I've had it up to HERE.

[kellinator]

All right. All week I've been quiet about the Reagan media circus, not wishing to court the drama. But fuck it. I'm not going to take it anymore.

How fucking sad am I supposed to be that Reagan died? Look, people die. It happens. A peaceful death at 93 after a long full life is the best that any of us can hope for. And when that death is preceded by the living hell known as Alzheimer's disease -- well, that's a blessing.

Not that Reagan was exactly interested in providing funds for Alzheimer's research during his time in office. Maybe if that had been more important to him than tax cuts for the rich, he wouldn't have had to suffer through that long death -- and neither would have millions of innocents, including my grandmother.

Not to mention all the other diseases that Reagan ignored -- AIDS, anyone?

Despite his own recollections to the contrary, Ronald Reagan spent World War II in Hollywood making movies. Jimmy Stewart took time out from his film career to be a fighter pilot -- and had a clause in his contract that if the film studio tried to get publicity out of that, he'd walk off the set.

Last Sunday should have been dedicated to celebrating and remembering the brave troops who stormed the beaches on D-Day, not Reagan. Don't insult real heroes by comparing them to this man.

What's with all this misguided 80's nostalgia? See if shawnj refreshes your memory. The '80s sucked, and Reagan was a big part of why.

And for those who are convinced that Reagan was a genius -- well, gaiagurl helped me out with this link to some of Reagan's more bizarre quotations.

What set me off to the point of no return was hearing someone say that it won't be as big a deal when Jimmy Carter dies, he won't be as "well-remembered or missed." Whether or not you like his politics, Jimmy Carter has dedicated his life to helping the less fortunate. He is one of my personal heroes and is respected around the world. If people think Ronald Reagan is a better man that Jimmy Carter -- well, maybe the United States is in even worse shape than I thought.

Go ahead. Have your bread and media circuses devised to get Dubya reelected. You get the America you deserve.

(Just wish I'd had the balls to post this earlier in the week. Nobody reads LiveJournal on Friday.)

Comments

[orfeo517.livejournal.com]

Amen, sistah! One of my best friends sent me this. Sorry about the length.

"Reagan's taxing legacy:

The Reaganomics doctrine that tax cuts would pay for themselves has caused
lasting damage, says William Keegan

Tuesday June 8, 2004

Amongst the BBC coverage of the death of the former US president Ronald
Reagan, there was an interesting item about the relationship between Reagan
and Margaret Thatcher.
We all know how much Mrs Thatcher admired Reagan and that, from the latter's
arrival in office in 1981, they formed a powerful mutual admiration society.

But one BBC correspondent recalled sitting on a haystack in California with
Reagan during a campaign interval in 1980, and learning how much - even
before he became president - he admired her.

Specifically, he said he wanted to emulate what she was doing by "getting
the government off the backs of the people".

A few years later, in an interview with the London Director magazine, Mrs
Thatcher told the late George Bull that her ambition was to transform the
British political scene and make the leading parties more like Republicans
and Democrats - implying a decisive and permanent shift of the centre of
gravity to the right.

Well, she certainly achieved a decisive shift. Whether it is permanent will
be for future historians to decide. For better or worse - and, in my
unfashionable view, it was for worse - Reagan and Thatcher made such an
impact on their respective societies that their names were given to
Reaganomics and Thatcherism.

The anti-government rhetoric of both leaders did a lot of damage to the very
concept of public service. In front of cabinet ministers and officials, Mrs
Thatcher used to rail against government as though she were an outsider from
another planet, not at the head of it.

And the anti-government rhetoric of both was overdone. Of course,
governments and officialdom have to be watched at every turn. But it is
impossible to run large democratic societies without a considerable degree
of government - the real point being that the emphasis should be on good
government, not no government.

There was a fundamental flaw at the heart of Reagonomics, namely the idea -
epitomised by the famous Laffer Curve - that tax cuts would pay for
themselves via greater incentives.

The truth was that the supply side doctrine was a crude and intellectually
shabby attempt to justify tax cuts for the rich. For those with incomes
above $250,000 (£135,879) a year, taxes as a percentage of income came down
from 48.6% to 38.9% between 1980 and 1984.

