I stopped writing about politics because it was driving me crazy. I decided to bury my head in the sand for a while. That is until I heard about the 39 riders on the the Boehner plan to raise the Debt Ceiling. The Bill was intended to a limited increase in the Debt Ceiling and we would have the whole fight again in a few months. The 39 riders were all about destroying regulation, environmental regulation. De-funding the EPA and gutting the Endangered Species Act are prime Republican targets. If the current class of Republicans and Tea Baggers had their way we would return to the pre-progressive Oligarchy when the wealthiest Americans owned everything, child labor laws did not exist, the environment was pillaged and plundered, factories were death traps, and the food was not fit for human consumption. Why would that be? Because regulation is really there to help the poorest and weakest of our society. The bottom 90% benefit the most from governmental protection. If we want a vision of the Republican Plan we need only to look at China with its lung searing pollution, toxic products and toys, unregulated building codes, and lack of personal liberty.
Yes the Republicans want to unfetter industry, the job creators, but they also want to tell you what you can do with your own body and tell you who you can love.
The Republicans always paint Democrats as tax and spend liberals but a quick search of the debt accumulated in my lifetime reveals the most fiscally prudent Presidents have been Johnson, Nixon and Clinton and the most fiscally reckless have been Ford, Reagan, and both Bushes. I left our Carter because he's somewhere in the middle and I left out Obama because were are only part way through his first term. George W. Bush raised the National Debt from 5.7 Trillion to 10.6 Trillion doubling it in 8 years. Under Bush Senior the Debt nearly doubled from 2.6 to 4.1 Trillion. Under Reagen the National Debt went from 900 Billion to 2.7 Trillion increasing by two thirds. Yes the debt has risen under all of the last 9 presidents but Clinton and Johnson were the best at keeping it under control.
If you want to believe the Republican lies and let the gut all environmental protection then go ahead... I'm looking to move to Canada.
Showing posts with label Reagan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Reagan. Show all posts
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Affable Dunce
Last night I watch Eugene Jarecki's documentary Reagan. The director interviews everyone from Reagan's cabinet members and sons to new reporters and biographers. It's a compelling piece of film making and gives probably the most unflinching view of the 40th president yet. From his beginnings as a nearsighted lifeguard who saved 77 lives and a staunch FDR supporter to his rise as the president of the Screen Actors Guild and spokesman for GE; Jarecki shows the evolution of the man but does not shy away from the hard questions surrounding the Iran Contra scandal.
Jarecki paints a clear picture that Reagan must have known about the arms deals but he seems to lay more blame at the feet of Vice President Bush... At once point the real mystery of Reagan (to my mind) was revealed. While many on the left saw him as an affable dunce, his resolve and calculation was entirely, to quote a phrase from another affable dunce, "misunderestimated." It seems the true genius of Reagan was to disarm his opponents with his likability. Even as he was flouting the Constitution and congress, he addresses the American people with a grandfatherly tone of learning from his mistakes. So even as Reagan destroyed the middle class, labor unions, and increased poverty most people liked him...
Bush Sr. never mastered this technique and always appeared petty and paranoid. Clinton was folksy and likable but George W. truly took the folksy lesson to heart. Despite the fact that he was from east coast money and studied at Yale, he was seen as the guy many Americans wanted to share a beer with; Never mind that he did more to gut our civil liberties than any other president.
Unfortunately, Obama is taking the same cues from Reagan. His tone has taken on a decidedly more folksy air since taking office but I don't think folksy enough to disarm his opponents.
Jarecki paints a clear picture that Reagan must have known about the arms deals but he seems to lay more blame at the feet of Vice President Bush... At once point the real mystery of Reagan (to my mind) was revealed. While many on the left saw him as an affable dunce, his resolve and calculation was entirely, to quote a phrase from another affable dunce, "misunderestimated." It seems the true genius of Reagan was to disarm his opponents with his likability. Even as he was flouting the Constitution and congress, he addresses the American people with a grandfatherly tone of learning from his mistakes. So even as Reagan destroyed the middle class, labor unions, and increased poverty most people liked him...
Bush Sr. never mastered this technique and always appeared petty and paranoid. Clinton was folksy and likable but George W. truly took the folksy lesson to heart. Despite the fact that he was from east coast money and studied at Yale, he was seen as the guy many Americans wanted to share a beer with; Never mind that he did more to gut our civil liberties than any other president.
Unfortunately, Obama is taking the same cues from Reagan. His tone has taken on a decidedly more folksy air since taking office but I don't think folksy enough to disarm his opponents.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Last Reagan Rant (maybe)
In a recent article in the Washington Examiner, Bryon York said "Americans live in a nation and world transformed by his [Reagan's] deep belief in liberty, free enterprise, and American exceptionalism..." Let me first say that I love America. I grew up in the Midwest, said the Pledge of Allegiance everyday in school, I know the words to the National Anthem, and I've even shed a tear hearing Lee Greenwood sing 'Proud to be an American.' That being said, I have come to feel that American exceptionalism is just a new fancy name for the same old racist, imperialist bull shit known as Manifest Destiny. I know the 1840's Democrats used to term to justify the expansion America from sea to shining sea... But how can we say we are the manifestation of THE shining city on the hill when we have the blood of 600,000 Iraqis on our hands (maybe more, some estimates are over 1,000,000).
