make-work jobs for the jobless would restore the human spirit, but dignity came with a price tag — an appropriation of almost $5 billion was requested. From 1936 to 1939 expenditures totaled nearly $7 billion ($124 billion in today’s dollars). Annual figures are shown below:

• 1936 $1,295,459,010
• 1937 $1,879,493,595
• 1938 $1,463,694,664
• 1939 $2,125,009,386

The legislation that created the WPA, the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935 sailed through the House, passing by a margin of 329 to 78 but bogged down in the Senate where a vocal minority argued against the measure. Despite the opposition, the legislation passed in April of 1935.

Harry Hopkins headed the new organization. Hopkins became, after Roosevelt, the most powerful man in the administration. All WPA administrators, whether assigned to Washington or to the agency’s state and local district offices, were employees of the federal government and all WPA workers’ wages were distributed directly from the U.S. Treasury. The WPA required the states to provide some of their own resources to finance projects but a specific match was never stipulated — a fact that would later become a source of contentious debate.

The agency prepared a “Guide to Eligibility of WPA Projects” which was made available to the states. Nineteen types of potentially fundable activities were described ranging from malaria control to recreational programs to street building.

Hopkins and Roosevelt proposed that WPA compensation be based on a “security wage” which would be an hourly amount greater than the typical relief payment but less than that offered by private employers. The administration contended that it was misleading to evaluate the programs’ effects solely on the basis of wages paid — more important were earnings through continuous employment. Thus, wages were reported in monthly amounts.

Wages differed widely from region to region and state-to-state. Senator Richard Russell of Georgia explained, “In the State of Tennessee the man who is working with a pick and shovel at 18 cents an hour is limited to $26 a month, and he must work 144 hours to earn $26. Whereas the man who is working in Pennsylvania has to work only 30 hours to earn $94, out of funds which are being paid out of the common Treasury of the United States”. Recurring complaints of this nature led to adjustments in the wage rate that narrowed regional differentials to more closely reflect the cost of living in the state.

The WPA employed far many more men than women, with only 13.5 percent of WPA employees being women in the peak year of 1938. Although the decision had been made early on to pay women the same wages as men, in practice they were consigned to the lower-paying activities of sewing, bookbinding, caring for the elderly, school lunch programs, nursery school, and recreational work. Ellen Woodward, director of the women’s programs at the WPA, successfully pushed for women’s inclusion in the Professional Projects Division. In this division, professional women were treated more equally to men, especially in the federal art, music, theater, and writers’ projects.

While FDR believed in the elementary principles of justice and fairness, he also expressed disdain for doling out welfare to otherwise able workers. So, in return for monetary aid, WPA workers built highways, schools, hospitals, airports and playgrounds. They restored theaters — such as the Dock Street Theater in Charleston, S.C. — and built the ski lodge at Oregon's Mt. Hood. The WPA also put actors, writers and other creative arts professionals back to work by sponsoring federally funded plays, art projects, such as murals on public buildings, and literary publications. FDR safeguarded private enterprise from competition with WPA projects by including a provision in the act that placed wage and price controls on federally funded products or services.

When federal support of artists was questioned, Hopkins answered, “Hell! They’ve got to eat just like other people.” The WPA supported tens of thousands of artists, by funding creation of 2,566 murals and 17,744 pieces of sculpture that decorate public buildings nationwide. The federal art, theater, music, and writing programs, while not changing American culture as much as their adherents had hoped, did bring more art to more Americans than ever before or since. The WPA program in the arts led to the creation of the National Foundation for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Opponents of the New Deal in Congress gradually pared back WPA appropriations in the years leading up to World War II. By 1940, the economy was roaring back to life with a surge in defense-industry production and, in 1943, Congress suspended many of the programs under the ERA Act, including the WPA.

On 27 May 1935, in the court case of Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, the Supreme Court held the mandatory codes section of NIRA unconstitutional, because it attempted to regulate commerce that was not interstate in character, and that the codes represented an unacceptable delegation of power from the legislature to the executive. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes wrote for a unanimous Court in invalidating the industrial "codes of fair competition" which the NIRA enabled the President to issue. The Court held that the codes violated the United States Constitution's separation of powers as an impermissible delegation of legislative power to the executive branch. The Court also held that the NIRA provisions were in excess of congressional power under the Commerce Clause.

The Court distinguished between direct effects on interstate commerce, which Congress could lawfully regulate, and indirect, which were purely matters of state law. Though the raising and sale of poultry was an interstate industry, the Court found that the "stream of interstate commerce" had stopped in this case: Schechter's slaughterhouses bought chickens only from intrastate wholesalers and sold to intrastate buyers. Any interstate effect of Schechter was indirect, and therefore beyond federal reach.

Specifically, the Court invalidated regulations of the poultry industry promulgated under the authority of the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933, including price and wage fixing, as well as requirements regarding a whole shipment of chickens, including unhealthy ones, which has led to the case becoming known as "the sick chicken case." The ruling was one of a series which overturned some New Deal legislation between January 1935 and January 1936, and which ultimately caused Roosevelt to attempt to pack the Court with judges that were in favor of the New Deal.

As an aside; in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1933, DeBenneville "Bert" Bell formed a new National Football League franchise to replace the defunct Frankford Yellow Jackets, naming this team the Eagles in recognition of the NRA (a name the team retains to the present).

Liquidated on June 30, 1943 as a result of high employment due to the industry boom of World War Two, the WPA had provided millions of Americans with jobs for 8 years.

The WPA should not be confused with the Public Works Administration (PWA). While similar in its nature to put people back to work the PWA was focused on large projects built by private contractors with government financing in a more traditional manner.

