7 things Republicans forget about Ronald Reagan (cost, school, compare, party)
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Reagan certainly isn't my idol. In fact, I can think of relatively few modern politicians who represented what I consider to be true conservatives. To find any decent political figures worth praising, you must travel deeper in to the pages of history.
Modern era politicians are basically exceptionally well paid liars and masters of deception. That's how you achieve any success in that profession, which shouldn't be a profession at all. Being a politician was originally an act of service to your nation and it's citizens, not a career.
Government always finds a need for whatever money it gets.
Ronald Reagan
Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.
Ronald Reagan
Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.
Ronald Reagan
People forget all the family farms that went under during the Reagan administration too.
Quote:
The President finally decided to use this putative power on January 4 of this year, when he suspended delivery of all U.S. grain sales to the U.S.S.R. in excess of the eight million tons guaranteed under the terms of a 1975 bilateral agreement. His announced purpose was to punish the Soviet Union for its military occupation of Afghanistan, begun in late December 1979. Never before had U.S. food exports to the U.S.S.R. been suspended in pursuit of a noncommercial, foreign policy objective. Now, at last, the "food weapon" had been taken from the shelf. For all who cared to watch, a definitive test of its effectiveness was at hand.
Reagan continued the Grain Embargo and urged more foreign countries to do the same.
Opportunity costs.
Continue the Cold War in perpetuity or suffer some economic costs...
Continue the Cold War in perpetuity or suffer increasing deficits...
Continue the Cold War in perpetuity or increase the national debt...
Apparently the fact that the Cold War was estimated to have cost the U.S. between $4.5 trillion and $5.5 trillion before the Reagan administration took the stance of "we win, they lose" never crossed the minds of some of you.
Was there a good ROI on the defense build up and ever increasing deficits and debt? Who really knows but at the rate the Cold War was going it's very likely to have costs us more over the long run than it did to build up the military and implement as many economic sanctions as possible to win the Cold War.
And of course we also had the longest peace-time expansion of the economy in U.S. history just after the dissolution of the U.S.S.R.
...I can think of relatively few modern politicians who represented what I consider to be true conservatives...
That is because they don't exist. True conservativism is dead in this nation. Dead as Dillinger. Has been for decades.
The GOP clearly abandoned all conservative principles beck sometime between the Vietnam War and the beginning of the Disco Era.
What we have now instead is big government, Big Brother, nanny state, moral watchdog neocons. The actions of the Republican Party and heck, the last three Republican presidents we've had, have been antithetical to everything actual conservativism stands for. The last three R presidents have been among the LEAST conservative presidents this nation has ever seen.
To say that Reagan was more liberal than Obama, as the OP does, is just patently ludicrous. We can't just look at the results from any admin and conclude that the prez was x, y, or z. You have to consider the context in which the results were achieved. Reagan had a dem-controlled house for all 8 years. And many of the old R bulls in the Senate were longtime DC moderates like Dole, Domenici, etc. Much of the time Reagan was fighting his own party, not just the Dems. And he had to frequently compromise, to take things that he did not want, in order to get things that he did want.
Much of what the OP says is thus based on fallacious logic. In essence it assumes that the POTUS is a king, but he is not.
He and Nancy put the "W" into the War on Drugs. The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 included reform of FOIA and broadened law enforcement exemption and increased the authority of federal agencies to withhold sensitive law enforcement documents in their possession. The Act included a budget of $1.7 billion to fund the war and increase the severity of punishment for drug related offences.
I disagree with the approach of Reagan, HW Bush, and for that matter, Obama, to the War on Drugs. That said, your post is highly misleading. The drug act of 86 was an initiative of Democrat Speaker Tip O'Neil. A basketball player named Len Bias had died from cocaine. He had just been drafted by the Boston Celtics (O'Neil's district was in Boston), and the drug act of 86 was O'Neil's response to that tragedy.
Actually this is quite typical of how libs are trying to do revisionism here. Just why is it that libs feel such a need to distort and dissemble?
Immediately after Bias's death, the speaker of the House of Representatives, Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill Jr., from the Boston area (where Bias had just signed with the Celtics), issued a demand to his fellow Democrats for anti-drug legislation. Senior congressional staffers began meeting regularly in the speaker's conference room as practically every committee in the House wrote Len Bias-inspired legislation attacking the drug problem. News conferences around the Capitol featured members of Congress extolling their efforts to clamp down on cocaine and crack.
Reagan during his presidency was basically conservative in terms of his program, but he was also a realistic politician who actually wanted to govern. That's what distinguishes him from many Republican figures now.
A really good president who was conservative in a sane, principled way? Grover Cleveland.
Well, whatever.
The fact remains that whether you use YOUR numbers or the ones I provided, it was still a HUGE number of people being laid off in the 11 months prior to Obama being sworn in and the year or so afterwards. It was a HUGE mess to have to deal with - and BOTH Reagan AND Obama had ENORMOUS challenges (as I've said MANY TIMES over the past few years). I have great respect for both men (again, as I've said many times). I certainly wouldn't want to deal with those problems.
Ken
Quote:
CES employment is an estimate of the number of nonfarm, payroll jobs in the U.S. economy. Employment is the total number of persons on establishment payrolls employed full-or part-time who received pay for any part of the pay period that includes the 12th day of the month. Temporary and intermittent employees are included, as are any employees who are on paid sick leave, on paid holiday, or who work during only part of the specified pay period. A striking employee who only works a small portion of the survey period, and is paid, would be included as employed under the CES definitions. Persons on the payroll of more than one establishment are counted in each establishment. Data exclude proprietors, self-employed, unpaid family or volunteer workers, farm workers, and domestic workers. Persons on layoff the entire pay period, on leave without pay, on strike for the entire period, or who have a pending job but have not yet reported for work are not counted as employed. Government employment covers only civilian employees; it excludes uniformed members of the armed services.
Employed persons: All persons who, during the reference week (week including the twelfth day of the month), (a) did any work as paid employees, worked in their own business or profession or on their own farm, or worked 15 hours or more as unpaid workers in an enterprise operated by a member of their family, or (b) were not working but who had jobs from which they were temporarily absent. Each employed person is counted only once, even if he or she holds more than one job.
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