For all of our faults, I still think America is a great nation but the Reagan revisionists and the Sarah Palin nut jobs, who tick of the three core conservative values as: American Exceptionalism, Strong 2nd Amendment rights, and a strong defense (no matter what the cost) are bankrupting this country both financially and morally!
We need to stay on message, help Obama get back to the vision he promoted during his campaign, and put the Reagan revisionists back in their place.
For all of our faults, I still think America is a great nation but the Reagan revisionists and the Sarah Palin nut jobs, who tick of the three core conservative values as: American Exceptionalism, Strong 2nd Amendment rights, and a strong defense (no matter what the cost) are bankrupting this country both financially and morally!
We need to stay on message, help Obama get back to the vision he promoted during his campaign, and put the Reagan revisionists back in their place.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
More Reagan Legacy
It wasn't until 1985, the year Rock Hudson died, that Ronald Reagan first mentioned AIDS in public... and this was in response to a reporter's question. By that time, more than 5600 Americans had died.
In 1988 Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, who looked like a character out of the Old Testament, advocated sex education and mailed over 100 million pamphlets infuriating religious conservatives and gay activist. His strident approach was off putting but at least he was willing to have a frank discussion about AIDS. Unfortunately this frank discussion didn't happen until over 20,000 people were infected nationwide. The Reagans and Bushes were silent and in 1987 Silence=Death became the mantra of Act Up.
By 1996 The AIDS Quilt covered the entire National Mall
Today 33 million people are infected worldwide and more than 25 million people have died. If Reagan had acted in those early days would it have made a difference? Yes!
Monday, February 7, 2011
Sunday, February 6, 2011
5 Reagan Myths
I haven't posted in a long time because doing the research was causing a flare up in my acid reflux... BUT this is too good to pass up.
From the Washington Post
I'm copying most of the article but adding my own editorial take.
1. Reagan was one of our most popular presidents.
It's true that Reagan is popular more than two decades after leaving office. A CNN/Opinion Research poll last month gave him the third-highest approval rating among presidents of the past 50 years, behind John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton. But Reagan's average approval rating during the eight years that he was in office was nothing spectacular - 52.8 percent, according to Gallup. Read that! Third behind Bill Clinton
In 1982, as the national unemployment rate spiked above 10 percent, Reagan's approval rating fell to 35 percent. At the height of the Iran-Contra scandal, nearly one-third of Americans wanted him to resign.
In the early 1990s, shortly after Reagan left office, several polls found even the much-maligned Jimmy Carter to be more popular. Only since... lobbying efforts by conservatives... has his popularity steadily climbed.
2. Reagan was a tax-cutter.
Certainly, Reagan's boldest move as president was his 1981 tax cut, a sweeping measure that slashed the marginal rate on the wealthiest Americans from 70 percent to 50 percent. The legislation also included smaller cuts in lower tax brackets, as well as big breaks for corporations and the oil industry. But the following year, as the economy was mired in recession and the federal deficit was spiraling out of control, even groups such as the Business Roundtable lobbied Reagan to raise taxes. And he did: The Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982 was, at the time, the largest peacetime tax increase in U.S. history.
Ultimately, Reagan signed measures that increased federal taxes every year of his two-term presidency except the first and the last.
3. Reagan was a hawk.
Long before he was elected president, Reagan predicted that the Soviet Union would collapse because of communism's inherent corruption and inefficiency. His forecast proved accurate, but it is not clear that his military buildup moved the process forward. Though Reagan expanded the U.S. military and launched new weapons programs, his real contributions to the end of the Cold War were his willingness to negotiate arms reductions with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and his encouragement of Gorbachev as a domestic reformer. Indeed, a USA Today poll taken four days after the fall of the Berlin Wall found that 43 percent of Americans credited Gorbachev, while only 14 percent cited Reagan.
4. Reagan shrank the federal government.
Reagan famously declared at his 1981 inauguration that "in the present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." This rhetorical flourish didn't stop the 40th president from increasing the federal government's size by every possible measure during his eight years in office.
Federal spending grew by an average of 2.5 percent a year, adjusted for inflation, while Reagan was president. The national debt exploded, increasing from about $700 billion to nearly $3 trillion. Many experts believe that Reagan's massive deficits not only worsened the recession of the early 1990s but doomed his successor, George H.W. Bush, to a one-term presidency by forcing him to abandon his "no new taxes" pledge.
The number of federal employees grew from 2.8 million to 3 million under Reagan, in large part because of his buildup at the Pentagon. (It took the Democratic administration of President Bill Clinton to trim the employee rolls back to 2.7 million.) Reagan also abandoned a campaign pledge to get rid of two Cabinet agencies - Energy and Education - and added a new one, Veterans Affairs.