The way in which certain tax exemptions were removed actually led to a rise
in the proportion of income paid in tax by the lowest income groups. In most
of the eulogies for Reagan this week, all those cuts in government
expenditure on food stamps, school lunches, welfare Medicaid and subsidised
housing have been forgotten.

The great economist, John Kenneth Galbraith, put it in a nutshell when he
said there was something strange about a doctrine holding that the rich
would work harder if they had more money and the poor would if they had
less.

In Britain, Mrs Thatcher and her chancellor, Lord Lawson, also tried to
justify tax cuts as self-financing - with similar results to those in the
US.

But whatever one's left/right views about the distribution of income and tax
strategy, the lasting damage of Reaganomics was illustrated recently when
the sacked US treasury secretary, Paul O'Neill, revealed that Dick Cheney
told him Reagan had proved "deficits don't matter".

The present president's father ought to know that they do. After George Bush
senior had promised "Read my lips - no new taxes", he had to eat his words
and raise taxes when confronted with the deficits inherited from the Reagan
era.

The budgetary chickens have yet to come home to roost in his son's US.
Reaganomics never was quite what it seemed.

· William Keegan, from The Observer"

[dwivian]

William Keegan should do better research.

Net taxes gained by the government, in fact, DID rise during Reagan's administration, largely attributable to a shift in money usage (people weren't scheming to protect money, but to spread it around into areas where taxes could be gained). It takes almost NO work at all to find that online.

Tax rates fell from 90% to 38.9%. Realize that there was a point at which making more money was like making no money at all, leading to the idea of a limited salary but non-taxable benefits like corporate jets, cars, houses, golf memberships, and other shelters, again limiting the ability of the government to charge for use.

All weird tax laws do is change behaviour (thus taxes on vices like tobacco and alcohol). I will always believe in a proportional tax scheme over a progressive one, with a simple progressive shift in the basis to prevent taxing the poor, because everyone should bear an even responsibility for the even opportunity of our country.

The reason Bush-the-elder had to blink and raise taxes is he didn't have the kohones to do what Clinton did, and shut down Government to get a better budget. Deficits come from spending more than you have, not from taking in less. Ever since FDR there has been an expansion of per-capita spending, with the exception of Clinton's years. Bush-the-miniscule and his GOP congress is trying to correct that by spending even more to get us back on track. Idiots.

And, the rich DO work more at making money when they get to keep it. The poor do, too, if you require they work to get the money instead of give it to them with weirdly managed tax credits (it is possible to end up with a larger refund than you actually paid, making it welfare instead of a refund).

Reagan had his problems, but his economic policy moved America out of a recession. I remember the fuel lines under Carter, and all the gardens and government cheese necessary to make ends meet. The total GNP rose well under Reagan, though it couldn't self-sustain without Government rising to the challenge of reducing expenditures. Alas.....

[orfeo517.livejournal.com]

Well, I will agree that Reagan had his problems:)

[dwivian]

Cool! Now, just point them out without resorting to distortion or lies. The facts are there, if someone will just go about making the proper case. The stuff people are parroting now is so easy to refute, but the truth is dull.

I've tried this before and gotten accused of practicing boredom as a profession, so I just play a short bit of tag with the problem posts to try to avoid the dreaded "tl;dr".

[orfeo517.livejournal.com]

Okay. Tell me that Reagan didn't fund Saddam Hussein against Iran. Tell me that Reagan didn't fund Osama Bin Laden against the Soviet Union! Convince me that this isn't a severely hypocritical government!

[dwivian]

Of course Reagan funded Hussein. He'd not gone all crazy on the Kurds at that point, and it looked like a good way to stabilize the MidEast to keep oil flowing, and thus destabilize the Soviet Oil export program. Good move, but lousy cleanup.

Reagan CONTINUED the funding for Osama that began under Carter. Yah, that one was a Carter plan, in an effort to support anti-soviet activity in Afghanistan. Again, good idea, but lousy cleanup afterwards.

What hypocrisy? We've never said it didn't happen....