The Public Works Administration, part of the New Deal of 1933, was a large-scale public works construction agency in the United States headed by Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes. It was created by the National Industrial Recovery Act in June 1933 in response to the Great Depression. It built large-scale public works such as dams, bridges, hospitals, and schools. Its goals were to spend $3.3 billion in the first year, and $6 billion in all, to provide employment, stabilize purchasing power, and help revive the economy. Most of the spending came in two waves in 1933-35, and again in 1938. Originally called the Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works, it was renamed the Public Works Administration in 1939 and shut down in 1943.

The PWA spent over $6 billion in contracts to private construction firms that did the actual work. It created an infrastructure that generated national and local pride in the 1930s and remains vital seven decades later. The PWA was much less controversial than its rival agency with a confusingly similar name, the Works Progress Administration, headed by Harry Hopkins, which focused on smaller projects and hired unemployed unskilled workers.

In essence the PWA should not be confused with its great rival the Works Progress Administration (WPA), though both were part of the New Deal. The WPA, headed by Harry Hopkins, engaged in smaller projects in close cooperation with local governments — such as building a city hall or sewers or sidewalks. The PWA projects were much larger in scope, such as giant dams. The WPA hired only people on relief who were paid directly by the federal government. The PWA gave contracts to private firms who did all the hiring on the private sector job market just as governmental contracting is done to this day. The WPA also had youth programs (the NYA), projects for women, and arts projects that the PWA did not have.

When President Roosevelt moved industry toward war production, the PWA was abolished and its functions were transferred to the Federal Works Agency in June 1943.

During the Great Depression (1929-1942) the nation had an unemployment rate that averaged around 18%. In 1929 it was 3.2% and the rate peaked in 1933 at 25%. By 1939 it had it had dropped to 17% and at the onset of WWII the rate had plummeted to less than 6% due to shift to defense spending and the induction of millions into the military.

During this period the nation had major programs to provide work for the millions of unemployed. The PWA was a traditional program to provide “stimulus” dollars for major infrastructure projects. It infused money into the private sector for the construction of large-scale public works such as dams, bridges, hospitals, and schools. Of all the New Deal programs it was the least controversial. It’s the way federal, state, and local projects are funded and constructed today.

The CCC was a program to restore and protect or natural environment, build minor civil works projects such as irrigation lines, trails, and wind-breaks. They planted 3 billion tress, built trails and roadways in our national parks, and constructed telephone and power lines in rural America. The program was designed to get unskilled (and in many cases uneducated) youth off the streets and into military-like camps where they would earn some money for their families, learn a work ethic, and provide some lasting benefit to the nation, especially in the Dust Bowl region. While having critics, such as the unions and those fearing it to become a Fascist type of government controlled organization similar to what was happening on Italy and Nazi Germany, the CCC did a great deal of good for the monies spent. Otto Slabe was the perfect example of a CCC success story.

The WPA was the most controversial of Roosevelt’s alphabet soup. While putting unskilled workers (like my uncle) to work building civil works projects such as roads and sewers the program, in many cases, put too many people working on make-work projects. When the WPA began to hire artists, actors, and writers the controversy became intense. (Click here for a gallery of images of the WPA)

The strongest attacks were that it was the prelude for a national political machine on behalf of Roosevelt. Reformers secured the Hatch Act of 1939 that largely depoliticized the WPA.

Others complained that far Left elements played a major role, especially in the New York City unit (which was independent of the New York State unit). Representative Martin Dies, Jr. went so far as to call the WPA a “seedbed for communists”. Exaggeration was rife—such as a false report circulating in 1936 that the cost of killing a single rat in one extermination endeavor was $2.97 (over $49 in current dollars).

Much of the criticism of the distribution of projects and funding allotment is a result of the view that the decisions were politically motivated. The South, as the poorest region of the United States, received 75 percent less in federal relief and public works funds per capita than the West. Critics would point to the fact that Roosevelt’s Democrats could be sure of voting support from the South, whereas the West was less of a sure thing; investing in the West was a way of swaying voters.

There was a perception that WPA employees were not diligent workers. Employers said the "WPA is bad for people since it gives them poor work habits. They believe that even if a man is not an inefficient worker to begin with, he gets that way from being on WPA." Having been on the WPA made it harder for alumni to get a job because employers said they had "formed poor work habits" on the WPA.

A Senate committee reported that:

"To some extent the complaint that WPA workers do poor work is not without foundation. Poor work habits and incorrect techniques are not remedied. Occasionally a supervisor or a foreman demands good work."

The WPA and its workers were ridiculed as lazy. The organization's initials were said to stand for "We Poke Along", "We Piddle Around", "We Putter Along", "Working Piss Ants", or the "Whistle, Piss and Argue gang". These were sarcastic references to WPA projects that sometimes slowed down deliberately because foremen had an incentive to keep going, rather than finish a project. My uncle along with a supervisor at my first full-time job as a surveyor’s assistant, both having worked for the WPA, stated that for the most part it was an organization more intent on prolonging the work than completing an a well-constructed, efficient project.

There are those today who argue for the return of some form of the CCC and WPA. Programs like the Job Corps have demonstrated the failures of these programs. With today’s governmental regulations regarding the workplace and the involvement of unions it would be near impossible to take unemployed, unskilled, and uneducated youth of the streets and put them to work planting trees, cleaning up oil spills, or picking up the trash off the highways.

These programs worked at the time they were instituted because the culture of the nation was much different than it is today. Every youth did not believe they had a right to a college education and looked down on those who worked with their hands. People were more comfortable with work than with government handouts. They wanted a job, not a free TV, cell phone, or a vacation. Governmental relief without work was a sign of failure to most Americans. If you watch any “man on the street” interviews with today’s college students you might believe it would be much better for them and our country if they were planting trees and building trails than running up thousands of dollars in debt for a college education with dubious benefits.

