How was Reagan as governor?

[fujiyama]

I've heard all the stories about him as president, but I was wondering how bad he was as governor?

I'm taking the opportunity to learn the truth about him and his administration...meaning I'm avoiding all TV coverage of him.

[bemildred]

1. George W. Bush-like, he trashed the place. nt

[HEyHEY]

Hey, it ain't a party till someone breaks the jacuzzi

:eyes:

[bemildred]

11. I just remember being dumbfounded when my well-run native

state suddenly started having mentally ill people wandering
around and various education and welfare programs were shut
down. And then there were the various police riots, my brother
still likes to talk about the taking of the Bank of America in
Isla Vista, someone else is posting stuff about events in
Berkeley. Prop 13, one of the biggest disasters in the
history of the state was primarily a Reagan legacy, although
Jerry Brown contributed by not addressing the issue of fair
taxation.

[HEyHEY]

13. They pulled that same crap with putting the mentally ill on the street

In BC. THen complained about all the homeless people..it never ends

[bemildred]

16. Yeah, I watched some of it.

My Dad lived in Victoria. I used to go visit in the 70s & 80s,
and it was just such a gorgeous, clean, well-run, civilized
place, and then all the Thatcherite assholes came in and started
spouting the same crap Raygun was feeding us down here and trying
to trash anything they could get away with. He would get
really annoyed at the BC politicians. Still, you are better
off than down here, just keep voting the bastards out.

[Sirveri]

2. Well lets see

I wasn't alive at the time, but from the one effect I'm STILL feeling is when he decided to drastically cut funding for the mental institutions. So now we have a whole bunch of crazy homeless people roaming the streets of San Francisco. All because the governor was too cheap of a bastard to pay to house them. No, better to let the pyschotics onto the streets to panhandle and assault random bystanders.

[Sapphocrat]

8. I was very much alive at the time...

...and you've got the picture to a T, Sirveri: State hospital funding cuts = homeless people in need of care wandering the streets three decades later.

However: 1) The problem is hardly limited to San Francisco, and 2) I don't feel "assaulted" so much as I do deeply saddened and powerless.

[Sirveri]

19. Yeah, I live in the Bay area

so I kinda get centric about SF. Though I've driven thru Oakland and seen plenty there as well.

[Sandpiper]

27. If you visit downtown SD

You'll see plenty of them wandering the streets and sleeping on the sidewalks there too.

[Piperay]

34. Los Angeles is full of them too

even in the suburbs you find the mentally ill panhandling and laying on sidewalks. :-(

[Art_from_Ark]

30. My wife was almost assaulted by one of those crazies

San Francisco, March 1984. My wife and I were walking along Market Street when all of a sudden some crazy freak intentionally rammed into my wife-- went out of his way-- and yelled "What you running into me for, bitch?" as he reached into his pocket for something. Fortunately, there was a police officer nearby.

[question everything]

46. Isn't it ironic that he cut funding for mental institutions

and ended up being a mental patient himself?

[NMDemDist2]

3. he was AWFUL

gutted the best higher education system in the world, closed mental hospitals and send thousands of mentally ill into and onto the streets with no homes, no skills and no medications


he SUCKED as Governor

[JI7]

4. he did some good on gay rights and abortion rights

[NMDemDist2]

7. oh yeah?? what did he do well on gay or abortion rights?

may I suggest the movie "And the Band Played On"

[Zynx]

42. He signed the most liberal abortion law in the country.

[NMDemDist2]

45. He didn't back it for long....

Messrs. Reagan and Hyde were among the first Republicans to have strong misgivings. Within a year after signing the abortion bill, Mr. Reagan told political writer Lou Cannon that he'd never have done so if he'd been more experienced in office. It was "the only time as governor or president that Reagan acknowledged a mistake on major legislation," Mr. Cannon writes in his new book, "Governor Reagan: His Rise to Power." By 1980, Mr. Reagan was campaigning for president in favor of banning abortion in all but rare cases. http://www.opinionjournal.com/ac/?id=110004264

[cally]

5. A few things

He called in the National Guard at Berkeley. The anti-war protests would have been peaceful but he chose to make it violent.

