Speaker of the House John A. Boehner started out the article with a disappointing yet untrue remark: “when the economy grows, it’s not because of a new government program or spending initiative… it’s time to leave that era behind.” Who else can the people lean on when the hard time comes, especially in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression? Just by a glance, one can conjecture that Boehner may reluctantly be an advocate of “laissez-faire” or free-market economics where the least governmental intervention in the market is the norm. But please remember what “laissez-faire” did to us back in the 30’s? Hoover’s “laissez-faire” policy was a perfect by-the-book example of classical Keynesian economics, yet it did not work. In fact, the American economy dove so deeply into the trough of the economic sine graph due to “laissez-faire” that it took us more than 10 years to get back to the grace of the market had it not for the intervention of New York’s own Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Mike Powell’s article once again debunks Boehner’s line

As an international student studying in New York, my knowledge of the city prior to my arrival was based on movie and novels. One fact pattern that always pops up is that the Bronx is not the most ideal of places to visit or to live in due to lines of old pre-war buildings with bullet-holed decorations. Having lived in New York City for over 5 years now and having visited the Bronx so many times, I have had chances to refute that old pattern that no longer holds truth in the present New York. Yet from the article, it is still amusing to learn about the past Bronx that was “the once broken beauty” and the vivid description of the borough from the narrative of the teenage Mike Powell. The kids drove through “ghost canyons of burnt-out buildings, saw mattresses and old sinks and tubs piled atop hills of rubble,” encountered drug dealers who mistook the white kids in a Buick as “boys in search of a fix.” I have learned of the success of housing authority in New York but their accomplishment in turning around such wreckage like the past Bronx and making it “livable” again cannot be overlooked, absolutely not. It is fascinating to learn about what the government has done for the borough, from Mayor Koch to today’s Bloomberg. The Bronx is “the greatest public rebuilding achievement since WWII” thanks to those administrations and a standing example of how terribly wrong John Boehner was in making such a depressive and assuming statement.

It was something of a peaceful sigh that I hear from the author, during the narrative of his trip around Melrose with “men in white fedoras playing dominoes under umbrellas” and the old lady’s statement “Oh my God, it was the ghetto.” Not anymore it wasn’t, all thanks to the government. My hope of our present government is somewhat restored, yet the author just had to say “the era of government may be in danger,” making me reexamining my own thinking. We will see.