A Modest Proposal

“Most economic fallacies derive from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie that one party can gain only at the expense of another.” — Milton Friedman

In the 1930’s, during the Great Depression, the Roosevelt administration turned to the use of taxpayer’s money to reduce the unemployment rate. In 1932 when Franklin Roosevelt was elected the unemployment rate was 24 percent. After spending billions on public works programs and creating agencies like The Works Progress Administration (WPA) and The Public Works Administration (PWA) the rate had declined to 17%.

The Works Progress Administration (renamed during 1939 as the Works Project Administration; WPA) was the largest and most ambitious New Deal agency, employing millions of unskilled workers to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads, and operated large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects.

It fed children and redistributed food, clothing, and housing. Almost every community in the United States had a park, bridge or school constructed by the agency, which especially benefited rural and Western areas.[citation needed] The WPA's initial appropriation in 1935 was for $4.9 billion (about 6.7 percent of the 1935 GDP), and in total it spent $13.4 billion.

At its peak in 1938 it provided paid jobs for three million unemployed men (and some women), as well as youth in a separate division, the National Youth Administration. Headed by Harry Hopkins, the WPA provided jobs and income to the unemployed during the Great Depression in the United States. Between 1935 and 1943, the WPA provided almost eight million jobs. Full employment, which emerged as a national goal around 1944, was not the WPA goal. It tried to provide one paid job for all families where the breadwinner suffered long-term unemployment.

The WPA was a national program that operated its own projects in cooperation with state and local governments, which provided 10%-30% of the costs. WPA sometimes took over state and local relief programs that had originated in the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) or Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) programs.

Liquidated on June 30, 1943 as a result of low unemployment due to the economic boom of World War II, the WPA provided millions of Americans with jobs for 8 years.[6] Most people who needed a job were eligible for at least some of its positions.] Hourly wages were typically set to the prevailing wages in each area.[8] However workers could not be paid more than 30 hours a week. Before 1940, there was very little training to teach new skills, to meet the objections of the labor unions.

The Public Works Administration (PWA), part of the New Deal of 1933, was a large-scale public works construction agency in the United States headed by Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes. It was created by the National Industrial Recovery Act in June 1933 in response to the Great Depression. It built large-scale public works such as dams, bridges, hospitals and schools. Its goals were to spend $3.3 billion in the first year, and $6 billion in all, to provide employment, stabilize purchasing power, and help revive the economy. Most of the spending came in two waves in 1933-35, and again in 1938. Originally called the Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works, it was renamed the Public Works Administration in 1939 and shut down in 1943.

The PWA spent over $6 billion in contracts to private construction firms that did the actual work. It created an infrastructure that generated national and local pride in the 1930s and remains vital seven decades later. The PWA was much less controversial than its rival agency with a confusingly similar name, the Works Progress Administration (WPA), headed by Harry Hopkins, which focused on smaller projects and hired unemployed unskilled workers.

The PWA headquarters in Washington planned projects, which were built by private construction companies hiring workers on the open market. Unlike the WPA, it did not hire the unemployed directly.

More than any other New Deal program, the PWA epitomized the progressive notion of "priming the pump" to encourage economic recovery. Between July 1933 and March 1939 the PWA funded and administered the construction of more than 34,000 projects including airports, large electricity-generating dams, major warships for the Navy, and bridges, as well as 70% of the new schools and one-third of the hospitals built between 1933–1939.

Streets and highways were the most common PWA projects, as 11,428 road projects, or 33% of all PWA projects, accounted for over 15% of its total budget. School buildings, 7,488 in all, came in second at 14% of spending. PWA functioned chiefly by making allotments to the various Federal agencies; making loans and grants to state and other public bodies; and making loans without grants (for a brief time) to the railroads. For example it provided funds for the Indian Division of the CCC to build roads, bridges and other public works on and near Indian reservations.

The PWA became, with its "multiplier-effect" and first two-year budget of $3.3 billion (compared to the entire GDP of $60 billion), the driving force of America’s biggest construction effort up to that date. By June 1934 the agency had distributed its entire fund to 13,266 federal projects and 2,407 non-federal projects. For every worker on a PWA project, almost two additional workers were employed indirectly. The PWA accomplished the electrification of rural America, the building of canals, tunnels, bridges, highways, streets, sewage systems, and housing areas, as well as hospitals, schools, and universities; every year it consumed roughly half of the concrete and a third of the steel of the entire nation.

Some of the most famous PWA projects are the Triborough Bridge and the Lincoln Tunnel in New York City, the Grand Coulee Dam in Washington state, the longest continuous sidewalk in the world along 6½ miles of Bayshore Blvd. in Tampa, Florida, and the Overseas Highway connecting Key West, Florida, to the mainland. The PWA also electrified the Pennsylvania Railroad between New York and Washington, DC. At the local level it built courthouses, schools, hospitals and other public facilities that remain in use in the 21st century.

While these programs had their critics they did provide valuable and lasting infrastructure assets. I am not so positive about the funding of the arts programs as most of artists, writers, musicians, and photographers involved in the program were communists or fellow travelers. Some of the critics compared Roosevelt’s progressive public works programs with those of Mussolini in fascist Italy and Adolph Hitler in National Socialist Germany. Both of these dictators used public spending to create full employment. Mussolini had his corps of fascist workers who built massive public works projects like draining the Pontine Marshes and building new towns. Hitler established the Reichsarbeitsdienst (RAD) to provide labor for agriculture and civic construction projects including the building of the Autobahns

It is difficult for me to harshly criticize the Roosevelt administration for initiating these public works spending. The national economy was in big trouble and with almost one –quarter of the workforce unemployed there was a real threat of socialism or communism sweeping into power. Also the nation benefited from the improvements in the infrastructure, especially in roads, electrification, flood control, sewer and water, and irrigation.

