Aufie

Good lord, you must be in kindergarten. Regan took over a horrible mess from carter, and started a 25 year boom. You may not like him for other reasons, but you are sick in the head for claiming his economics were horrible. You come on as a total ideologue which means that you don't use your brain at slv ( if you gave one)". You are making a total ass out of yourself. I'm not going to answer you anymore, because you need a therapist snd I'm not one

KHH1

10 Things Conservatives Don’t Want You To Know About Ronald Reagan
Tomorrow will mark the 100th anniversary of President Reagan’s birth, and all week, conservatives have been trying to outdo each others’ remembrances of the great conservative icon. Senate Republicans spent much of Thursday singing Reagan’s praise from the Senate floor, while conservative publications have been running non-stop commemorations. Meanwhile, the Republican National Committee and former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich are hoping to make a few bucks off the Gipper’s centennial.

But Reagan was not the man conservatives claim he was. This image of Reagan as a conservative superhero is myth, created to unite the various factions of the right behind a common leader. In reality, Reagan was no conservative ideologue or flawless commander-in-chief. Reagan regularly strayed from conservative dogma — he raised taxes eleven times as president while tripling the deficit — and he often ended up on the wrong side of history, like when he vetoed an Anti-Apartheid bill.

ThinkProgress has compiled a list of the top 10 things conservatives rarely mention when talking about President Reagan:


1. Reagan was a serial tax raiser. As governor of California, Reagan “signed into law the largest tax increase in the history of any state up till then.” Meanwhile, state spending nearly doubled. As president, Reagan “raised taxes in seven of his eight years in office,” including four times in just two years. As former GOP Senator Alan Simpson, who called Reagan “a dear friend,” told NPR, “Ronald Reagan raised taxes 11 times in his administration — I was there.” “Reagan was never afraid to raise taxes,” said historian Douglas Brinkley, who edited Reagan’s memoir. Reagan the anti-tax zealot is “false mythology,” Brinkley said.

2. Reagan nearly tripled the federal budget deficit. During the Reagan years, the debt increased to nearly $3 trillion, “roughly three times as much as the first 80 years of the century had done altogether.” Reagan enacted a major tax cut his first year in office and government revenue dropped off precipitously. Despite the conservative myth that tax cuts somehow increase revenue, the government went deeper into debt and Reagan had to raise taxes just a year after he enacted his tax cut. Despite ten more tax hikes on everything from gasoline to corporate income, Reagan was never able to get the deficit under control.

3. Unemployment soared after Reagan’s 1981 tax cuts. Unemployment jumped to 10.8 percent after Reagan enacted his much-touted tax cut, and it took years for the rate to get back down to its previous level. Meanwhile, income inequality exploded. Despite the myth that Reagan presided over an era of unmatched economic boom for all Americans, Reagan disproportionately taxed the poor and middle class, but the economic growth of the 1980’s did little help them. “Since 1980, median household income has risen only 30 percent, adjusted for inflation, while average incomes at the top have tripled or quadrupled,” the New York Times’ David Leonhardt noted.

4. Reagan grew the size of the federal government tremendously. Reagan promised “to move boldly, decisively, and quickly to control the runaway growth of federal spending,” but federal spending “ballooned” under Reagan. He bailed out Social Security in 1983 after attempting to privatize it, and set up a progressive taxation system to keep it funded into the future. He promised to cut government agencies like the Department of Energy and Education but ended up adding one of the largest — the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, which today has a budget of nearly $90 billion and close to 300,000 employees. He also hiked defense spending by over $100 billion a year to a level not seen since the height of the Vietnam war.

5. Reagan did little to fight a woman’s right to choose. As governor of California in 1967, Reagan signed a bill to liberalize the state’s abortion laws that “resulted in more than a million abortions.” When Reagan ran for president, he advocated a constitutional amendment that would have prohibited all abortions except when necessary to save the life of the mother, but once in office, he “never seriously pursued” curbing choice.

6. Reagan was a “bellicose peacenik.” He wrote in his memoirs that “[m]y dream…became a world free of nuclear weapons.” “This vision stemmed from the president’s belief that the biblical account of Armageddon prophesied nuclear war — and that apocalypse could be averted if everyone, especially the Soviets, eliminated nuclear weapons,” the Washington Monthly noted. And Reagan’s military buildup was meant to crush the Soviet Union, but “also to put the United States in a stronger position from which to establish effective arms control” for the the entire world — a vision acted out by Regean’s vice president, George H.W. Bush, when he became president.

7. Reagan gave amnesty to 3 million undocumented immigrants. Reagan signed into law a bill that made any immigrant who had entered the country before 1982 eligible for amnesty. The bill was sold as a crackdown, but its tough sanctions on employers who hired undocumented immigrants were removed before final passage. The bill helped 3 million people and millions more family members gain American residency. It has since become a source of major embarrassment for conservatives.

8. Reagan illegally funneled weapons to Iran. Reagan and other senior U.S. officials secretly sold arms to officials in Iran, which was subject to a an arms embargo at the time, in exchange for American hostages. Some funds from the illegal arms sales also went to fund anti-Communist rebels in Nicaragua — something Congress had already prohibited the administration from doing. When the deals went public, the Iran-Contra Affair, as it came to be know, was an enormous political scandal that forced several senior administration officials to resign.

9. Reagan vetoed a comprehensive anti-Apartheid act. which placed sanctions on South Africa and cut off all American trade with the country. Reagan’s veto was overridden by the Republican-controlled Senate. Reagan responded by saying “I deeply regret that Congress has seen fit to override my veto,” saying that the law “will not solve the serious problems that plague that country.”

