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1949 – President Truman delivers his Fair Deal speech


On January 5, 1949, President Harry S. Truman announces, in his State of the Union address, that every American has a right to expect from our government a fair deal. In a reference to Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal policies, Truman announced his plans for domestic policy reforms …read more

Key Takeaways: The “Fair Deal”

  • The “Fair Deal” was an aggressive agenda for social reform legislation proposed by President Harry Truman in January 1949.
  • Truman had initially referred to this progressive domestic policy reform program as his “21-Points” plan after taking office in 1945.
  • While Congress rejected many of Truman’s Fair Deal proposals, those that were enacted would pave the way for important social reform legislation in the future.

For more information: thoughtco.com

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

On this day … 1/5


WethePeople1477 Swiss troops defeat the forces under Charles the Bold of Burgundy at the Battle of Nancy.
1815 Federalists from all over New England, angered over the War of 1812, draw up the Hartford Convention, demanding several important changes in the U.S. Constitution.
1861 The merchant vessel Star of the West sets sail from New York to Fort Sumter, in response to rebel attack, carrying supplies and 250 troops.
1904 American Marines arrive in Seoul, Korea, to guard the U.S. legation there.
1914 Henry Ford astounds the world as he announces that he will pay a minimum wage of $5 a day and will share with employees $10 million in the previous year’s profits.
1917 Bulgarian and German troops occupy the Port of Braila.
1919 British ships shell the Bolshevik headquarters in Riga.
1920 GOP women demand equal representation at the Republican National Convention in June.
1921 Wagner’s “Die Walkyrie” opens in Paris. This is the first German opera performed in Paris since the beginning of World War I.
1923 The U.S. Senate debates the benefits of Peyote for the American Indian.
1925 Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming is sworn in as the first woman governor in the United States.
1936 Daggha Bur, Ethiopia, is bombed by the Italians.
1942 U.S. and Filipino troops complete their withdrawal to a new defensive line along the base of the Bataan peninsula.
1947 Great Britain nationalizes its coal mines.
1951 Inchon, South Korea, the site of General Douglas MacArthur’s amphibious flanking maneuver, is abandoned by United Nations force to the advancing Chinese Army.
1952 Prime Minister Winston Churchill arrives in Washington to confer with President Harry S. Truman.
1968 U.S. forces in Vietnam launch Operation Niagara I to locate enemy units around the Marine base at Khe Sanh.
1969 President Richard M. Nixon appoints Henry Cabot Lodge as negotiator at the Paris Peace Talks.
1971 President Richard M. Nixon names Robert Dole as chairman of the Republican National Party.
1982 A Federal judge voids a state law requiring balanced classroom treatment of evolution and creationism.
1991 The South Ossetia War (1991-92) begins as Georgian forces enter Tskhinvali, capital of South Ossetia, Georgia.
2005 Eris, largest known dwarf planet in the Solar System is discovered in images taken Oct. 21, 2003, at Palomar Observatory.
~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

LABOR — BUSINESS LOBBYISTS YEARN FOR THE DAYS WHEN BUSH APPOINTEE ELAINE CHAO RAN THE LABOR DEPARTMENT:


The Associated Press …

reports that the first year of Labor Secretary Hilda Solis’ tenure has brought “aggressive moves to boost enforcement and crack down on businesses that violate workplace safety rules have sent employers scrambling to make sure they are following the rules.” In many ways, Solis has reversed the course of the Labor Department that was set by her Bush-era predecessor, Elaine Chao. Solis’ crackdown has business lobbyists yearning for the days when Chao ran the show. “Our members are concerned that the department is shifting its focus from compliance assistance back to more of the ‘gotcha’ or aggressive enforcement first approach,” Karen Harned, executive director of the National Federation of Independent Business’ small business legal center, told BusinessWeek. Keith Smith, a spokesman for the National Association of Manufacturers, explained that his organizations wants “to build upon [Chao’s] progress and recognize what’s working.” The business lobbyists’ reaction to Solis’ tenure is unsurprising, given the fact that her predecessor’s Labor Department spent eight years “walking away from its regulatory function across a range of issues, including wage and hour law and workplace safety.” The Government Accountability Office found that under Chao, the agency “did an inadequate job of investigating complaints by low-wage workers who alleged that their employers were stiffing them for overtime, or failing to pay the minimum wage.” In one survey, 68 percent of low-income workers reported a pay violation in the previous week alone. Solis, meanwhile, has “slapped the largest fine in [Department] history on oil giant BP PLC for failing to fix safety problems after a 2005 explosion at its Texas City refinery.” She is hiring 250 additional wage-theft inspectors, and “started a new program that scrutinizes business records to make sure worker injury and illness reports are accurate.”

thinkprogress.org