With this in mind I have a proposal for President Obama to reduce our national unemployment. Taking into consideration that most of our major infrastructure has been built and we now require only maintenance and upgrades. We don’t need to subsidies artists, musicians, and those in the entrainment industry, they are doing just fine. What we need is a program for unskilled workers who can’t seem to find work in the service or fast food industry. We need low skilled construction jobs.

With the president’s belief that only government can create jobs and that we all owe any success we have to government or a teacher I think he will jump right in to this proposal.

I call my proposal the Earth Supply and Renewal Project. Here is how it would work. First, our excavation specialists insert their shovels into the ground and remove the soil. This presents the problem of an existing hole in the earth, creating a dangerous situation that could lead to hazards, including but not limited to tripping, falling, and bodily injuries.

Then there is the renewal process. At the Earth Supply Division, professional backfillers will be trained to renew the soil in place of the existing hole, restoring the earth to its original condition.

Some folks say we’re just digging ditches and filling them back up again. But it’s about more than that. It’s about jobs.

Just think of the business opportunities this government program will create. First we have the shovel makers. The government will set the standards for the size of the shovels making them at three-fourths the size of a conventional shovel yow old buy from your local Ace Hardware store. Of course two types of shovels would be needed. Firstly a spade to remove the earth and then secondly a flat-end shovel to scoop up the earth to fill in the ditch. We will also need picks to break up the hard ground.

Second we would have the trainers who would no doubt require a college education in civil and construction engineering. This would help them pay off their student loans.

Third we would have the environmentalist, biologist, and botanists who would select the locations for each project so as not disturb the desert tortoise or the woolly daisy.

Finally we would need the inspectors to make sure the unskilled earth movers were doing the proper job.

Of course the unions would be involved to make sure all of the workers joined unions like SEIU and received prevailing wage, health care, and a pension.

I can’t take full credit for this proposal. I have to give a tip of the hat to James O’Keefe writing in Breibart.com for his Project Veritas idea. O’Keefe’s purpose was to expose union corruption as he wrote:

“That’s the setup. O’Keefe’s Project Veritas then takes this newly-created non-existent company – a company dedicated to digging and filling holes – and asks for help from local union bosses to help move subsidies for Earth Supply and Renewal through legislatures. After all, they argue, even if we’re just digging ditches and refilling them on the taxpayer dime, at least we’re creating new union workers.

And, unbelievably, the union bosses are only too happy to help. They couldn’t care less about wasting taxpayer dollars. And that’s precisely what they say.

John Hutchings, director of the Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA) New York State Laborers’ Organizing Fund (NYSLOF), explains:

Right now it’s all about jobs. It’s awful hard for anybody to vote against like a jobs bill right now …

He agrees that even if there are sites where this ditch digging and filling has no environmental program, legislators will decided, “it’s a jobs program for the laborers.” And when some of the Earth Supply and Renewal “employees” explain that they literally dig a ditch, then fill it up again, Hutchings says, “It sounds like, it almost is exactly the same as where we were with Green Jobs, Green New York.” Green Jobs, Green New York was a $112 million state plan that was designed to create environmentally-friendly jobs. And it was sponsored, in large part, by unions.

Anthony J. Tocci, business manager of the Local 601 for LIUNA AFL-CIO, goes even further. He says that he’d be willing to help find public funds just to dig and fill ditches:

Hey, if people are willing to give you money, if people will give you the money, that’s fine.

And Hutchings adds:

You know, the Green Jobs, Green New York, between us, a lot of it is bullshit… even if it’s bullshit, I think as long as people are working, that’s not bull, you know what I mean?

Tocci and Hutchings say that this is just the sort of stuff that happened under FDR in the 1930s with the Works Progress Administration. “They dug the roads up, put ‘em back!” says an animated Tocci.

Says Tocci, “You just wanna get the money. Then you figure out afterward.”

Hutchings then explains the economic theory behind all of this:

Well, I think, I think the key thing is, even if it’s bullshit, I think as long as people are working, that’s not bull, you know what I mean? Then you’re doing a service. If there are people working, there are people paying taxes, there are people paying goods, there are, you know what I mean… You’re doing right by the economy… anything that brings work into a community is a plus…

And, of course, the union benefits. Says Hutchings, “It’s a win-win for everybody. Everybody understands that part of it.” Especially the unions, who will be including “employees” of Earth Supply and Renewal in their collective bargaining from now on.”

Two read the rest of O’Keefe’s article and watch the video click here.

Once the Earth Supply and Renewal Project gets underway other special interest groups will no doubt get into the act. The Audubon Society and Burpee Seeds will lobby for trees and flowers to be planted in the ditch and the ditches dug alongside of roads. They will argue that this will beautify the nation in the same manner as Lady Bird Johnson’s Highway Beautification Plan did in 1965.

I am positive that President Obama and his progressive masterminds in his administration will enthusiastically adopt this proposal. It will create “shovel ready” jobs that will dramatically increase his chances for reelection. Of course he will gave to appoint a czar of hole digging.

More on the Financing of Our Deteriorating Highway Infrastructure

He will therefore have to use what knowledge he can achieve, not to shape the results as the craftsman shapes his handiwork, but rather to cultivate a growth by providing the appropriate environment, in the manner in which the gardener does this for his plants.” — Friedrich August von Hayek.

In my most recent blog I touched on the fact that our lawmakers are changing the way we finance our highway infrastructure and damaging the once sacrosanct Highway Trust Fund by adding many non-highway elements such as mass transit and environmental issues to their funding bills. This is a subject near and dear to me due to my involvement with highway engineering during my long career as a highway engineer and a land surveyor.

When Congress passed and President Eisenhower signed the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 this nation embarked on one of the greatest highway building programs in the world. Not since the building of the Transcontinental Railroad (1864-1869) and the Manhattan Project during World War II had Congress allocated so much money to one specific project. The original concept of the Federal Aid Highway Act (FAHA) was to build about 20,000 miles of four-lane divided super highway at a cost of $25 billion dollars in 12 years. When the system was deemed completed in 1991 over 47,000 miles had been built at a cost of $114 billion (adjusted for inflation, $425 billion in 2006 dollars).