He released all the mentally ill folks to the streets. They used to have institutional care when needed but they ended up on the streets.

[fujiyama]

14. I saw a few minutes

of a documentary on the riots and protests in Berkeley a while back.

I also remember being enraged by it. However, I'm not too familiar with the events. Can someone explain it?

[cally]

18. Not tonight. I'll either post or send you a PM

I was a young teen living with conservative parents at the time. Much of memory is based on snippets from those there that I met when I went to Berkeley. The student protests were sweeping the country. Berkeley was a center of it. It morphed into free speech protests. I need to check with folks involved.

[Hepburn]

17. No fucking shit - the same with Isla Vista

I was at UCSB when the bank went up. Man, then the freaking National Guard all over the place. Like a fucking police state. Asshole!!

[Sandpiper]

6. Put the mentally infirm on the streets

If you ever come to Cali and see a mentally incompetent homeless person wandering the street and muttering to themself, you can thank the former governor.

[goclark]

23. Found a mentally disturbed man

sitting on the fence in someones back yard after Ronnie let them out of the hospitals. I was horrified to read in the paper during that time that the man was howling like a wolf.


Reagan was not kind to the Mentally ill or those that were homeless in California.

It was, " let them eat cake" unless you were one of his rich buddies.

Seems like I also remember a scandal of some kind involving his buddy Bloomingdale and some sex parties. Of course that was silently put to bed. That is the way of the Rethugs.

[King_Crimson]

44. Rest assured...

it wasn't me!:evilgrin:

[rumguy]

9. I believe he wracked up a huge debt as gov. too

[madrchsod]

10. my mom and dad`s republican friends hated him

he gassed the Berkley protesters-rubber stamped the huge amounts of social welfare spending....

[seabeyond]

12. i lived in calif then, was too young, my mom though

hated him. so didnt want him as president, said he would run up a deficit like he did in calif. and calif never had deficits. a democrat, brown i believe had to fix it after reagan. my mom really didnt like the guyy

[Hepburn]

15. Fucking Asshole, Creep, Bastard - And those were his good points!

In the history of the UC - always from its inception it had been tuition free - the bastard imposed tuition. That pissed me off. It was NOT that I could not afford it, but that the free higher education system in Calif was a pride and joy....until that bastard.

And...the worst....closing the mental health facilities. He seemed to hit on the groups and people who could least defend themselves and screwed them over.

Whadda fucking creep! :mad:

[Sirveri]

21. Yeah, follow it up with Arnie hiking all the rates across the board

and now I can't afford it myself! He chucked up the community college rates like a extra 16-20$ a unit. Fucking rich assholes, raise the rates for everyone, then outsource the job they're training to get. That way your kids have no debt cause you're rich and you're influential and can get them a job. Drive around all day long in Burlingame in your frickin' benz. GAH!!!!!

[TexasMexican]

20. Isnt he partially responsible for California's horrible gun laws.

Didnt he sign some some of California's gun laws into effect because of the Black Panthers.

Its true what they say, gun laws are racist.

[Sirveri]

22. The main proponents behind CA gun laws are Democrats.

Boxer I believe is the really die-hard anti-gun freak. It's the one plank of the party that I hate the most.

[TexasMexican]

26. I feel sorry for people who live under Cali's gun laws.

I was watching COPS the other day and this cop pulled over some guy because he thought it was a "suspicious vehicle" because it had pulled out of the parking lot of a business that had been closed down for a while.

It turned out to be a guy and his wife where were travelling into town to visit some family or something and he had pulled into the parking lot to get something out for his wife.

The cop took a hard look into the windows of the car with his flashlight looking for something illegal to bust the guy on, in the backseat were some pillows and blankets.

It turned out the guy had an expired registration, so he probably would have gotten a ticket or something, but before writting him up the cop asked for permission to search the car, which the guy allowed (which was his own fault, never consent to have your car searched).

Anyways before the cop started searching the guy told the cop that he had a loaded .22 rifle in the back seat for protection because some people had been bothering him.

