Reagan

America's fundamental problem, in my opinion, since Ronald Reagan came to office January 20, 1981, and declared the fateful words: "Government is not the solution to our problem, Government is the problem" we have been on a more than a 30 year jag of dismantling the very means to address the challenges we face as a society. Jeffrey Sachs CSPAN 2/17/12
"If you strip away the magical claims of Reaganomics (“cutting tax rates will yield more revenue and balance the budget”), you can see that the real purpose of “supply side” theory was to shift the tax burden down the income ladder—away from the high incomes. This is the operative objective: Tax work instead of wealth. That has been the practical result of favoring capital’s returns on stocks and bonds over wage income. The pivot was a landmark political reversal, and it continues to this day." William Greider
"Over the past few weeks there have been a number of commentaries about Ronald Reagan's legacy, specifically about whether he exploited the white backlash against the civil rights movement. The controversy unfortunately obscures the larger point, which should be undeniable: the central role of this backlash in the rise of the modern conservative movement." Paul Krugman, The New York Times: 11/19/2007
...then Reagan came along and basically informed the business world that you can do anything you like to break unions. You can violate the law, and in fact, illegal firing of organizers tripled in the Reagan years. Clinton came along and he added another way of destroying unions. It's called NAFTA [North American Free Trade Agreement]. He didn't bother saying it, but the business world knew they could violate labor laws to break strikes by threatening to transfer enterprises to Mexico. And the number of illegal actions like that shot up again. Noam Chomsky 12/13/2012
"Ronald Reagan swept into the presidency in 1980. His two terms in that office were marked by the dismantling of public health's regulatory powers. Within eight years the Reagan administration had so thoroughly defeated its regulatory adversaries that public health was forced into defeat, even on issues of bona fide community health threats, its most outspoken voices of environmental concern sidelined along the margins of academia and political activism" Laurie Garrett "Betrayal of Trust" page 580.
...in 1981, when Ronald Reagan became President. He ushered in an era of union busting, financial deregulation, leveraged buyouts, and the financialization of the American economy. For a while, life expectancy continued to grow, but ever more slowly - until finally, in 2014, it began to decline. That decline has been concentrated among poor and working-class people. MIT Technology Review 3/2021 pg 61.
In 1987 Ronald Reagan's Federal Communications Commission (FCC) repealed the Fairness Doctrine, ending the requirement for political balance within broadcasts on the public airwaves. In 1996, a Republican Congress lifted restrictions on media ownership. "The combination of the two left ownership with no real constraints ... they followed the money and their own biases. [from David Dayen's book Monopolized]
Among the lessons of Iran-Contra is that a healthy democracy must have robust checks on executive authority in order to minimize abuses of power. A quarter century ago, the president’s attorney general, William Barr, staunchly opposed the independent counsel’s investigation of wrongdoing in the White House, and he also firmly supported Bush’s use of pardons as a means of self-protection. Are we to believe that Barr’s relationship with President Trump will be any different? What Does William Barr Have to Do With Iran Contra?
"By the end of his term, 138 Reagan administration officials had been convicted, had been indicted, or had been the subject of official investigations for official misconduct and/or criminal violations. In terms of number of officials involved, the record of his administration was the worst ever." Sleep-Walking Through History: America in the Reagan Years, by Haynes Johnson, p. 184, (1991, Doubleday),
"[Ronald] Reagan ... was most definitely a global empire builder, a servant of the corporatocracy. At the time of his election, I found it fitting that he was a Hollywood actor, a man who had followed orders passed down from moguls, who knew how to take direction. That would be his signature. He would cater to the men who shuttled back and forth from corporate CEO offices to bank boards and into the halls of government. He would serve the men who appeared to serve him but who in fact ran the government - men like Vice President George H. W. Bush, Secretary of State George Shultz, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, Richard Cheney, Richard Helms, and Robert McNamara. He would advocate what those men wanted: an America that controlled the world and all its resources, a world that answered to the commands of that America, a U.S. military that would enforce the rules as they were written by America, and an international trade and banking system that supported America as CEO of the global empire." John Perkins

Congress covered up the fact that illegal drug deals were at the heart of the Iran-Contra story, just as the CIA has been deeply involved in drug trafficking for decades. It's a situation that continues today in Mexico and Afghanistan, and the reality is that our economy is secretly deeply embedded in the global drug trade. Jesse Ventura: American Conspiracies pg 113.