10. Reagan helped create the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. Reagan fought a proxy war with the Soviet Union by training, arming, equipping, and funding Islamist mujahidin fighters in Afghanistan. Reagan funneled billions of dollars, along with top-secret intelligence and sophisticated weaponry to these fighters through the Pakistani intelligence service. The Talbian and Osama Bin Laden — a prominent mujahidin commander — emerged from these mujahidin groups Reagan helped create, and U.S. policy towards Pakistan remains strained because of the intelligence services’ close relations to these fighters. In fact, Reagan’s decision to continue the proxy war after the Soviets were willing to retreat played a direct role in Bin Laden’s ascendancy.

Conservatives seem to be in such denial about the less flattering aspects of Reagan; it sometimes appears as if they genuinely don’t know the truth of his legacy. Yesterday, when liberal activist Mike Stark challenged hate radio host Rush Limbaugh on why Reagan remains a conservative hero despite raising taxes so many times, Limbaugh flew into a tirade and demanded, “Where did you get this silly notion that Reagan raised taxes?”


Salon has more in their series “The Real Reagan,” including how he cared more about UFOs than AIDS and how Reagan destroyed respect for the social compact that rebuilt America after World War II.

arvadaian

It appears you gave up on education a long time ago.
The austerity programs forced on Greece,Spain and Portugal are libertarian ideas and are of course making things worse and the people have had it. We will see how it goes.

The European socialist countries that most on the right are usually talking bad about are doing just fine thank you. They were smart enough to not join the EU.

arvadaian

Answer who? No one knows who you are addressing because you don't seem to be able to figure out the mechanics of this op.Its not so difficult just click quote reply before you start writing. Hell even I can do it.

arvadaian

Did you read KHHIs post, that describes the real ronnie. Not the romantic notion you seem to have tucked away in that tiny space you absurdly refer to as a brain. Try thinking for yourself instead of buying into all that goofy crap limbpdick keeps ranting on right wing radio. Ragen was a dick. He used to send out the California militia every night to beat us and arrest us for reading names on the capital steps. He used the state police to run the hells angels out of Sacramento just because he didn't like them. He was a dick as govenor, a dick as president and he finally did the one decent thing of his life and died a dick.

arvadaian

:thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup:

I'm running out of thumbs. Thank you.

arvadaian

Who said deficits don't matter? Could it possible be the same dick that raised taxes 11 times during his presidency? Or maybe it was the dick who contacted the Iranians just before the election to make a deal with them so they would not release the hostages to jimmy Carter but instead keep them until after the election and then he would reward them with weapons once he was president. ( Iran Contra).
A proper conducting of jurisprudence would have had that treasonous piece of dick hung on the capital mall.

KHH1

I won't even go into the people who were the first in their family to attend college, making good grades in majors such as engineering and had to drop out because rayGun killed Pell grant funding.....which lower income people was using to pay for college...the GOp wants all the non-rich to be like appalachian whites...poor,uneducated, happy about it and hating n-ggers...plain and simple.....

peter11937 Loc: NYS

Then there's this link. This shows the business cycle from the 1850's thru 2009. The cycle is not dependent of government, no matter who's in office. Government has been trying to figure out how to moderate the cycle, lows not so low, highs not so high. In order to do this, banking laws, stock market laws, margin rates, separation of money supply from politics with the Federal Reserve Act, Anti trust and anti monopoly laws were all devised and put in place. To a degree, they have been successful, but recessions replaced depressions and people still commit suicide when their fortunes go down the tube.
Government cannot create the economy or jobs but it can make it more easy or more difficult. Business, always seeking to grow, will try and find a way to overcome government obstacles.

arvadaian

Henry Wallace said the rich need subjugation of the poor in order to live their elitist lives.
These folks are just dying to be the subjects.

KHH1

**That is sure in the hell what it seems like...sit at their feet while they feast and like a dog, hopefully someone will drop something to eat on the floor...then it will be dinner time...'sigh'**

Blade_Runner Loc: DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

Aufie, you are wading in a liberal/socialist/racist cess pool here. These obamabots will post anything to deflect responsibility from their glorious idol. They will NOT, under any circumstance, take an objective approach to anything a conservative president has done.

Almost from the beginning of Reagan's administration, America experienced 37 straight months of substantial job growth. And why? Because Reagan reined in the federal government and got it as far as possible the hell out of our way. Just this fact alone is enough to drive these O-bots into their spin campaigns, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Liberty Tree

They are the ones Obama is counting on to believe anything he says, anything he does and any data he puts out. They would be willing to support him if he used the military to shut down Congress, suspend the Constitution and declare himslef dictator for life.

J Anthony Loc: Connecticut

J Anthony Loc: Connecticut

Such a hypocrite. I don't see you being objective about Democrats,,ever.
All the presidents from the 70s on have been beholden to the same economic elite. They've all played a part in selling us down the river, and none of them had the courage to go out on a limb. When are you people going to stop being such goddamn hypocrites and acknowledge that? There is one party in DC today, the party of money. The rest of it is power-games, bread and circuses. If you can't pay, you get no say. That coud change if the masses got it together, but we're too busy surviving and squabbling amongst ourselves.. Perfect! Works for them!
It is unfathomable to me that anyone could lionize any president from Nixon to Obama. They've all done some things that were helpful, but the overall long-term ramifications of their presidencies have been more negative than positiive, because they've all catered first and foremost to that tiny sliver of uber-rich ruling class. This is where it's got us.