Reagan Budget Director: "GOP Destroyed U.S. Economy"

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

This piece first ran on MarketWatch on Aug. 10, 2010. The 'insider' referred to in the title is the former economic wunderkind of Reaganomics - David Stockman. -- JPS/RSN

http://readersupportednews.org/opini...yed-us-economy

How: Gold. Tax cuts. Debts. Wars. Fat Cats. Class gap. No fiscal discipline.


How my GOP destroyed the US economy." Yes, that is exactly what David Stockman, President Ronald Reagan's director of the Office of Management and Budget, wrote in a recent New York Times op-ed piece, "Four Deformations of the Apocalypse."

Get it? Not "destroying." The GOP has already "destroyed" the US economy, setting up an "American Apocalypse."

Yes, Stockman is equally damning of the Democrats' Keynesian policies. But what this indictment by a party insider - someone so close to the development of the Reaganomics ideology - says about America, helps all of us better understand how America's toxic partisan-politics "holy war" is destroying not just the economy and capitalism, but the America dream. And unless this war stops soon, both parties will succeed in their collective death wish.

But why focus on Stockman's message? It's already lost in the 24/7 news cycle. Why? We need some introspection. Ask yourself: How did the great nation of America lose its moral compass and drift so far off course, to where our very survival is threatened?

We've arrived at a historic turning point as a nation that no longer needs outside enemies to destroy us, we are committing suicide. Democracy. Capitalism. The American dream. All dying. Why? Because of the economic decisions of the GOP the past 40 years, says this leading Reagan Republican.

Please listen with an open mind, no matter your party affiliation: This makes for a powerful history lesson, because it exposes how both parties are responsible for destroying the US economy. Listen closely:

Reagan Republican: The GOP Should File for Bankruptcy

Stockman rushes into the ring swinging like a boxer: "If there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing. The nation's public debt ... will soon reach $18 trillion." It screams "out for austerity and sacrifice." But instead, the GOP insists "that the nation's wealthiest taxpayers be spared even a three-percentage-point rate increase."

In the past 40 years Republican ideology has gone from solid principles to hype and slogans. Stockman says: "Republicans used to believe that prosperity depended upon the regular balancing of accounts - in government, in international trade, on the ledgers of central banks and in the financial affairs of private households and businesses too."

No more. Today there's a "new catechism" that's "little more than money printing and deficit finance, vulgar Keynesianism robed in the ideological vestments of the prosperous classes" making a mockery of GOP ideals. Worse, it has resulted in "serial financial bubbles and Wall Street depredations that have crippled our economy." Yes, GOP ideals backfired, crippling our economy.

Stockman's indictment warns that the Republican party's "new policy doctrines have caused four great deformations of the national economy, and modern Republicans have turned a blind eye to each one:"

Stage 1. Nixon Irresponsible, Dumps Gold, US Starts Spending Binge

Richard Nixon's gold policies get Stockman's first assault, for defaulting "on American obligations under the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement to balance our accounts with the world." So for the past 40 years, America's been living "beyond our means as a nation" on "borrowed prosperity on an epic scale ... an outcome that Milton Friedman said could never happen when, in 1971, he persuaded President Nixon to unleash on the world paper dollars no longer redeemable in gold or other fixed monetary reserves."

Remember Friedman: "Just let the free market set currency exchange rates, he said, and trade deficits will self-correct." Friedman was wrong by trillions. And unfortunately "once relieved of the discipline of defending a fixed value for their currencies, politicians the world over were free to cheapen their money and disregard their neighbors."

And without discipline America was also encouraging "global monetary chaos as foreign central banks run their own printing presses at ever faster speeds to sop up the tidal wave of dollars coming from the Federal Reserve." Yes, the road to the coming apocalypse began with a Republican president listening to a misguided Nobel economist's advice.

Stage 2. Crushing Debts From Domestic Excesses, War Mongering

Stockman says "the second unhappy change in the American economy has been the extraordinary growth of our public debt. In 1970 it was just 40% of gross domestic product, or about $425 billion. When it reaches $18 trillion, it will be 40 times greater than in 1970." Who's to blame? Not big-spending Dems, says Stockman, but "from the Republican Party's embrace, about three decades ago, of the insidious doctrine that deficits don't matter if they result from tax cuts."

