Sunday, November 28, 2010

Ronnie The Hero Reagan

Everybody's Hero Ronald Reagan (I still don't understand that phenomenon) I lived thru that idiotic period of lowering and then raising taxes, cutting goverment services putting sick people on the street to fend for themselves instead of getting needed medical help, and then in the end making government bigger that when it started under his administration, it's the truth look it up.
While he played the role of the nation's kindly grandfather, his operatives divided the American people, using "wedge issues" to deepen grievances especially of white men who were encouraged to see themselves as victims of "reverse discrimination" and "political correctness."

Yet even as working-class white men were rallying to the Republican banner (as so-called "Reagan Democrats"), their economic interests were being savaged. Unions were broken and marginalized; "free trade" policies shipped manufacturing jobs abroad; old neighborhoods were decaying; drug use among the young was soaring.

Meanwhile, unprecedented greed was unleashed on Wall Street, fraying old-fashioned bonds between company owners and employees.

Before Reagan, corporate CEOs earned less than 50 times the salary of an average worker. By the end of the Reagan-Bush-I administrations in 1993, the average CEO salary was more than 100 times that of a typical worker. (At the end of the Bush-II administration, that CEO-salary figure was more than 250 times that of an average worker.)

When it came to cutting back on America's energy use, Reagan's message could be boiled down to the old reggae lyric, "Don't worry, be happy." Rather than pressing Detroit to build smaller, fuel-efficient cars, Reagan made clear that the auto industry could manufacture gas-guzzlers without much nagging from Washington.

The same with the environment. Reagan intentionally staffed the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department with officials who were hostile toward regulation aimed at protecting the environment. George W. Bush didn't invent Republican hostility toward scientific warnings of environmental calamities; he was just picking up where Reagan left off.

Reagan pushed for deregulation of industries, including banking; he slashed income taxes for the wealthiest Americans in an experiment known as "supply side" economics, which held falsely that cutting rates for the rich would increase revenues and eliminate the federal deficit.

Over the years, "supply side" would evolve into a secular religion for many on the Right, but Reagan's budget director David Stockman once blurted out the truth, that it would lead to red ink "as far as the eye could see."

5 comments:

Eric Martin said...

Terry:

This is so well written, I thought you copied it from someone.

sara p said...

Ol' Sara normally does not respond to Terry's simplistic misconceptions. However, here is a least ONE woman who believes President Reagan is a hero.

Reagan Was Hero To One Iowa Woman Former President Ronald Reagan is known as the "Great Communicator," but one Iowa woman will always know him as her hero.
Melba King (pictured, pictured below right) was a 22-year-old nursing student in Des Moines in 1933. She was walking home one autumn night when a mugger came up behind her with a gun and demanded her money.
At that moment, Ronald Reagan -- who was a Des Moines radio sportscaster at the time -- came to her rescue. Reagan pointed a .45-caliber revolver at the robber from the window of his second-floor rented room.
"And he said, 'Leave her alone or I'll shoot you right between the shoulders,'" King told KCCI.
Reagan scared the man off and calmed King's nerves. Then, the future president said he would walk King home.
King didn't see Reagan again until 1984, when Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad heard her story and invited her to an Iowa caucus campaign event (pictured, above left).
After King and Reagan hugged on stage, Reagan laughed, and said to the crowd, "This is the first time I've had a chance to tell you the gun was empty. I didn't have any cartridges. If he hadn't run when I told him to, I was going to have to throw it at him."
King's rescue became a national news story. "The phone rang constantly," King said.
All the media attention caused Reagan and King to stay in touch. The two families exchanged cards on birthdays, holidays, and during times of sickness and grief.
The Reagans helped King when she lost her husband Harold in 1987, and now she will send Nancy Reagan a sympathy note.

Eric Martin said...

It's a good story all right. Which one of the Gipper's movie's is that scene from?

"Some time, Rock, when the team is up against it, when things are wrong and the breaks are beating the boys - tell them to go in there with all they've got and win just one for the Gipper. I don't know where I'll be then, Rock. But I'll know about it, and I'll be happy."

terry said...

We’ve already named a major airport, schools and streets after Ronald Reagan, and since his death some people have suggested other ways to celebrate his memory. Perhaps a more fitting tribute to his legacy would be for each American city to name a park bench – where at least one homeless person sleeps every night – in honor of our 40th president, but Sara P, I never said he was a bad guy

Baxter said...

I have long thought that "Reagan National Airport" should be more accurately named "Reagan National Debt Airport".