The Reagan Myth

[srpantalonas]

This week, well-informed liberal politicians who know better will pay their respects to Ronald Reagan, saying things like "he always did things with a smile", or "he charmed America" and other "look! over there!" distractions. Telling the reality of Reagan's America this week is viewed as political death: he was a popular president with about half the country, and at least half the swing vote. But I don't feel quite as compelled to hold back.

Reagan was terrible for America, and Reagan's America was terrible for the world. Unemployment peaked in 1985 at over 10%. Homelessness and deaths of the homeless hit record levels. Poverty increased by 6% during the 80's. The Consumer Price Index rose from 126.1 in 1980 to 187.0 in 1989, the year Reagan left office.

Perhaps the most damaging statistic, though, is the national debt. Reagan lured the country into believing that massive deficit spending was good for the country, but it was only good for foreign investors and the US military-industrial complex. With a smile on his face, Reagan boasted of boosting the morale of the armed forces while lining the pockets of executives of Raytheon, Lockheed, and most disturbingly, GE. Reagan was the highly paid spokesman for GE from 1954 to 1962. And GE was well rewarded: during Reagan's presidency, no fewer than 12 Cabinet officers had been or went on to become members of the Board at GE.

The bill to US taxpayers for the Gipper's lavish expenditure? About $2 trillion, or 2/5 of our current debt. When he assumed office, the national debt was less than $1 trillion, and when he left, he had tripled it with record annual deficits that continued well into the Bush I years. Service on the national debt currently costs American taxpayers $318 billion a year--enough to vastly improve our schools and pay for the full health insurance for the America's 50 million uninsured citizens--a shameful waste of money.

Now George Bush II, who likes to think of himself as a disciple of Reagan, is borrowing over $500 billion a year to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy, an illegal war full of human rights abuses and shameful top-down decisions to dehumanize the occupied, and the expansion of large multi-national corporations overseas, moving high-value jobs offshore while creating thousands of low-paying service jobs for the well-trained, highly educated workforce we once called "white collar". The Reagan Legacy lives on, sadly, in the shadow of the Reagan Myth.

Ronald "I'm a Contra" Reagan authorized the illegal funding of brutal Nicaraguan dictator Somosa's former national guard in Nicaragua--the "contras"-- skirting the Boland Amendment by arranging private funding through puppet nonprofit organizations such as Americares. Worse, Reagan's America authorized the trafficking of cocaine from Columbia's powerful Medellin drug cartel to help fund the contras to buy weapons from none other than the big evil--Iran--in exchange for Iran gaining the release of American hostages held in Lebanon. Reagan said at the time, "A few months ago, I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that is true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not." Right. He authorized it, and encouraged illegal behavior by US officials in order to carry out his political agenda.

This was a man who lived above the law. And no wonder he felt he could--look who surrounded him. Ed Meese, Reagan's ruthless Attorney General banned a bike messenger from entering the Justice building for wearing a t-shirt that appropriately read "Meese is a Pig", sparking a wave of protests not only for violating the First Amendment, but doing it for personal reasons. To his credit, he sparked the rapid growth of the "Meese is a Pig" t-shirt market. Jim Baker, the devious and manipulative Texan who engineered the theft of the 2000 election, served as Reagan's Chief of Staff from 1981 to 1985, running the cynical agenda that literally killed thousands of people thorugh back-door proxy wars in Central America and East Asia. And let's not forget Donald Regan, the Treasury Secretary from Merrill Lynch who pushed for huge tax cuts for the wealthy, massive deficit spending at the expense of all of us today, and created the environment that led to the shameful S&L scandal of the late 80's. What a crew.

As part of the nation mourns Reagan's death, the other part still wonders, astonished, about how such a man could be elected president. Stop wondering and start acting--we've already made the mistake again and suffered through 4 years of mismanagement and scandals as a result. I wonder how Bush could have ever gotten elected, and wonder why this race is even close. But what scares me most is the voting public's failure to look more deeply into the actions and effect of those actions by our elected leaders.

Many Democrats out there think George Bush has no chance of winning. Think again. The voting public just isn't paying close enough attention to assure us of anything, except that they can--twice in 20 years--elect a man who's legacy is running the country into the ground while lining the pockets of the rich. Good riddance, I say.

[redqueen]

1. The Great Taxer

Another myth destroyed. Thanks Mr. Krugman. :)

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/08/opinion/08KRUG.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists%2fPaul%20Krugman

Over the course of this week we'll be hearing a lot about Ronald Reagan, much of it false. A number of news sources have already proclaimed Mr. Reagan the most popular president of modern times. In fact, though Mr. Reagan was very popular in 1984 and 1985, he spent the latter part of his presidency under the shadow of the Iran-Contra scandal. Bill Clinton had a slightly higher average Gallup approval rating, and a much higher rating during his last two years in office.

We're also sure to hear that Mr. Reagan presided over an unmatched economic boom. Again, not true: the economy grew slightly faster under President Clinton, and, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates, the after-tax income of a typical family, adjusted for inflation, rose more than twice as much from 1992 to 2000 as it did from 1980 to 1988.

But Ronald Reagan does hold a special place in the annals of tax policy, and not just as the patron saint of tax cuts. To his credit, he was more pragmatic and responsible than that; he followed his huge 1981 tax cut with two large tax increases. In fact, no peacetime president has raised taxes so much on so many people. This is not a criticism: the tale of those increases tells you a lot about what was right with President Reagan's leadership, and what's wrong with the leadership of George W. Bush.

The first Reagan tax increase came in 1982. By then it was clear that the budget projections used to justify the 1981 tax cut were wildly optimistic. In response, Mr. Reagan agreed to a sharp rollback of corporate tax cuts, and a smaller rollback of individual income tax cuts. Over all, the 1982 tax increase undid about a third of the 1981 cut; as a share of G.D.P., the increase was substantially larger than Mr. Clinton's 1993 tax increase.

(much more excellent, must-read information at link above)

[srpantalonas]

2. Yeah. Biggest tax increase...

and biggest jump in gap between poor and rich...