Needless to say the cop arrested the guy, confiscated his weapon, and had the vehicle towed away, all over a .22 rifle. Then the cop says to the camera something to the effect of "I always feel good when we get guns off the street."

That comment made me wish I could slap someone. I really felt sorry for the guy and his wife for having to be put through that bullshit over something that would not be illegal here in my own state.

[Sirveri]

28. Yeah they're pretty harsh here.

I'm a big civil liberties fan and you know what, owning guns is a civil liberty. Being able to order service from a prostitute is a civil liberty. Being able to imbibe alcohol or do drugs is a civil liberty. They're all under the same umbrella, sure I'll go ahead and apply sphere of influence rule to guns. Weapons designed to cause mass indescriminant casualties probably shouldn't be on the street. Like Artillery with HE shells, or flame throwers. But otherwise it's fair game. Or at least it should be.

[TexasMexican]

29. I agree completely.

[Forkboy]

32. huh?

yesterday you said you can't feel sorry for 6 million Jews being dead because you didn't know them,now you're saying you feel sorry for people in Cali because they can't have the guns the want?

What kind of warped fucking logic is that?

:wtf: over?

and on edit-I also forgot to mention that you said that to you AIDS "isn't really an issue".You have some seriously messed up priorities.

[TexasMexican]

37. I feel sorry for the individual...

because I saw part of his story.

[Forkboy]

38. But you've never seen a story about the Holocaust or AIDS huh?

sure,I believe that :freak:

[TexasMexican]

39. Sure I have.

Yeah the holocaust was fucked up and Nazi Germany got what it deserved.

I'm sorry that you feel somehow wronged because at this moment I'm unable to mourn the several million people who died during WWII.

You seem to think that I should feel mournfull of everyone that has ever died, however I'm just not feeling it right now.

How about you mourn the people that you want to, and I'll mourn the people that I want to and we will just let it go at that.

[genius]

24. He destroyed education and mental health in CA.

California used to be first in education. Guess where we wound up after Reagan.


He closed mental hospitals and said the relatives could take care of the sick patients.

[MnFats]

25. Two highly illustrative comments by this radical lunatic...

we should return to this because I'm afraid some who went to bed will miss it....
when antiwar protests erupted on college campuses, as they did all over the country....Reagan responded with unparallelled brutality...he said:
"If it takes a bloodbath, let's get it over with. No more appeasement."

I did not make that up. He was prepared to accept a "bloodbath" on California campuses in order to shut up antiwar protesters.

Later, when the crypto-nutty SLA kidnapped patty Hearst and demanded that Daddy Hearst give away something like $5 million in free food to poor neighborhoods, the TV stations all had tape of poor folks walking away from trucks with boxes of free food.
said Reagan:
"There's always hope for an outbreak of Botulism."
um, excuse me sir, that would only kill the poor people who accepted the food, not the kidnappers. But maybe you DID realize that.....

what a complete and total asshole. I fucking cried the night he beat a decent and honorable man. Fuck him.

[VOX]

31. Gov. Reagan had Clark Kerr, distinguished UC president, fired in 1967...

and he double-teamed on Kerr with the FBI. With Reagan's death, there will no doubt be some attempts to name some University of California structures and landmarks on the campuses after Reagan, which will ignite more controversy, as Reagan was no friend to UC -- ever.

Kerr died last December, BTW.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0610-05.htm
Published on Monday, June 10, 2002 by the San Francisco Chronicle
Ex-UC Chief Calls FBI Actions Despicable
<snip>
Kerr gave his first public response to a Chronicle report that revealed wide-ranging and unlawful covert operations at the university involving the head of the CIA and Gov. Ronald Reagan.

Kerr, 91, a renowned educator who led UC to academic excellence, also said that the FBI harmed the integrity of the university by intruding into campus affairs and exacerbating internal disputes.

"What bothers me is that the FBI would want to go so far outside its proper jurisdiction and get involved in the internal affairs of the university," Kerr said.
<snip>
An FBI spokesman had previously declined to comment on The Chronicle story. Edwin Meese III, who was Gov. Reagan's chief of staff, had said that to his knowledge the FBI gave Reagan no special help, and the bureau's contacts with him were proper.

