The "Eat Your Peas" Doctrine

It sounds so sensible, and well, adult.

Not a jarring phrase—as, say, "Shock Doctrine" might be.

The president's choice of "peas" is interesting, as poking around the Library of Congress FSA/OWI archive suggests.

That's where I found a series of 1939 photos by Dorothea Lange; among them— FSA caption:

Migrant agricultural worker's family. Seven hungry children. Mother aged thirty-two. Father is a native Californian. Destitute in pea picker's camp, Nipomo, California, because of the failure of the early pea crop. These people had just sold their tent in order to buy food. Of the twenty-five hundred people in this camp most of them were destitute.

It's a different view of a family more familiar here—
Digby posted this interview with Michael Hudson:"Guns, Finance and Butter - Finance Is the New Mode of Warfare" [transcipt here].

Regarding "negotiation" over the debt ceiling "crisis," Digby quotes Hudson—

It’s a good cop-bad cop charade. The Republicans are playing the role of the bad cop. Their script says: "You cannot raise taxes on anybody. No progressive income tax, no closing of tax loopholes for special interests, not even prosecutions for tax fraud. And we can get a lot of money back into the economy if we give a tax holiday to the companies and individuals that have been keeping their money offshore. Let's free the wealthy from taxes to help us recover."

Mr. Obama can turn around and pretend to be the good cop. "Hey, boys, let me at least do something. I'm willing to cut back Social Security. I'm willing to take over what was George Bush's program. I share your worries about the budget deficit. We have to balance it, and I've already appointed a Deficit Reduction Commission to prepare public opinion for my cutbacks in the most popular programs. But you have to let me get a little bit of revenue somewhere."

In the end the Republicans will make some small token concessions, but they'll get their basic program. Mr. Obama will have sold out his constituency.

"The problem is, how can Mr. Obama move to the right of where George Bush stood? The only way he can do this is for the Republicans to move even further to the right. So the Republicans are accommodating him by pushing the crazy wing of their party forward, the Tea Party. Michelle Bachman, Eric Cantor and their colleagues are coming with such an extremist, right-wing attitude that it gives Mr. Obama room to move way to the right as he triangulates, depicting himself a the less crazy alternative: "Look. I'm better than these guys are."

There's very much more, in Hudson's analysis of financial class warfare against all other segments of societies, and the havoc it has just begun to wreak internationally.

As to Hudson's domestic forecast:

... We're going into a depression that is unnecessary – except to drive down wage levels and strip away government obligations to pay for Social Security, Medicare and other public programs. This will enable the government to get rid of what remains of progressive taxation on the higher wealth and income brackets.

In other words: Republican policies, promoted by a nominally Democratic president elected with a mandate for change—
just not of this particular brand.

But, maybe Obama is on to something with those peas.

Eat 'em or pick 'em: it's been done before.

More photos from Lange in 1939, with FSA captions:

Pea picker camp. This family had been farm owners in Oklahoma, lost their farm and for the last three years "have been draggin' our children around California. We're a have-to case."
Calipatria, Imperial Valley, California.

Why should Americans become too soft, when they can experience a character-building return to the old days?

Migrant pea pickers on the road. California.

Like pea eating, pea picking is a healthy activity.

Just think of it: life in the open air, communing with nature...

Migrant pea pickers camp in the rain. California.

This could be a bracing lesson in Back to Basics...

Pea pickers in California. "Mam, I've picked peas from Calipatria to Ukiah. This life is simplicity boiled down." California.

And a big bonus: plenty of fresh air for the youngsters.

Children of migratory pea pickers in Brawley camp. California.