Race, Reagan and the religious right (10/10/2022)

Student Loan Debt Is an American Malignancy Born of Ronald Reagan (8/26/2022)

Ronald Reagan’s “Welfare Queen” Lie Has Been Resurrected (5/2021)

Reagan Tax Cuts

2020 Was the Year Reaganism Died (12/28/2020)

Stock Buybacks Were Once Illegal. Why Are They Legal Now? The SEC changed policy during the Reagan administration in 1982. The Intellectualist (2/6/2019)

Ronald Reagan: Worst President Ever? (2/20/2012)

Reagan Ruined America (8/13/2018)

Ronald Reagan and the Metric System (2008)

Rachel Maddow- beware the ghost of reagan

 

Happy Birthday Ronald Reagan (2/6/2009)

Seth Rosenfeld's book, Subversives, details Ronald Reagan's rise to the Presidency as an informer for the FBI who furnished McCarthy's HUAC with the identities of dissidents and destroyed their careers.

Since Reagan took office the middle class has been sinking, and the top 1% has reaped almost all of the gains. Income inequality has soared and democracy has correspondingly weakened. That is a consequence of Republican transfer of power to the market instead of democracy, a continuation of the GOP fascist coup.

Features of the very Republican Reagan administration included:

An appeal to every wedge issue possible: race, religion, sexuality, language, immigration, states rights, and a renewal of class struggle. The wealthy won. The middle class [everybody else] sank.

An assault on labor that permitted further weakening of employee rights and tended to impoverish many workers.

Massive military buildup for a ten foot tall Soviet Union that was based on twisted 'intelligence'. When the USSR collapsed we had to continue feeding the military-industrial complex in its quest for empire and world domination. The same NEOCONs behind this military adventure were the war criminals who lied to go to war in Iraq.

The Iran-Contra scandals made felons of dozens of Reagan officials. Typical of GOP Presidents.

The huge military buildup was put on the tab. Fiscal responsibility is only a Republican talking point when they have little to say about the actual budget.

To demonstrate that the President was above the law, he pursued an illegal war in Central America that included a torture manual, training at the School of the Americas, drug running to the inner US cities, illegal arms sale to Iran, and ultimately led to the conviction of a number in his administration. Many of the felons returned to take jobs in the Bush administration.

When the World Court ruled that the US was liable for damage mining the harbors in Nicaragua, Reagan simply ignored the World Court. Republicans have no respect for international law.

We are number one. ..in incarcerations.

Reagon was responsible for Fox

The Bush believers in small government implemented the most vicious assault on civil liberties ever seen in the US. We barely escaped with habeas corpus. The 'nofly list', 'Patriot Act', the Military Commissions Act, real id, all illustrate just what R's mean when they talk about small government. We know now that the NSA listens to everyone's phone. Read them the Constitution next time you pick up the phone.

So we see now the consequences of the Republican agenda: the US military budget is larger than the rest of the world's combined, it has a shredded social safety net that includes the most expensive health care of the developed world, pensions are disappearing (except maybe for Social Security...but Republicans attempted to remove that too.) Say goodbye to your standard of living. Most likely the empire won't last long either because the industrial base and prosperity that enabled it have disappeared as corporations fled offshore.

One of the worst Republican ideas is that the President needs to be a 'strong man', the Congress has been weakened and the result is that people can only speak in increasingly badly flawed elections

We are accelerating our race for extinction, and you can count on Republicans to oppose any change in course.

More

See the forecast.

Links

Iran Contra

Ronald Reagan page Third World Traveler

Elliott Abrams (7/8/2023)

About Ronald Reagan

The Massive Reagan Administration Corruption.

Bibliography

When the Clock Broke, Con Men, Conspiracies, and How America Cracked up in the Early 1990s by John Ganz

REAGANLAND, America’s Right Turn, 1976-1980 By Rick Perlstein

Subversives: The FBI's War on Student Radicals and Reagan's Rise to Power: Seth Rosenfeld

Reagan's Reign of Error: Mark Green and Gail MacColl

The Tower Commission Report

Out of Control: The Story of the Reagan Administration's Secret War in Nicaragua, the Illegal Arms Pipeline, and the Contra Drug Connection: Leslie Cockburn

Visions And Nightmares, America After Reagan: Robert Lekachman

Tear Down This Myth, the Right-Wing Distortion of the Reagan Legacy: Will Bunch

Sleepwalking Through History, America in the Reagan Years: Haynes Johnson

On Bended Knee, the Press and the Reagan Presidency by Mark Hertsgaard

Day of Reckoning, the Consequences of American Economic Policy Under Reagan and After: Benjamin M. Friedman

Greed is Not Enough: Reaganomics, Robert Lekachman

The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism: Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman