Tags for this video have been changed from 'rachel maddow, mike huckabee, ronald regan, history, revisionism' to 'rachel maddow, mike huckabee, ronald reagan, history, revisionism' - edited by bareboards2

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:

The robber barons of America's past abused power in a way far more like what Stewart is whining about here. They ran roughshod over people, and there were no laws to stop them. A good thing happened, and the people forced government to pass laws that allowed government to regulate such abuses. It was a good thing.

Yes, so let's do that again. We just need to roll back the robber barons' acquisition of government. They took it over in the immediate aftermath of the progressive era in the early 20th century -- by 1929 they basically ran Washington, just like now.

Back then, people demanded a New Deal, and got one. We had an era of real growth, where the resulting prosperity was relatively equally shared. The rising tide really did raise all boats. Not because businesses were more kindhearted, but because we had strong unions, and regulators who saw their job as actually regulating business.

Then Ronald Reagan came along, and it became Mourning in America. Unions got systematically broken up and destroyed. Business was welcomed into Washington with open arms, and allowed to write regulation. An anti-Fed objectivist became chairman of the Fed. Taxes for the rich were slashed, so were benefits to the poor. Everyone (who matters) wins!

Now we're getting a Great Depression of our own, and it looks like instead of us getting a New Deal, the robber barons are. More union busting, more tax cuts for the rich, more deregulation, and all so we can "compete" with authoritarian dictatorships that run sweatshops, by setting up our own here at home.

I think this is the direct result of some very specific, intentional rhetoric. I think it is also mostly, specifically american.

I'm listening to an audio book right now about John Winthrop and the puritan dream of america. The book focuses a lot on his speech on the model of Christian charity. History has been more concerned with his excerpts from the sermon on the mount, focusing entirely on "the city upon a hill". America is a beacon to the rest of the world, Christian values and American exceptionalism and boundless opportunity ... except to Winthrop these things had a more egalitarian backbone. We would be exceptional because of our belief in Christ's charity.... among other things mixed in with calvinist self-hatred and a sense of impending apocalyptic doom.

Here's an excerpt from the speech:

that He might have the more occasion to manifest the work of his Spirit: first upon the wicked in moderating and restraining them, so that the rich and mighty should not eat up the poor.

Reagan of all people invoked this speech. Leaving out the part about the rich eating up the poor of course and focusing only on "that shining city upon a hill" .... I think you've touched on something with your cold war reference. Reagan made greed and enduring pride a national value during the cold war. Contextually, this seems sort of appropriate... if you're ronald reagan, it's the 80s and capitalism proving a more lasting and successful social/economic value than communism is of the utmost importance.
And somewhere between then and now, we've skipped the part where we redefine our national values and even 9/11 and the decade of war proceeding did not put our moral folly in check.

It seems ever so unlikely that economic, social, political and cultural devastation is going to put it in check now. Right around 15% of the country is now receiving food stamps. I think if we knew that, instead of "poor" being taboo, you'd be more likely to see some kind of authentic populist uprisings. I think the decades since the cold war have seen such a demonization (and femalization for that matter) of economic hardship, you're unlikely to meet enough people ready to come out of their homes and yell about it. Not only does the media and marketing make women feel bad about their bodies, I think it's making people feel bad about their inability to consume the desired quantity of shit.
>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

I've noticed that even broaching the topic of poorness is taboo. You either get complete disinterest, eye rolling, jokes or people who try to explain to you that poor are really living it up on tax payer dollars. Even the democrats seem to avoid using the word 'poor', but they have no problem defending the 'middle class'. I'd love to see democrats combine the middle and poor classes into one 'underclass', since international free trade seems to be destroying the line between the middle and lower classes anyway.

If you don't upvote, who but me will get to enjoy your deft sarcasm?

>> ^bareboards2:

Yeah. He was the only president ever to believe in the promise and purpose of America.
Too bad nobody else has before or since....

Turns out, Reagan literally didn't know what was going on.

>> ^Yogi:

>> ^AeroMechanical:
Ronald Reagan.

