UPDATE 2: Kudos to the (federal) Supreme Court for upholding its Michigan counterpart's ruling on "affirmative action"; the modern-day reversal of the evils of slavery & the lawlessness of segregation, in my view... The last thing we need is a government, be it state (had Michigan ruled the opposite ruling) or federal (had the federal Supreme Court upheld the opposite ruling), using us as "pawns" (for those of you who play chess) in its games to undermine everybody with whom it disagrees!
CONT.: I called most political talkers "conspiracy theorists" previously, & I'll keep calling them such until they learn the correct history of our system:
Republicans, circa 1865/1896: mostly left wing (classical) liberal, against all those aforementioned wrongs, & believers in "equality of opportunity"; that is, allowing everybody to get the same chances at whatever they choose to do! Granted, the
communist regimes in Belarus/Castro's Cuba/Venezuela under the idiots Chàvez & Maduro take liberalism to the ultimate
horrifying level, but here, you at least see those groups differentiating themselves from everybody else in this country who's decidedly more moderate!
Democrats, circa 1865/1896: mostly right wing (classical) conservatism, for all the wrongs that this country suffered through until the late 1960s, &, with the new Tea Party "movement" now in the political awareness, dare I say, some of those kooks are
even more extremist with their individual beliefs! Remember where else such ideologies wrecked countries? Nazi Germany/Fascist Italy, under the brutal Hitler/Mussolini dictatorships? Remember that, neo-Nazis & Fascists? Granted, I have seem some moderate conservatives reject those extremist ideologies, but as long as you have far left-wing pinkos & far right-wing fascists in this country pushing such brutal ideologies on the rest of us, we won't go anywhere except for
down in this nation!
UPDATE: I've
never seen as many
moronic conspiracy theories as I've seen in the past 5 years... It's as if the
far right has overtaken the "conspiracy theory" department in an attempt to undermine any
real progress not just in the short term, but also in the
long term! Since our current President is a Democrat, & as such,
conservatives are smacking him around left & right, so I figured I would counterattack their invalid claims by pointing out that "(
their) guys", Nixon & Reagan, weren't exactly "saints", either:
- the 40th anniversary of Watergate, which I believe is
still the
biggest scandal in modern politics, Republican or Democratic!
- Peter Dreier, Occidental College professor (
I know... but stick with me!), made some comments upon Reagan's 2004 death that weren't all
glowing reviews, as the political talk radio obituaries were (those
intentionally blind idiots...):
"During his two terms in the White House (1981-89), Reagan presided over a
widening gap between the rich and everyone else; declining wages and living standards for working families; an assault on labor unions as a vehicle to lift Americans into the middle class; a
dramatic increase in poverty and homelessness; and the
consolidation and
deregulation of the financial industry that led to the current mortgage meltdown, foreclosure epidemic, and lingering recession.
These trends were not caused
by inevitable socioeconomic forces. They resulted from Reagan's policy and political choices based on a "You're on your own" ideology.
Reagan is often lauded as "the great communicator," but what he often communicated were
lies and
distortions (the typical politician...). During his stump speeches, while
promising to roll back welfare, Reagan told the story of a so-called "welfare queen" in Chicago who drove a Cadillac and had ripped off $150,000 from the government. Journalists searched for this "welfare cheat" and discovered that
she didn'
t exist. But this phony imagery of "welfare cheats" persisted and laid the groundwork for cuts to programs for the poor.
Reagan's most famous statement--"Government is not a solution to our problem. Government is the problem"--has become the unofficial slogan for the resurgence of right-wing extremism. The rants of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, the Tea Party, the policy ideas promulgated by outfits like the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation masquerading as think tanks, and the takeover of the GOP by
its most conservative wing were all incubated during the Reagan years.
Many Americans credit Reagan with
reducing the size of government. In
reality, he
increased government spending, cut taxes, and turned the U.S. from
creditor to
debtor nation. During his presidency, Reagan
escalated the military budget while
slashing funds for domestic programs that assisted working-class Americans and protected consumers and the environment.