Most of the money to build this system came from the Highway Trust Fund that obtained its money from taxes collected from fuel and other vehicle sources and considered as “user taxes.” Prior to the 1956 Highway Revenue Act and the establishment of the Highway Trust Fund roads were financed directly from the General Fund of the U.S. Treasury. The 1956 Act directed federal fuel tax to the fund to be used exclusively for highway construction and maintenance. The Highway Revenue Act mandated a tax of three cents per gallon. The original Highway Revenue Act was set to expire at the end of fiscal year 1972. In the 1950s the gas tax was increased to four cents. The 1982 Surface Transportation Assistance Act, approved by President Ronald Reagan in January 1983, increased the tax to nine cents with one cent going into a new Mass Transit Account to support public transport. In 1990 the gas tax was increased by President George H. W. Bush with the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990 to 14 cents - with 2.5 cents of the increase going to the Highway Fund and the other 2.5 cents going towards deficit reduction. In 1993 President Clinton increased the gas tax to 18.4 cents with the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 with all of the increase going towards deficit reduction. The Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 redirected the 1993 increase to the Fund. During the Vietnam War President Johnson dipped into the fund to “borrow” money so he could finance his “guns and butter” programs without raising taxes. Most of his “borrowed” funds were never repaid.

Over the ensuing years from 1956 the once sacrosanct Highway Trust Fund has been raided and pillaged to finance other than its original intended purpose — to finance our nation’s Interstate Highway System. This has also been the case with many of the states, such as California, with their dedicated highway trust programs.

Today much of our Interstate System is approaching 50-years old. These roadways usually had a design life of 20 years, with bridges having a longer design life up to 50 years. Every year the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) releases a report card on our crumbling infrastructure and each year our highways and bridges receive a grade of “D-“ and “C” respectively. It does not take a civil engineer to realize the extent of our crumbling highway infrastructure. All you need to do is drive the Interstates. Some states like Utah, Nebraska, and Nevada do a better job than others in maintain their highway infrastructure by using their fuel tax appropriately while others such as California, New York, New Jersey, and Illinois have allowed the highway infrastructure to deteriorate.

Over the years Congress has passed many highway funding bills with fancy names like ISTEA, T-21, and SAFETEA with all of them diverting more and more monies to non-highway purposes such as intermodal transportation, rail, and environmental purposes. This contrary to the original intent of the highway trust fund and these monies get allocated through earmarks and lobbying by special interest groups, mainly cities and counties.

Not since the building of the Transcontinental Railroad has one single project added so much to our economy. The construction of the Interstate Highway System created millions of job and added trillions of dollars to our national economy. It created jobs for construction workers, engineers, construction material suppliers, long-haul truckers, construction equipment manufactures, and roadside businesses.

The Case For Highway User Fees

How should we pay for highways in America? Relatively unique among developed countries, the United States from the beginning has employed the user-pays principle. This means for the most part the users of the highway system pay for it with fees that are more or less directly related to their use. The idea is that those who benefit directly from the highway system are also the ones who pay for it.

In the 19th century, prior to motorized transportation, most inter-city roads were toll roads, usually developed and operated by private companies under state charters. When the automobile led to a demand for paved roads in the early 20th century, Oregon legislators enacted a tax on motor fuel in 1919. In the following decade, the remaining 47 states and the District of Columbia all enacted motor fuel taxes. In order to ensure that the revenue would be used solely to benefit those paying these taxes, most states created dedicated highway funds, many of which were given constitutional status and often called “trust funds.” Toll roads, like the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and bridges, like the Golden Gate Bridge, proliferated in the first half of the 20^th century, generally in cases where the large size of the investment needed made toll finance the best way to fund such large “lumpy” investments. Toward the end of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st, a new generation of toll roads and toll lanes has been emerging.

There are many advantages to the users-pay/users-benefit principle. Among them are the following:

Fairness: Those who pay the user fees are the ones who receive most of the benefits, and those who benefit are the ones who pay. This is the same general principle America employs with respect to other network utilities, such as electricity, water, gas and telecommunications.

Proportionality: Those who use more highway services pay more, while those who use less pay less (and those who use none pay nothing). And cost allocation studies can determine which users are responsible for which portion of costs, so that rates can be set accordingly.

Self-limiting: The imposition of a user tax whose proceeds may only be used for the specified purpose imposes a de-facto limit on how high the tax can be: only enough to fund an agreed-upon need for investment. In contrast, Europe’s motor fuel taxes are a general revenue source, and hence tend to be three to five times as high as those in the United States (though highway investment in Europe is the same or less than in this country).

Predictability: A user fee produces a revenue stream that can and should be independent of the vagaries of government budgets.

Investment signal: The user-pays mechanism provides a way to answer the question of how much infrastructure to build, assuming that the customers have some degree of say. With respect to toll roads, the value of the facility can be judged by how many choose to use it and what level of tolls they are willing to pay. This mechanism is less direct with fuel taxes, though there does appear to be a connection between motorist/taxpayer confidence in a government’s highway program and their willingness to support increases in fuel taxes. Prof. Eric Patashnik, in his book on federal trust funds, notes that “Taxpayers will only demand an increase in services if they perceive the benefits of the service increment to exceed the cost.”

These points about the advantages of user fees hold true regardless of the details of the user-fee mechanism. In highways, America has used tolls, fuel taxes, excise taxes on tires, weight-distance taxes (for trucks) and several other minor sources, and is considering a shift from fuel taxes to a charge or tax per vehicle mile traveled.