Back "in 1981, traditional Republicans supported tax cuts," but Stockman makes clear, they had to be "matched by spending cuts, to offset the way inflation was pushing many taxpayers into higher brackets and to spur investment. The Reagan administration's hastily prepared fiscal blueprint, however, was no match for the primordial forces - the welfare state and the warfare state - that drive the federal spending machine."

OK, stop a minute. As you absorb Stockman's indictment of how his Republican party has "destroyed the US economy," you're probably asking yourself why anyone should believe a traitor to the Reagan legacy. I believe party affiliation is irrelevant here. This is a crucial subject that must be explored because it further exposes a dangerous historical trend where politics is so partisan it's having huge negative consequences.

Yes, the GOP does have a welfare-warfare state: Stockman says "the neocons were pushing the military budget skyward. And the Republicans on Capitol Hill who were supposed to cut spending, exempted from the knife most of the domestic budget - entitlements, farm subsidies, education, water projects. But in the end it was a new cadre of ideological tax-cutters who killed the Republicans' fiscal religion."

When Fed chief Paul Volcker "crushed inflation" in the '80s we got a "solid economic rebound." But then "the new tax-cutters not only claimed victory for their supply-side strategy but hooked Republicans for good on the delusion that the economy will outgrow the deficit if plied with enough tax cuts." By 2009, they "reduced federal revenues to 15% of gross domestic product," lowest since the 1940s. Still today they're irrationally demanding an extension of those "unaffordable Bush tax cuts [that] would amount to a bankruptcy filing."

Recently Bush made matters far worse by "rarely vetoing a budget bill and engaging in two unfinanced foreign military adventures." Bush also gave in "on domestic spending cuts, signing into law $420 billion in nondefense appropriations, a 65% percent gain from the $260 billion he had inherited eight years earlier. Republicans thus joined the Democrats in a shameless embrace of a free-lunch fiscal policy." Takes two to tango.

Stage 3. Wall Street's Deadly 'Vast, Unproductive Expansion'

Stockman continues pounding away: "The third ominous change in the American economy has been the vast, unproductive expansion of our financial sector." He warns that "Republicans have been oblivious to the grave danger of flooding financial markets with freely printed money and, at the same time, removing traditional restrictions on leverage and speculation." Wrong, not oblivious. Self-interested Republican loyalists like Paulson, Bernanke and Geithner knew exactly what they were doing.

They wanted the economy, markets and the government to be under the absolute control of Wall Street's too-greedy-to-fail banks. They conned Congress and the Fed into bailing out an estimated $23.7 trillion debt. Worse, they have since destroyed meaningful financial reforms. So Wall Street is now back to business as usual blowing another bigger bubble/bust cycle that will culminate in the coming "American Apocalypse."

Stockman refers to Wall Street's surviving banks as "wards of the state." Wrong, the opposite is true. Wall Street now controls Washington, and its "unproductive" trading is "extracting billions from the economy with a lot of pointless speculation in stocks, bonds, commodities and derivatives." Wall Street banks like Goldman were virtually bankrupt, would have never survived without government-guaranteed deposits and "virtually free money from the Fed's discount window to cover their bad bets."

Stage 4. New American Revolution: Class-Warfare Coming Soon

Finally, thanks to Republican policies that let us "live beyond our means for decades by borrowing heavily from abroad, we have steadily sent jobs and production offshore," while at home "high-value jobs in goods production ... trade, transportation, information technology and the professions shrunk by 12% to 68 million from 77 million."

As the apocalypse draws near, Stockman sees a class-rebellion, a new revolution, a war against greed and the wealthy. Soon. The trigger will be the growing gap between economic classes: No wonder "that during the last bubble (from 2002 to 2006) the top 1% of Americans - paid mainly from the Wall Street casino - received two-thirds of the gain in national income, while the bottom 90% - mainly dependent on Main Street's shrinking economy - got only 12%. This growing wealth gap is not the market's fault. It's the decaying fruit of bad economic policy."