The documents show that the FBI:
-- Sent the White House a report on Kerr containing allegations that he was disloyal -- even though the bureau knew they were false.
-- Schemed with then-CIA Chief John McCone to leak derogatory reports about students and faculty to Edwin Pauley, a senior member of the university's Board of Regents, who used them in his efforts to oust Kerr.
-- Gave a secret briefing about alleged subversion on campus to Gov. Reagan, who had vowed to fire Kerr during his 1966 campaign for governor.
Kerr was dismissed by UC's governing Board of Regents on Jan. 20, 1967, at the first board meeting attended by the newly elected Reagan.

Kerr acknowledged that by then some regents and Reagan were angry with him because of continuing student protests at UC Berkeley.

"Then the FBI came in and added some fuel to the flames," he said. "What happened might have happened anyway, but it was more likely with FBI support."
<snip>

[Piperay]

33. He sucked. nt

:puke:

[xxqqqzme]

35. as bad as he was as president

he was worse as governor. I was in college when he raised the rates and cut funding 2 education. Those rethugs hate education.

[WhoDoYouTrust]

36. My friend moved to Oregon to get away from him.

She would call the White House every Saturday night. Pure hatred!

[Disturbed]

40. He was an Asshole!

he was AWFUL

gutted the best higher education system in the world, closed mental hospitals and send thousands of mentally ill into and onto the streets with no homes, no skills and no medications

he SUCKED as Governor

Theory: Rethugs only want rich people to attend College.

[Sugarbleus]

41. yes, he did all the things

mentioned in these posts and more. He cut funding for some cancer research programs, used biblical quotes to put down the aids sufferers at the time. He cut and gutted more valuable programs than you can shake a stick at.

He cut education programs and basically tried to break up unions. He called single women with children "welfare queens". Later, Ron Dellums wanted to use sanctions on the South Africans over apartheid and wanted Mandella released; Reagan vetoed it; he called Nelson Mandella something akin to a terrorist. The continued efforts of many here found the way to get the job done anyway. Thank Goodness!
Reagan could go to white Europe and yell 'tear down that wall' but he was a racist to the core in terms of South Africa. Oh yeah, built more prisons too.

During his time as Gov of Calif., I found my job (the first one I knew of in the area) go OFFSHORE! Yep, it all started in the 80's.
As far as I'm concerned, Ron was the opening salvo, in the flesh, for the neocon movement we have today. Life as we came to know and enjoy it just started to fall apart under his leadership. "Anything to save a buck for Uncle Sam"...so that Uncle Sam could spend it on pet projects of the neocons-----military build up for one. Mostly, he just hated that anyone should give a damn about those on the bottom of the totem pole. It was everyman/woman for themselves. He didn't seem to give a damn about the environment either

Trickle down economics started in Calif. It was great for the investment class and the wealthy. It was hell for the rest of us trying to keep body and soul together.
He charmed everyone with his grandfatherly smile and charm. Maybe they should give him an Oscar to take with him to eternity. :P

[Snellius]

43. He kindly stationed armed national guard right outside my door

Wasn't that thoughtful of him? Right outside my cosy, dopey, hippie Berkeley pad. He was protecting me from the "unAmerican, unwashed, anarchist storm-troopers" marching in the streets trying to prevent me from doing my patriotic duty of going to Vietnam to die for my country. Just like our governor. He fought many battles. He was in many war films. Just like his friend and model John Wayne. He even started talking like him. (Some say Wayne was gay. But we didn't talk about that)

I always liked the way the governor would say cute little things like "If you've seen one redwood, you've seen them all". Or give the finger to a heckler when no one was looking. Except the ubiquitous Berkeley Barb guy with a camera who caught some "special moments." Our governor was wonderful. He moved out of the Governor's Mansion, the White House of California, because it didn't have a pool. He cut our horrible taxes which were wasted on the best educational and highway systems in the world (He raised them back up again soon after. But we don't talk about that). But he definitely raised our tuition. And got "commie" kids killed on Telegraph Ave. He gave us lots of "law and order", as it was called back then. Oh, he was a wonderful governor. He was from Hollywood, you know.