Category: Programs

Seeing Eye Dogs

Guide dogs got their start in America when Dorothy Eustis wrote an article for the Saturday Evening Post describing how the Germans were training dogs to help blind veterans from World War I. The article was entitled "The Seeing Eye". A 16-year old boy in Tennessee then wrote her and asked her to train a dog for him. That, according to The Seeing Eye, is the humble origin of the guide dog in America. But the Seeing Eye Foundation also benefited from the fact that it was founded by a breeder named Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge, daughter of Standard Oil's William Avery Rockefeller. Humble origins or not, The Seeing Eye has been training guide dogs for the blind for nearly 80 years.

Apartheid in South Africa

Apartheid became the law in South Africa in 1948, while Roscoe Bartlett was at the University of Maryland. Apartheid was a legal system of racial segregation. The law classified all residents and even visitors to South Africa into racial categories, and stripped black residents of their citizenship. Interracial marriage was prohibited, and even having sex with someone of another race was made a crime. ID cards for adults set forth their racial classification, and the country was partitioned into separate areas for different races. Blacks could not attend white schools, eat at white restaurants or use white restrooms.

Opposition to apartheid grew both within South Africa and internationally. By 1985, the country was virtually in a civil war. The violence was appalling, and the government began to understand that apartheid could not survive.. In 1991, negotiations between the government and the African National Congress had brought an end to apartheid, and just three years later, Nelson Mandela was elected as South Africa's first black president.

Social Security

When Roscoe Bartlett was in elementary school, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed into law the Old Age Pension Act, also known as the Social Security Act of 1935. Since that time, the program has expanded and changed more times than we would care to enumerate here. It seems that every four years Social Security gets kicked around some more. Cut this, expand that, privatize this, end that. Still, it remains an enduring institution.

Today over 55 Million people receive Social Security benefits. It is probably worth noting that Roscoe Bartlett has been eligible to receive Social Security retirement benefits for nearly 30 years. If he would just retire.

The Federal Gas Tax

Back when Roscoe Bartlett was born, not a single politician with Presidential aspirations ever talked about enacting a gas tax holiday. You see, back then, there was no federal gas tax. In fact, it wasn't until the Revenue Act of 1932 was enacted that the federal government levied a tax of one penny on a gallon of gasoline. Of course, in those days, a gallon of gas only cost 15 cents! Today's federal tax of 18.4 cents is actually less, as a percentage of the total cost of gas, than it was in 1932.

By the way, you might like to know where that tax is spent. The tax goes into the federal Highway Trust Fund, which is already more than $3 Billion in the red. The Department of Transportation says that every $1 billion in highway spending creates 34,779 jobs. But who needs jobs when we can cut taxes and increase the deficit?

Minimum Wage

When Roscoe Bartlett was born, there was no such thing as a minimum wage. Sweatshops that paid workers a few pennies an hour were perfectly legal. It wasn't until 1938 that the federal government established a minimum wage of 25 cents per hour. The minimum wage reached a dollar in 1956, and two dollars in 1974.

Of course, Roscoe is opposed to any minimum wage, and regularly votes against any proposals to increase the minimum wage. He believes that wages should be determined solely by the marketplace. Like the "good old days".