In deciding whether any such mechanism is essentially a user fee or essentially a tax, the critical question is the use of the revenues. If the revenues from a charge are strictly spent on services and infrastructure for the users/payers, it is a user fee. If the proceeds can be spent on beneficiaries other than those who generated the funds by making use of the infrastructure, then the mechanism is more of a tax. In the case of utility bills, the charge that is based on services the customer has used is a fee, paid to the infrastructure provider to cover the costs of building, operating and maintaining the infrastructure. (This is true regardless of whether that infrastructure is provided by a public-sector or private-sector utility.) If government seeks to make those utility customers fund other beneficiaries, it may impose a tax for that purpose on utility bills (e.g., the tax that is used to fund rural telephone services).

Historically, therefore, highway advocates were correct in calling motor fuel taxes highway user fees, since most state fuel taxes were dedicated to the state highway system. The federal fuel tax, when the Interstate highway program was launched in 1956, was likewise dedicated to building that nationwide system, via the newly created federal Highway Trust Fund. This was a fair and equitable deal.

History of the Highway Trust Fund

Early proposals for funding of the Interstate Highway System included the issuance of long-term bonds, based in some version on toll revenues (modeled after mid-century superhighways such as the Pennsylvania Turnpike and the New York Thruway) and in others on federal taxes. There was strong opposition in Congress both to bonding and to the large federal tax increases that were estimated to be necessary to fund the system. Neither alternative prevailed in 1955.

Hence, the following year, “The object was to find a way to finance the system that more stakeholders thought was fair, and to reassure stakeholders and legislators that the receipts of the increased taxes would be dedicated towards highways. The proposed solution was a set of federal highway user taxes (largely on motor fuel) whose proceeds would be deposited into a new Highway Trust Fund. The Republican members of the House committee that recommended this approach wrote that “The existence of this fund will insure that receipts from the taxes levied to finance this program will not be diverted to other purposes.” The final bill embodying these provisions was passed by both houses of Congress and signed by President Eisenhower on June 29, 1956.

The pure users-pay/users-benefit principle was not breached until 1970, when PL 91-605 allowed federal highway monies to be used for bus lanes, bus facilities and park-and-ride lots. Many urban and transit advocates wanted to open up the Highway Trust Fund much further, being dissatisfied with the extent of funding available from the Urban Mass Transportation Administration (UMTA), created by 1964 legislation. (UMTA was originally located within the Department of Housing & Urban Development—HUD—but was shifted to the Department of Transportation when the latter agency was created.) Several years later, in 1973, Congress enacted PL 93-87, which allowed Highway Trust Fund monies to be used for capital expenditures for buses and fixed rail facilities and permitted a state to petition the U.S. DOT for permission to withdraw a planned urban Interstate project and build a public transit system instead, using federal general fund monies up to the amount that the Interstate segment would have cost.

President Carter proposed consolidation of the highway and transit programs, merging the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and UMTA, as part of the 1978 highway bill. But that bill ended up making only minor program changes. And that status quo prevailed until the early years of the Reagan administration. DOT Secretary Drew Lewis accepted the need for increased federal highway investment, but had difficulty persuading President Reagan to support the corresponding federal fuel tax increase. To build transit groups’ support for the measure, “He promised to create a mass transit account in the Highway Trust Fund that would receive 20 percent of the revenue from a five cent per gallon tax hike (the ‘transit penny’). This convinced many big city Democrats and liberals to support the measure, despite their concern over the effects of the tax on the poor.” After first promising to veto the bill, after the 1982 elections Reagan changed his mind, and signed the bill after it finally passed, in January 1983.

That bill, the Surface Transportation Assistance Act of 1982 (PL 97-424), established the Mass Transit Account within the Highway Trust Fund, to receive “one-ninth of the amounts appropriated to the Highway Trust Fund” from all federal motor fuels taxes. These changes from 1973 through 1982 represented a shift away from the ‘benefit taxation’ model whereby user fees are levied on system users in proportions that are as close as feasible to the direct benefit that the users get out of the system, Although the votes brought to the table by the transit lobby were the key to getting the biggest ever increase in the ‘user fee’ on drivers and truckers, the addition of mass transit to the Trust Fund made the gas and diesel taxes resemble true ‘user fees’ much less.

Since the 1982 legislation, every subsequent reauthorization of the federal program has led to further departure from the users-pay/users-benefit principle. The most sweeping change occurred with enactment of the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) in 1991. It created two new programs within the Highway Trust Fund, both of which were to be “flexible,” allowing states and metro areas to switch funds from highway to non-highway uses. The Surface Transportation Program (STP, funded at $23.9 billion over six years) allowed highway funds to be spent not merely on transit projects but on bike paths, sidewalks, recreational trails, landscaping and historic preservation—all under the rubric of “transportation enhancements.” The Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Program (CMAQ, funded at $6 billion) funded a wide variety of projects intended in some manner to reduce emissions and/or reduce congestion. All of these acts drew monies away from out Interstate Highway System to pet projects of environmentalists and progressive politicians.

ISTEA also imposed extensive new transportation planning requirements on Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs). This increased complexity of planning infrastructure investments reflects so many goals (air quality, promoting public transit, historic preservation, wetlands protection, environmental justice) that moving people in automobiles effectively and efficiently got lost in the shuffle.

Subsequent reauthorization measures—TEA-21 in 1998 and SAFETEA-LU in 2005—have expanded the extent of “flexibility,” and increased both the number of specific transportation programs and the complexity of transportation planning requirements. As of this writing, the only draft reauthorization bill—the Senate’s 1,500-page 2-year Senate Highway Bill (MAP 21, S. 1813) that will be combined with the student loan extension would complete the transformation of what used to be called the highway program into an overall transportation program, and convert the former highway user taxes into general transportation taxes. The Congressional Research Service’s impartial analysis notes that the bill “reflect[s] policies that favor alternatives to the automobile, such as transit, bicycles, and walking. The CRS analysis notes that “MAP-21 would allow for a major expansion of funding transferability between highway and transit programs and a broadening of direct project funding eligibilities to allow an increase in direct highway funding of transit projects or direct transit funding of highway projects.” Although as of June 2012 MAP-21 was still in conference CRS interprets the wording of the bill to imply that it “could be substantially expanded in dollar terms.” Moreover, it would shift several of the non-highway programs (including Safe Routes to Schools, Transportation Enhancements, Recreational Trails, Scenic Byways and the U.S. Bicycle Route System) into a new FHWA Office of Livability. It would also “specifically require that a portion of funds must be obligated for Transportation Enhancement activities and college student loan interest forgiveness.

