A pioneering experiment in progressiveness, the story of Arthurdale;
Delivered late and vastly over budget,[11] Arthurdale displayed all the characteristics of a boondoggle, a political creature that “puts people over profits” and is widely familiar to all Americans, circa 2007. The pre-fabricated houses, even when it was known that they were unsuitable for West Virginia winter and wouldn’t fit their foundations, were still built but then torn to pieces and remodeled. An article in the August 1934 Saturday Evening Post speaks of how chimneys were built eight feet away from their houses’ sides, after which the houses were reconstructed to meet the chimneys.
From padded payrolls, to houses stuffed with goodies (“most Arthurdale families found their new homes lavish,” Hoffman 2001, p. 44), to the importing of rhododendrons (a flower native to the Arthurdale area) from sixty miles away (just to leave them to rot), to wells being drilled at great expense and then abandoned, the project was every bit the financial disaster that one should expect when giving management over obscene sums of cash to people who believe “profit” is a curse word.
Even Mrs. Roosevelt herself noted “much money was spent, perhaps some of it unwisely,” and if you substitute “perhaps some” with the far more accurate “all,” she would have been spot on.
A great read.
(h/t reader Daniel Ryan)
Sounds like Starnesville (or whatever it was called) in Atlas Shrugged.
And don’t forget, Elinor is Hillary Clinton’s idol.
ER was proof that the raod to hell is paved with good intentions. The quintessential dingbat.
sounds like a template for Nfld or the whole east coast for that matter, boardwalks to nowhere, firehalls without roads or fire engines. all with that famous Danny Williams handshake , palm up.
when you think of it Danny Williams is the biggest winner of all the whiners. Nfld with all the idle time had “nuttin else to do boy ,’cept watch dat der cable teevee” and Danny “bless ‘is ‘eart , cished in , ma dear. he did too”
Compare and contrast with Levittown, Lefties. Built 20 years later by Mr. Levit and became the model by which all subsequent developments are measured. Not a nickel or a minute wasted.
Well. It’s nice to know the lefties haven’t evolved mentally in 73 years.Just think how much crap they could think up if their brains actually worked,and weren’t filled with sugarplums and the Easter Bunny Utopia!
One has to love the leftard practice of never learning from one’s own mistakes. One does not have to look very far to see the mess of subsidized housing. Sure, some of the smaller projects work well, but the majority of the larger ones build in the 60’s and 70’s are in bad shape. Crime. drugs, violence, teen pregnancy, very bad indeed. I know what I speak, as I grew up in projects in Ottawa, Oshawa and Toronto. The underground economy alone is something to behold. The poor were corralled into these ghettos by “enlightened” moonbat idiots, and the result is nothing short of criminal. Then there is the NIMBY displayed by the dipper crowd. We actually had a NDP MPP complaining, and working to stop a project on a piece of land adjoining his property. Moonbats, dippers and libranos should just stay clear of the housing business. They screw it up every time!
Over in Quebeckistan, those things come with a permanent government job, and a ‘singing fountain’ in your backyard swamp.
Great tip: Daniel Ryan. This is news to me.
“The itch to uplift … the itch to control”.
Yup, and longer-lasting than 7 years.
My favourite phrase for these folks: HPPs (Higher Purpose Persons) … chuckling as I type it.
Good points above: Hillary Clinton! … who BTW is proposing a public programme to bail out homebuyers with sub-prime mortgages in default!
Also good analogy via a vis Newfieland and the rest of Atlantic Canada.
Is HILLARY POTTER talking with her ghost again?
I didn’t really mind ER before, but I’ll despise her now, if it’ll make me a better SDA’er.
This is also exactly like the native reservations across the country. The same mentality, building homes on poor land in the middle of nowhere and wondering why businesses wont move there and provide the non-governmental jobs. Can’t be bothered maintaining the water purification equipment, no problem we’ll rebuild the village, it will be different next time!
The fact that “the remoteness of Arthurdale from suitable transportation and markets made [it] especially unattractive as a manufacturing site” should have been plainly apparent to anyone with an IQ high enough to gain admission to our Ivy League schools, yet it made no dent in the heads of those involved. Like the shortage of lifeboats on the Titanic, the choice of Arthurdale’s location was a blunder of monumental proportions.
As long as lefties have access to other people’s hard-earned money they will repeat these same stupid social boondoggles over and over again, they never learn. After the group hug followed by the expensive failure of the project they wander away, never accepting responsibility, blaming those damn capitalists who can’t see our higher purpose.
maintenance has never been a first nations forte. it may be genetically implanted from a life of a nomad. the arabs are the same.
strangely their vocal music is similar too, no consonants
@Me No Dhimmi: I was glad to, in part for patriotic reasons. There’s no sense in blaming Canada as “Boondoggle Land” when the United States government is subject to the same phenomenon.
Speaking of blame, kingstontard hit the nail on the head, although the problem is a more subtle one for “Boondoggleers:” they don’t even know they’ve made a mistake. Sad to say, but thorough book learning – including taking careful notes from the “best” books – tends to inculcate a sense of certitude that turns into stubbornness when the concrete situation doesn’t co-operate with the textbooks (so to speak.)
Thanks for the mention, Kate.