Reagan gets a bad rap when really he didn't know what was going on. He spent most of his later years simply saying what rich people told him to say...as GE spokesman and then as President. Everyone knew that if Reagan went off script you had to shut him up or he was going to say something crazy.
If you don't buy it think about this. Ronald Reagan was credited with starting a Revolution, for being the man who formed the modern republican party. Yet after he left office how many interviews did he do? How many experienced journalists went to talk to him about the future of his party and what they should be doing? Nobody of any significance because all the journalists knew he didn't know what was going on, that he wasn't in charge at all.
It was the PATRIOTS!!

And Thomas Edison gets too much credit. When somebody is the public figurehead of a group, and that group has a coherent personality, then it's meaningful to identify the actions of the group with the figurehead.

The gestalt entity known as Ronald Reagan kicked the supports out from under the California state government, and then went on to do the same to the federal government. I can't think of one aspect of the current financial/political crisis in the US that can't be clearly linked to the reagonite program. Barring everything else, he choose to be the symbol of that, and I'll continue to treat him as such.

>> ^Yogi:
Reagan gets a bad rap

>> ^AeroMechanical:

Ronald Reagan.


Reagan gets a bad rap when really he didn't know what was going on. He spent most of his later years simply saying what rich people told him to say...as GE spokesman and then as President. Everyone knew that if Reagan went off script you had to shut him up or he was going to say something crazy.

If you don't buy it think about this. Ronald Reagan was credited with starting a Revolution, for being the man who formed the modern republican party. Yet after he left office how many interviews did he do? How many experienced journalists went to talk to him about the future of his party and what they should be doing? Nobody of any significance because all the journalists knew he didn't know what was going on, that he wasn't in charge at all.

It was the PATRIOTS!!

Ronald Reagan.

It's become part of the Sift, not unlike Westy's spelling and QuantumMushroom finding a rightist slant that blames leftist forces for everything.


Oh, not EVERYTHING. After all, 98% isn't a 100%.

Liberals' 50 years of dreadful domestic policy
Posted: December 23, 2010

by Larry Elder

For the past 50 years, the Democrats – and many Republicans who should know better – have been wrong about virtually every major domestic policy issue. Let's review some of them:

Taxes

The bipartisan extension of the Bush tax cuts represents the latest triumph over the "soak the rich because trickledown doesn't work" leftists.

President Ronald Reagan sharply reduced the top marginal tax rates from 70 percent to 28 percent, doubling the Treasury's tax revenue. President George H.W. Bush raised the income tax rate, as did his successor. But President George W. Bush lowered them to the current 35 percent.

President Barack Obama repeatedly called the current rate unfair, harmful to the country and a reward to those who "didn't need" the cuts and "didn't ask for" them. If true, he and his party ditched their moral obligation to oppose the extension. But they didn't, because none of it is true. Democratic icon John F. Kennedy, who reduced the top marginal rate from more than 90 percent to 70 percent, said, "A rising tide lifts all the boats." He was right – and most of the Democratic Party knows it.


Welfare for the "underclass"

When President Lyndon Johnson launched his "War on Poverty," the poverty rate was trending down. When he offered money and benefits to unmarried women, the rate started flat-lining. Women married the government, allowing men to abandon their moral and financial responsibilities.

The percentage of children born outside of marriage – to young, disproportionately uneducated and disproportionately brown and black women – exploded. In 1996, over the objections of many on the left, welfare was reformed. Time limits were imposed, and women no longer received additional benefits if they had more children. The welfare rolls declined. Ten years later, the New York Times wrote: "When the 1996 law was passed ... liberal advocacy groups ... predicted that it would increase child poverty, hunger and homelessness. The predictions were not fulfilled."

Education

The federal government's increasing involvement with education – what is properly a state and local function – has been costly and ineffective at best, and counterproductive at worst. Title I, a program begun 45 years ago to close the performance gap between urban and suburban schools, burns through more than $15 billion a year, and the performance gap has widened. The feds spend $80 billion a year on K-12 education, as if money is the answer. States like Utah and Iowa spend much less money per student compared with districts like those in New York City and Washington, D.C., with much better results.

Where parents have choices – where the money follows the student rather than the other way around – the students perform better, with higher parental satisfaction. But the teachers' unions and the Democratic Party continue to resist true competition among public, private and parochial schools.

Gun control

Violent crime occurs disproportionately in urban areas – where Democrats in charge impose the most draconian gun-control laws.

Over the objection of those who warn of a "return to the Wild West," 34 states passed laws allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons. Not one state has repealed its law. Professor John Lott, author of "More Guns, Less Crime," says: "There is a strong negative relationship between the number of law-abiding citizens with permits and the crime rate: As more people obtain permits, there is a greater decline in violent crime rates. For each additional year that a concealed handgun law is in effect, the murder rate declines by 3 percent, rape by 2 percent and robberies by over 2 percent."


"Affirmative action"

Race-based preferences have been a disaster for college admissions. Students admitted with lesser credentials are more likely to drop out. Had their credentials matched their schools, they would have been far more likely to graduate and thus enter the job market at a more productive level.

Preferences in government hiring and contracting have led to widespread, costly and morale-draining "reverse discrimination" lawsuits. Where preferences have been put to the ballot, voters – even in liberal states like California – have voted against them.

Minimum-wage hikes

Almost all economists agree that minimum-wage laws contribute to unemployment among the low-skilled – the very group the "compassionate party" claims to care about.

Economist Walter E. Williams, 74, in his new autobiography, "Up from the Projects," describes the many low-skilled jobs he took as a teenager. "By today's standards," he wrote, "my youthful employment opportunities might be seen as extraordinary. That was not the case in the 1940s and 1950s. In fact, as I've reported in some of my research, teenage unemployment among blacks was slightly lower than among whites, and black teens were more active in the labor force as well. All of my classmates, friends, and acquaintances who wanted to work found jobs of one sort or another."

Obamacare

This ghastly government-directed scheme will inevitably lead to rationing and lower-quality care – all without "bending the cost curve" down as Obama promised.

Any party can have a bad half-century. Merry Christmas Solstice.

Sarah, like George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan before her, is a perfect corporate vessel. She has that right combination of vanity, self importance, folksy charisma and complete ignorance. If elected, we will focus all our outrage on her as she mindlessly carries out the will of big business. She will gladly take credit for all of the things she has been instructed to do, and at the end of her term, will be completely destroyed by the public and the media. Luckily for her anonymous patrons, there is a limitless supply of megalomaniacs in the USA. Rinse, Repeat...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism

Liberals' 50 years of dreadful domestic policy
Posted: December 23, 2010

by Larry Elder

For the past 50 years, the Democrats – and many Republicans who should know better – have been wrong about virtually every major domestic policy issue. Let's review some of them:

Taxes

The bipartisan extension of the Bush tax cuts represents the latest triumph over the "soak the rich because trickledown doesn't work" leftists.

President Ronald Reagan sharply reduced the top marginal tax rates from 70 percent to 28 percent, doubling the Treasury's tax revenue. President George H.W. Bush raised the income tax rate, as did his successor. But President George W. Bush lowered them to the current 35 percent.

President Barack Obama repeatedly called the current rate unfair, harmful to the country and a reward to those who "didn't need" the cuts and "didn't ask for" them. If true, he and his party ditched their moral obligation to oppose the extension. But they didn't, because none of it is true. Democratic icon John F. Kennedy, who reduced the top marginal rate from more than 90 percent to 70 percent, said, "A rising tide lifts all the boats." He was right – and most of the Democratic Party knows it.


Welfare for the "underclass"

When President Lyndon Johnson launched his "War on Poverty," the poverty rate was trending down. When he offered money and benefits to unmarried women, the rate started flat-lining. Women married the government, allowing men to abandon their moral and financial responsibilities.

The percentage of children born outside of marriage – to young, disproportionately uneducated and disproportionately brown and black women – exploded. In 1996, over the objections of many on the left, welfare was reformed. Time limits were imposed, and women no longer received additional benefits if they had more children. The welfare rolls declined. Ten years later, the New York Times wrote: "When the 1996 law was passed ... liberal advocacy groups ... predicted that it would increase child poverty, hunger and homelessness. The predictions were not fulfilled."

Education

The federal government's increasing involvement with education – what is properly a state and local function – has been costly and ineffective at best, and counterproductive at worst. Title I, a program begun 45 years ago to close the performance gap between urban and suburban schools, burns through more than $15 billion a year, and the performance gap has widened. The feds spend $80 billion a year on K-12 education, as if money is the answer. States like Utah and Iowa spend much less money per student compared with districts like those in New York City and Washington, D.C., with much better results.

Where parents have choices – where the money follows the student rather than the other way around – the students perform better, with higher parental satisfaction. But the teachers' unions and the Democratic Party continue to resist true competition among public, private and parochial schools.

Gun control

Violent crime occurs disproportionately in urban areas – where Democrats in charge impose the most draconian gun-control laws.

Over the objection of those who warn of a "return to the Wild West," 34 states passed laws allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons. Not one state has repealed its law. Professor John Lott, author of "More Guns, Less Crime," says: "There is a strong negative relationship between the number of law-abiding citizens with permits and the crime rate: As more people obtain permits, there is a greater decline in violent crime rates. For each additional year that a concealed handgun law is in effect, the murder rate declines by 3 percent, rape by 2 percent and robberies by over 2 percent."


"Affirmative action"

Race-based preferences have been a disaster for college admissions. Students admitted with lesser credentials are more likely to drop out. Had their credentials matched their schools, they would have been far more likely to graduate and thus enter the job market at a more productive level.

Preferences in government hiring and contracting have led to widespread, costly and morale-draining "reverse discrimination" lawsuits. Where preferences have been put to the ballot, voters – even in liberal states like California – have voted against them.

Minimum-wage hikes

Almost all economists agree that minimum-wage laws contribute to unemployment among the low-skilled – the very group the "compassionate party" claims to care about.

Economist Walter E. Williams, 74, in his new autobiography, "Up from the Projects," describes the many low-skilled jobs he took as a teenager. "By today's standards," he wrote, "my youthful employment opportunities might be seen as extraordinary. That was not the case in the 1940s and 1950s. In fact, as I've reported in some of my research, teenage unemployment among blacks was slightly lower than among whites, and black teens were more active in the labor force as well. All of my classmates, friends, and acquaintances who wanted to work found jobs of one sort or another."

Obamacare

This ghastly government-directed scheme will inevitably lead to rationing and lower-quality care – all without "bending the cost curve" down as Obama promised.

Any party can have a bad half-century. Merry Christmas.

I suppose this is appropriate, given that this song's history began when Lennon was inspired by Timothy Leary's failed gubernatorial campaign for governor of California titled "Come together, join the party" against Ronald Reagan, which promptly ended when Leary was sent to prison for possession of marijuana.

Dude, regardless of how you feel about Ron Paul, in two years from today he will be 76 years old, and 77 years old on Election Day, November of 2012. Ronald Reagan was 77 in his last year of his 8 yrs in office. If Ron Paul won, he would be 81 at the end of just his first term. Ronald Reagan was 83 when he was officially diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.

Is it wise to elect someone who is that old? I don't think so. It's one of the most stressful jobs on earth. That can't be easy on an old man. And remember, age was one of the many reasons why McCain lost. One could argue that Ron Paul would select a good running mate to carry on his legacy if he died while in office. However, wouldn't it just be better to have the running mate run for president himself?

And his views on vaccination alone should disqualify him for office. I don't want someone like him in charge if a major pandemic broke out.

(And in case anyone is wondering, the editors of Effect Measure are well-respected public health scientists and health practitioners. They don't allow quacks and charlatans to have blogs on ScienceBlogs. You have to fill out an application, and then they'll let you know if you've been accepted or rejected. They've been around for 4.5 years, and they only have 80+ blogs total. It ain't no Blogger.com)

Also, Im not an American but I thought Ronald Reagan was the golden days of the republican party. Or maybe thats when it started to go downhill and another element got control over them?

I feel it's only in America do people apply hagiographic accounts of their presidents.

I mean look how Ronald Reagan is considered by the Republican Party. Or Bush right after 9/11.

Historically one should however consider the historical context, Lincoln may have assaulted the US via infractions but look what his legacy created, a country on it's way emancipation and civil liberities. What has Bushes infractions created? Yeah.

I personally don't think any President should be viewed in overly rose tinted views.