On 7/27/2012 6:25 PM, jayrichardm wrote:
> On Tuesday, July 24, 2012 5:02:49 PM UTC-6, John Manning wrote:
>> Reagan - Myth vs Reality
>> WATCH: http://youtu.be/0k-orSZJty0
> I haven't visited this web group in about ten years. I am surprised to see what can only be described as Communist propaganda, history revisionism, being displayed here. To give his guy the benefit of the doubt he is probably too young to have been around to know what the truth is. I would like to say this for Ron Reagan. Reagan's predecessor, Jimmy Carter, was undoubtedly the worst president that nation has ever had. When Carter left office after one term, and the whole nation was grateful to see Carter go because everything he did was a total disaster, Carter left Reagan with about 15% unemployment and about the same number in inflation. I was working on my MBA at the time. In my entire life I have never seen a worse president than Carter and I'm almost 70 years old. One of Reagan's first acts in office was to instruct Paul Volcker, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, to clamp down on the money supply. While everybody knew that would cause some economic pain, after six
months the 15% run away inflation was stopped dead in it's tracks. Next Reagan turned to getting the economy going again. That took a while. He had a solid Democratic congress standing in his way and fighting him every step of the way. Actually I played a role in helping Reagan get his economic agenda in place, but it was at least half way through his eight years in office in order to get that accomplished. Actually the economic juggernaut that Reagan put in place did not last a mere 4 years as this clown suggests. The Reagan economic juggernaut kept rolling along all the way through the Clinton administration. Bill Clinton is and was a convicted pathological liar, and besides in has always been the way of the human garbage that inhabits Washington to try and claim credit for what one had absolutely nothing to do with. That is true for Bill Clinton's economy. Bill Clinton had absolutely nothing to do with the economic growth that occurred while he was in office. Ron Reagan d
eserves the credit for every bit of it.
That's laughable nonsense where you have
offered ZERO documented evidence to discredit
or refute *any* of what was pointed out in the video.
Here are *documented* FACTS about your fake hero:
10 Things Conservatives Don't Want You To Know About Ronald Reagan
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 *documented* 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.
Unsurprisingly, 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?”
~~ *Documented* in multiple links here:
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/02/05/142288/reagan-centennial/