Even this is not enough for some opponents of highways and automobiles. The Smart Growth Partnership is promoting a measure called the Complete Streets Act, which would require state DOTs and MPOs to adopt new traffic-calming street designs with full sidewalks and bikeways, if necessary at the expense of traffic lanes. The two before-and-after photos on the Complete Streets website both show four-lane urban streets reduced to two lanes to permit the addition of raised medians, bike lanes and traffic-calming bulb-outs. The “Policy Elements” discussion on the coalition website says the bill would apply to “all agencies and all roads,” though it would allow for exceptions such as Interstate highways. And it would apply to all new roads and road improvement projects. As of June 28^th the Complete Streets option has been chopped from the pending Senate Bill in conference committee, but rest assured they will be back.

All of this perfectly exemplifies the loss of national purpose and focus in the federal transportation program. When legislation in 1956 expanded the federal government’s role in transportation in order to create the Interstate System, the Interstates were a clear national project with national benefits. Traffic calming in Tampa or Boise, or bike paths in Buffalo or Phoenix, do not provide national benefits and should not be federally funded. Paying for them with highway user fees also increasingly abolishes the users-pay/users-benefit principle and increasingly transforms fuel taxes from user fees to transportation taxes paid by one group to provide for benefits for other groups.

The federal transportation program needs to refocus on the national transportation system and leave local projects with local benefits to local governments. At the same time, state and local governments need to quit seeking federal funding for their local projects that are not critical parts of national networks. A crucial part of this is restoring the users-pay/users-benefit principle. If there are non-highway transportation projects with national benefits and scope, they should be paid for with general fund tax revenue, not highway user fees

Over the ensuing years, after the passage of the first Federal Aid Highway Act, a straight forward, simple, and fair means of funding the greatest transportation project in the history of the world, politicians of all stripes have turned our transportation funding into a pork-barrel means of financing their favorite projects and building a massive bureaucracy that has added thousands of public sector union employees to the roosters of federal, state and municipal payrolls.

In the next part of this blog I will cover the need for highway investment and how we can return to the original purpose of the Highway Trust Fund.

Hide Your Stradivarius

Government has no other end, but the preservation of property.” — John Locke

Federal Agents of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service raided factories and offices of Gibson Guitar in Memphis and Nashville on last Wednesday, seizing wood pallets, electronic files and guitars.

Federal authorities are apparently investigating Gibson for the alleged importation and use of illegal wood.

The Wall Street Journal reported last Friday on this highly “aggressive enforcement of overly broad laws to make the company cry uncle.” The Journal reports that the raid this past Wednesday was not the first time that agents of Fish and Wildlife came after Gibson guitars.

Gibson is already fighting a federal lawsuit that stemmed from a 2009 federal raid, but this raid seems to have upped the stakes. As the Journal described the ongoing case:

“The question in the first raid seemed to be whether Gibson had been buying illegally harvested hardwoods from protected forests, such as the Madagascar ebony that makes for such lovely fretboards but with the new raid, the government seems to be questioning whether some wood sourced from India met every regulatory jot and tittle.”

The real issue here seems to be the bureaucratic minutia of federal environmental regulations that increasingly pervade all aspects of American life. Environmental regulations cover your home, your business, and now even your guitar. To lay out the over-regulation in this case, the Journal quoted John Thomas, a law professor at Quinnipiac University, who described the enormous burden of proof on guitar owners to show they aren’t carrying endangered wood:

“”It’s not enough to know that the body of your old guitar is made of spruce and maple: What’s the bridge made of? If it’s ebony, do you have the paperwork to show when and where that wood was harvested and when and where it was made into a bridge? Is the nut holding the strings at the guitar’s headstock bone, or could it be ivory? Even if you have no knowledge—despite Herculean efforts to obtain it—that some piece of your guitar, no matter how small, was obtained illegally, you lose your guitar forever.”

Certainly, the dedication of federal resources for the harassment of a private musical instrument producer reinforces already negative perceptions about the Obama administration’s hyper-regulatory environment.

Now the tale of the Gibson guitar raid — the one focused on the legendary guitar maker’s alleged importation and use of illegal wood — has taken an odd turn. Now CEO Henry Juskiewicz is claiming the Feds told him that some of his problems “would go away” if the company used Madagascar labor.

In an interview with KMJ 105.9 in Fresno, California, Juskiewicz told host Chris Daniel that the government made the point “explicitly:”

CHRIS DANIEL: Mr. Juszkiewicz, did an agent of the US government suggest to you that your problems would go away if you used Madagascar labor instead of American labor?

HENRY JUSZKIEWICZ: They actually wrote that in a pleading.

CHRIS DANIEL: Excuse me?

HENRY JUSKIEWICZ: They actually wrote that in a pleading.

CHRIS DANIEL: That your problems would go away if you used Madagascar labor instead of our labor?

HENRY JUSKIEWICZ: Yes, yeah. They said that explicitly.

That’s an interesting charge. But what is it all about? Well, Juskiewicz is not referencing the latest raid, but rather a similar raid that occurred in 2009 when authorities confiscated ebony fingerboard blanks and accused the company of importing them illegally. According to Juskiewicz, those accusations are false.