Before Reagan took office, the American public was already growing more skeptical about government and politicians, exacerbated by the lies told by Lyndon Johnson about the Vietnam War, by Richard Nixon about the Watergate scandal, and then Jimmy Carter's inability to deal with rising prices and unemployment ("stagflation"). But Reagan--with his avuncular style, optimism, and plain-folks demeanor--turned government-bashing into an art form.
Accompanying the Reagan era was the rise of a corporate-funded conservative propaganda machine--including think tanks and lobby groups, endowed professorships at universities, legal advocacy organizations, magazines, and college student internships to train the next generation--designed to demonize government and glorify unregulated markets.
Reagan's fans give him credit for restoring the nation's prosperity. But whatever economic growth occurred during the Reagan years
mostly benefited those already well off. The minimum wage was
frozen at $3.35
an hour while prices
rose,
eroding the standard of living of millions of low-wage workers. The number of people living beneath the federal poverty line
rose from 26.1 million in 1979 to 32.7 million in 1988. Meanwhile, by the end of the decade, the richest 1 percent of Americans had 39 percent of the nation's wealth.
After signing the Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act in 1982, Reagan presided over the
dramatic deregulation of the nation's savings-and-loan industry. The law allowed S&Ls to end their reliance on home mortgages and permitted banks to provide adjustable-rate mortgage loans. The S&Ls began a
decade-
long orgy of real estate
speculation,
mismanagement, and
fraud. The industry indulged in a
wild ride of merger
mania, with banks and S&Ls gobbling each other up and making loans to finance shopping malls, golf courses, office buildings, and condo projects that had
no logic other than a quick-buck profit.
When the dust settled,
hundreds of S&Ls and banks had gone under,
billions of dollars of commercial loans were
useless, and the federal government was left to bail out depositors whose money speculators had
looted to the tune of more than $130 billion.
This was just the first chapter in the slide toward today's financial crisis. Things got even worse--much worse--in the decades after Reagan left office. Both Bushes, and Clinton, took up where Reagan left off in granting banks and insurance companies permission to wreak havoc on consumers and the economy, leading to the epidemic of subprime loans and foreclosures of recent years and the federal bailout of "too big to fail" Wall Street banks.
Reagan's indifference to urban problems was
legendary. He
failed to deal with the
growing corruption scandal at Housing and Urban Development that resulted in the indictment and conviction of top Reagan administration officials for
illegally targeting housing subsidies to politically connected developers.
Reagan didn't invent the pay-to-play game, or the revolving door of top government officials becoming well-paid lobbyists and government contractors. But his hands-off attitude toward government oversight
contributed to the
deepening culture of corruption.
The 1980s saw
pervasive racial discrimination by banks, real estate agents, and landlords,
unmonitored by the Reagan administration. Community groups uncovered
blatant redlining by banks. But Reagan's HUD and Department of Justice
failed to prosecute or sanction banks that violated the Community Reinvestment Act, which
prohibits racial discrimination in lending. Of the 40,000 applications from banks requesting permission to expand their operations, Reagan's bank regulators
denied only eight on grounds of violating CRA regulations.
The
declining fiscal fortunes
of America's cities began during these years. By the end of his second term, federal assistance to local governments had been slashed by 60 percent. He eliminated general revenue sharing to cities, cut funding for public-service jobs and job training, almost dismantled federally funded legal services for the poor, cut the antipoverty Community Development Block Grant program, and reduced funds for public transit.
These cutbacks had a
disastrous effect on cities with high levels of poverty and limited property-tax bases, many of which depended
on federal aid to provide basic services. In 1980, federal dollars accounted for 22 percent of big-city budgets. By the end of Reagan's second term, federal aid was only 6 percent. The consequences were devastating to schools and libraries, hospitals and clinics, and sanitation, police, and fire departments--many of which had to shut their doors.
The
most dramatic cut in domestic spending was for low-income housing subsidies. In his first year in office, Reagan cut the budget for public housing and Section 8 rent subsidies in half. Congress
thwarted his plan to wipe out federal housing assistance to the poor altogether, but he got much of what he sought.
Another of Reagan's
enduring legacies is the
steep increase in the number of homeless people, which by the late 1980s had
swollen to 600,000
on any given night--and 1.2 million over the course of a year. Many were Vietnam veterans, children, and laid-off workers.
Since his death, we've named a major airport, many schools, and many streets after Ronald Reagan. 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 his honor."
Mark Weisbrot of
Common Dreams opined on the Reagan administration's
fiscal legacy:
"Budget deficits soared to record heights. The national debt doubled, as a percentage of the economy, before Mr. Reagan's successors were able to bring it under control. This "military Keynesianism" did pull the economy out of the 1982 recession, but the 1980s still chalked up the slowest growth of any decade in the post-World War II era. And income was redistributed to the wealthy as never before: during the 1980s, most of the country's income gains went to the top 1 or 2 percent of households.
Mr. Reagan also helped redistribute American income and wealth with a bold assault on American labor. In 1981 he summarily fired 12,000 air traffic controllers who went on strike for better working conditions. This ushered in a new and dark era of labor relations, with employers now free to "permanently replace" striking workers. The median real wage failed to grow during the decade of the 1980s.
The Reagan revolution caused even more economic damage internationally, for example by changing policy at the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Thus began the era of "structural adjustment" -- a set of economic policies that has become so discredited worldwide that the IMF and World Bank no longer use the term. The 1980s became "the lost decade" for Latin America, the region most affected by Washington's foreign economic policy. Income per person actually shrank for the decade, a rare historical event, and the region has yet to come close to its pre-1980s growth rates."
see this: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/federal-eye/2010/02/budget_15_pay_raise_for_civili.html
As everybody who
isn'
t currently "living under a rock" knows, yesterday was the 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination! Not only did that anniversary allow those of you who were around back then to tell various media outlets "I was at such-and-such a place", but it also opened what I believe is a
necessary debate on the role of the Secret Service & other agencies in protecting those who work for us in DC (more on that later)! By modern-day accounts, JFK became President on the back of the newest form of political discourse (debates), & he encountered a bunch of challenges,
both domestic & abroad, that threatened to collapse the country's civil society (at best) or cause a so-called "nuclear apocalypse" (at worst)! Back then, however, the overall attitude toward Castro's Cuba, the Soviet Union, & all the wars that had either just ended or were "just heating up" (Korea, Vietnam, etc.), seemed less urgent than nowadays, mostly because the country's overall attitude toward its own government wasn't so hostile, & the rest of the world didn't see the U.S. as "the world's police state" just yet! On the "home front", he was a believer in
just enough government intervention in the civil rights debate, as well as the
necessary amounts of tax cuts that would keep regular people from forking over their entire life savings to DC, while also keeping Wall Street & other corporations in
just enough of a check to keep
them from running away with
our money, & echoing the modern-day loose monetary policy "creed", he kept interest rates near
then-historic lows; however, political divisions were
just as apparent back then as they are now, as political infighting, even in various Democratic strongholds, threatened to ruin the Democratic Party's overall unity, & various fascist groups labeled JFK "communist" & mentioned that he "should be tried for treason",
despite the
fact that he was
fighting such groups to the full extent that his administration could! Even
before 1960, then-senator JFK made a foreign policy impact when he stated his
full support for the then-new nation of Israel:
"Israel will endure and flourish. It is the child of hope and the home of the brave. It can neither be broken by adversity nor demoralized by success. It carries the shield of democracy and it honors the sword of freedom." As another sign of his softening toward Israel, he ended the arms embargo that Eisenhower & Truman (not exactly among the most extremist Presidents in this nation's history!) inexplicably placed upon Israel. He was a balanced-budget proponent instead of a tax-cut proponent, & instead of needlessly attacking the Soviet Union after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, he instead dared the Soviets to install nuclear missiles in Cuba, & then, he allowed his military people to slowly, but surely, turn the Soviet cargo ships away 1 by 1 instead of all at once! In the immediate aftermath of that scare, he agreed to cut the country's nuke supply instead of building it up to dangerous levels (more on that later)! Fast forward about 20 years, past Vietnam, Watergate, & the long-term economic "malaise", however, & we see a return to the instability of the "World War era", at least in my opinion, during the Reagan administration! Early on in his administration, he survived an assassination attempt of his own by ultra-radical crazy Marxist-inspired nut John Hinckley, Jr., which, had it worked, would've been just as devastating to the country as JFK's assassination was, & unlike JFK, it would've ended Reagan's presidency just as it started, leaving him with no legacy whatsoever! Getting past that assassination attempt, however, I agree with liberals & moderate Republicans whenever they claim that "Reagan wouldn't make it out of the Republican primaries today", & here's why: 1: In the immediate aftermath of that assassination attempt, he was for both gun control & mental health control, mostly at the urging of his Press Secretary, James Brady, but unfortunately for them, those bills never got signed into law until the 1st days of the Clinton administration! 2: He brought in his "cronies" from his years as CA governor to serve with him in DC, & out of all of his CA "cronies", Rita Lavelle, his EPA commissioner, was the 1 who allowed his/her agency to do the most damage out of any of Reagan's cabinet agencies, as she allowed some Superfund sites to go completely unchecked for years, & took $$$$ from the ones that were checked & simply "redistributed" it within the EPA, as I'm sure any fine-tuned radical nut job would do.… 3: Savings & loan institutions everywhere were just simply allowed to collapse during his early years, & others that were (this might sound familiar to you Wall Street followers) bailed out at a cost of billions (approximately $341 billion, as a matter of fact) to typical, everyday citizens! 4: In a series of attacks that far outweighs the impact of Benghazi on this country's foreign policy, 241 American & 58 French troops were killed in Beirut in 1983, 5: Contrary to most hard-line conservatives' beliefs that Obama must "hate" Israel for no apparent reason, well, by their own logic, Reagan must have had more "hate" for Israel deep down inside of him, as well as deep within his administration, since he never visited Israel, while his predecessor, Jimmy Carter, did so in 1979, Bill Clinton did so in 1994, 1995, 1996, & 1998, & Obama made sure to do so early this year! 6: "Reaganomics" introduced sharp & sudden tax cuts that should've been saved for more prosperous times in this country's economy, & during Reagan's 1st term, the earliest effects of Reaganomics threatened to wreck the country's economy almost beyond repair! Interest rates, which, as I mentioned, were at historic lows during JFK's short presidency were at almost 20% in 1981; as a result just of those sky-high interest rates, GDP actually fell 1.9% in 1982, as ordinary people felt the effects of Reaganomics' drastic across-the-board cuts! Immediately following the recession of 1982, trouble emerged, as average unemployment was slightly higher, & average productivity & private investment growth were slightly lower, instead of the other way around! Unemployment was also at its highest point following the recession (10.8%), & poverty ranged from anywhere between 13 & 15.2% during his administration! The largest tax increase ever recorded in DC also came in the midst of Reagan's 1st-term recession, & ironically enough, it was a Democrat in the DC House who originally introduced that bill, not to raise taxes, but to instead lower them! Perhaps the most destructive consequence of Reaganomics is 1 that is still being felt by us ordinary people today, & is 1 that our idiotic politicians keep "kicking down the road" nowadays instead of fixing: the national debt, which broke the trillion level during the Reagan administration, & while all subsequent administrations have (unfortunately) kept the debt above $1 trillion, it has grown at a slower pace during all of them than it did under Reagan!