5. Reagan was a conservative culture warrior.
Reagan's contributions to the culture wars of the 1980s were largely rhetorical and symbolic. Although he published a book in 1983 about his staunch opposition to abortion (overlooking the fact that he had legalized abortion in California as governor in the late 1960s), he never sought a constitutional ban on abortion. In fact, Reagan began the odd practice of speaking to anti-abortion rallies by phone instead of in person - a custom continued by subsequent Republican presidents. He also advocated prayer in public schools in speeches, but never in legislation.
In 1981, Reagan unintentionally did more than any other president to prevent the Roe v. Wade abortion ruling from being overturned when he appointed Sandra Day O'Connor to the Supreme Court. O'Connor mostly upheld abortion rights during her 25 years as a justice...
From the time I was 16 to 24 I lived under the Reagan regime and I can't say I thought much of him then or now. I am truly baffled as to why he has become the hero of the right. Especially when you closely look at his record. But, when looking at the mythology taught in schools about the Founding Fathers; the Reagan Myth seems to be more firming grounded in idealism than realism.
From the Washington Post
I'm copying most of the article but adding my own editorial take.
1. Reagan was one of our most popular presidents.
It's true that Reagan is popular more than two decades after leaving office. A CNN/Opinion Research poll last month gave him the third-highest approval rating among presidents of the past 50 years, behind John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton. But Reagan's average approval rating during the eight years that he was in office was nothing spectacular - 52.8 percent, according to Gallup. Read that! Third behind Bill Clinton
In 1982, as the national unemployment rate spiked above 10 percent, Reagan's approval rating fell to 35 percent. At the height of the Iran-Contra scandal, nearly one-third of Americans wanted him to resign.
In the early 1990s, shortly after Reagan left office, several polls found even the much-maligned Jimmy Carter to be more popular. Only since... lobbying efforts by conservatives... has his popularity steadily climbed.
2. Reagan was a tax-cutter.
Certainly, Reagan's boldest move as president was his 1981 tax cut, a sweeping measure that slashed the marginal rate on the wealthiest Americans from 70 percent to 50 percent. The legislation also included smaller cuts in lower tax brackets, as well as big breaks for corporations and the oil industry. But the following year, as the economy was mired in recession and the federal deficit was spiraling out of control, even groups such as the Business Roundtable lobbied Reagan to raise taxes. And he did: The Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982 was, at the time, the largest peacetime tax increase in U.S. history.
Ultimately, Reagan signed measures that increased federal taxes every year of his two-term presidency except the first and the last.
3. Reagan was a hawk.
Long before he was elected president, Reagan predicted that the Soviet Union would collapse because of communism's inherent corruption and inefficiency. His forecast proved accurate, but it is not clear that his military buildup moved the process forward. Though Reagan expanded the U.S. military and launched new weapons programs, his real contributions to the end of the Cold War were his willingness to negotiate arms reductions with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and his encouragement of Gorbachev as a domestic reformer. Indeed, a USA Today poll taken four days after the fall of the Berlin Wall found that 43 percent of Americans credited Gorbachev, while only 14 percent cited Reagan.
4. Reagan shrank the federal government.
Reagan famously declared at his 1981 inauguration that "in the present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." This rhetorical flourish didn't stop the 40th president from increasing the federal government's size by every possible measure during his eight years in office.
Federal spending grew by an average of 2.5 percent a year, adjusted for inflation, while Reagan was president. The national debt exploded, increasing from about $700 billion to nearly $3 trillion. Many experts believe that Reagan's massive deficits not only worsened the recession of the early 1990s but doomed his successor, George H.W. Bush, to a one-term presidency by forcing him to abandon his "no new taxes" pledge.
The number of federal employees grew from 2.8 million to 3 million under Reagan, in large part because of his buildup at the Pentagon. (It took the Democratic administration of President Bill Clinton to trim the employee rolls back to 2.7 million.) Reagan also abandoned a campaign pledge to get rid of two Cabinet agencies - Energy and Education - and added a new one, Veterans Affairs.
5. Reagan was a conservative culture warrior.
Reagan's contributions to the culture wars of the 1980s were largely rhetorical and symbolic. Although he published a book in 1983 about his staunch opposition to abortion (overlooking the fact that he had legalized abortion in California as governor in the late 1960s), he never sought a constitutional ban on abortion. In fact, Reagan began the odd practice of speaking to anti-abortion rallies by phone instead of in person - a custom continued by subsequent Republican presidents. He also advocated prayer in public schools in speeches, but never in legislation.
In 1981, Reagan unintentionally did more than any other president to prevent the Roe v. Wade abortion ruling from being overturned when he appointed Sandra Day O'Connor to the Supreme Court. O'Connor mostly upheld abortion rights during her 25 years as a justice...
From the time I was 16 to 24 I lived under the Reagan regime and I can't say I thought much of him then or now. I am truly baffled as to why he has become the hero of the right. Especially when you closely look at his record. But, when looking at the mythology taught in schools about the Founding Fathers; the Reagan Myth seems to be more firming grounded in idealism than realism.
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