Gibson has obtained sworn statements and documents from the Madagascar government and these materials, which have been filed in federal court, show that the wood seized in 2009 was legally exported and that no law has been violated,” the company says in a news release.

So why the comments about Madagascar labor? The latest raid may offer some insight. In the most recent case, the Feds say Gibson violated the U.S. Lacey Act by importing wood from India not finished by Indian workers. But Gibson says the Lacey Act only applies if foreign law has been violated, and it hasn’t been in this case:

“The Federal Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. has suggested that the use of wood from India that is not finished by Indian workers is illegal, not because of U.S. law, but because it is the Justice Department’s interpretation of a law in India. (If the same wood from the same tree was finished by Indian workers, the material would be legal.) This action was taken without the support and consent of the government in India.”

That could then explain the alleged comments by the Feds that Gibson could avoid problems by outsourcing labor to Madagascar: if workers in Madagascar finished the wood then — considering the DOJ’s interpretation of the law — there would be no problem.

It isn't just Gibson that is sweating. Musicians who play vintage guitars and other instruments made of environmentally protected materials are worried the authorities may be coming for them next. According to the Journal article:

“If you are the lucky owner of a 1920s Martin guitar, it may well be made, in part, of Brazilian rosewood. Cross an international border with an instrument made of that now-restricted wood, and you better have correct and complete documentation proving the age of the instrument. Otherwise, you could lose it to a zealous customs agent—not to mention face fines and prosecution.

John Thomas, a law professor at Quinnipiac University and a blues and ragtime guitarist, says "there's a lot of anxiety, and it's well justified." Once upon a time, he would have taken one of his vintage guitars on his travels. Now, "I don't go out of the country with a wooden guitar."

The tangled intersection of international laws is enforced through a thicket of paperwork. Recent revisions to 1900's Lacey Act require that anyone crossing the U.S. border declare every bit of flora or fauna being brought into the country. One is under "strict liability" to fill out the paperwork—and without any mistakes.

It's not enough to know that the body of your old guitar is made of spruce and maple: What's the bridge made of? If it's ebony, do you have the paperwork to show when and where that wood was harvested and when and where it was made into a bridge? Is the nut holding the strings at the guitar's headstock bone, or could it be ivory? "Even if you have no knowledge—despite Herculean efforts to obtain it—that some piece of your guitar, no matter how small, was obtained illegally, you lose your guitar forever," Prof. Thomas has written. "Oh, and you'll be fined $250 for that false (or missing) information in your Lacey Act Import Declaration."

Consider the recent experience of Pascal Vieillard, whose Atlanta-area company, A-440 Pianos, imported several antique Bösendorfers. Mr. Vieillard asked officials at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species how to fill out the correct paperwork—which simply encouraged them to alert U.S. Customs to give his shipment added scrutiny.

There was never any question that the instruments were old enough to have grandfathered ivory keys. But Mr. Vieillard didn't have his paperwork straight when two-dozen federal agents came calling.

Facing criminal charges that might have put him in prison for years, Mr. Vieillard pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of violating the Lacey Act, and was handed a $17,500 fine and three years probation.

Given the risks, why don't musicians just settle for the safety of carbon fiber? Some do—when concert pianist Jeffrey Sharkey moved to England two decades ago, he had Steinway replace the ivories on his piano with plastic.”

Given the risks, why don't musicians just settle for the safety of carbon fiber? Some do—when concert pianist Jeffrey Sharkey moved to England two decades ago, he had Steinway replace the ivories on his piano with plastic.

Still, musicians cling to the old materials. Last year, Dick Boak, director of artist relations for C.F. Martin & Co., complained to Mother Nature News about the difficulty of getting elite guitarists to switch to instruments made from sustainable materials. "Surprisingly, musicians, who represent some of the most savvy, ecologically minded people around, are resistant to anything about changing the tone of their guitars," he said.

You could mark that up to hypocrisy—artsy do-gooders only too eager to tell others what kind of light bulbs they have to buy won't make sacrifices when it comes to their own passions. Then again, maybe it isn't hypocrisy to recognize that art makes claims significant enough to compete with environmentalists' agendas.”

Perhaps the next victims of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will be Itzhak Perlman, Joshua Bell, Anne-Sophie Mutter, or Isaac Stern with their Stradivarius or Guarnerius violins. What will happen if they leave the country with their million dollar violins and then try to reenter? Will they be asked for a certificate of the wood used by the famous 18^th century violin makers? What happens if they do not have the “proper” certification documents? Will the violins be confiscated and the great musicians fined or imprisoned? I doubt Holder would go that far as such a case would become a Cause Célèbre bringing too much attention to his tyrannical and incompetent justice department.

There may be another reason why the Feds are harassing Gibson. The Gibson Guitar Company with facilities in Tennessee, Arkansas, and Montana (all right to work states) is a non-union operation. Perhaps this is Eric Holder’s way of attacking a non-union firm to grant an advantage to one of Obama’s union buddies. Just like Boeing’s plans to open a plant in South Carolina and his support of the union rioters in Wisconsin.

This is yet another example of the tyranny being imposed by Obama’s statist government officials. We have the coercive tyranny of the Department of Education, the Department of Labor through the NLRB, the EPA with its onerous and job killing regulations, and the Department of Justice with its legal actions against Arizona and Alabama over their policies towards illegal immigrants. And now we have the Department of Interior joining the club of tyrants with the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Either way, the raid has been costly on the American business that employs about 2,000 people. According to Juskiewicz, “my personal guess is somewhere in the neighborhood of $2 million to $3 million.”

That’s a lot of money considering the Feds have yet to file charges in the 2009 case.

Given the current economic climate, and the recent Obama administration decision to de-prioritize deportation of illegal immigrants in a way that appears to many as backdoor amnesty, the case against Gibson is raising many eyebrows.