Get it? The decaying fruit of the GOP's bad economic policies is destroying our economy.

Warning: This Black Swan Won't Be Pretty, Will Shock, Soon

His bottom line: "The day of national reckoning has arrived. We will not have a conventional business recovery now, but rather a long hangover of debt liquidation and downsizing ... it's a pity that the modern Republican party offers the American people an irrelevant platform of recycled Keynesianism when the old approach - balanced budgets, sound money and financial discipline - is needed more than ever."

Wrong: There are far bigger things to "pity."

First, that most Americans, 300 million, are helpless, will do nothing, sit in the bleachers passively watching this deadly partisan game like it's just another TV reality show.

Second, that, unfortunately, politicians are so deep-in-the-pockets of the Wall Street conspiracy that controls Washington they are helpless and blind.

And third, there's a depressing sense that Stockman will be dismissed as a traitor, his message lost in the 24/7 news cycle ... until the final apocalyptic event, an unpredictable black swan triggers another, bigger global meltdown, followed by a long Great Depression II and a historic class war.

So be prepared, it will hit soon, when you least expect.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

This is the quote that should really make the right-wing rubes' heads explode...

Stockman says "the second unhappy change in the American economy has been the extraordinary growth of our public debt. In 1970 it was just 40% of gross domestic product, or about $425 billion. When it reaches $18 trillion, it will be 40 times greater than in 1970." Who's to blame? Not big-spending Dems, says Stockman, but "from the Republican Party's embrace, about three decades ago, of the insidious doctrine that deficits don't matter if they result from tax cuts."

[baja]

Isn't it interesting that an old hippie living in rural Baja has been saying for years exactly what Stockman disclosed in the OP Op-Ed piece.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by baja

Isn't it interesting that an old hippie living in rural Baja has been saying for years exactly what Stockman disclosed in the OP Op-Ed piece.

Remember when EpicFail was sporting the Saint Ron avatar with the "bring back truth" tagline?

Careful what you wish for, eh?

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Reagan’s ‘Greed Is Good’ Folly

October 5, 2011

Exclusive: For three decades, the United States has undertaken an extraordinary social experiment, incentivizing greed among the richest Americans by cutting their top tax rates in half or more. The results are now in from Ronald Reagan’s bold gamble and Robert Parry says they aren’t good.

By Robert Parry

So, it turns out that greed isn’t good after all – at least not for the vast majority of the American people. But this is a lesson that many U.S. opinion leaders still resist.

For the past three decades – since Ronald Reagan’s Republican landslide in 1980 – the United States has undertaken arguably the most destructive social experiment in American history, the incentivizing of greed among the rich by halving their top marginal tax rates.

The idea – once famously sketched out by right-wing economist Arthur Laffer on a napkin – was to slash the tax rates on the rich to spur a “supply side” bonanza of economic growth and higher tax revenues for the government.

Before becoming Reagan’s vice presidential running mate, George H.W. Bush labeled this tax strategy “voodoo economics,” and Reagan’s first budget director David Stockman warned that, without severe spending cuts, it could create a sea of red ink as far as the eye could see.

But the experiment was undertaken anyway, with Reagan persuading a large swath of the American electorate – especially alienated white men – that tax cuts heavily weighted to the rich were the way to go and that the most important priority was to get rid of federal regulations, or as Reagan phrased it, “government is the problem.”

Reagan’s sharply lower tax rates meant that the rich had a much stronger incentive to pad their salaries and grab whatever they could.

Instead of the richest Americans paying 70 percent or more of the highest tranche of their income to the Treasury as they did in the 1960s and 1970s (it was even higher, 90 percent, under President Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s), the rich saw Reagan reduce their marginal tax rates to 28 percent by 1988.

The tax bite on some millionaires could be even lower if their earnings were categorized as “capital gains,” which were taxed at 15 percent. Over time, Republicans also eliminated the “estate tax” on large fortunes.

So, rather than discouraging excess wealth – as had occurred under presidencies from Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy to Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter – Reagan essentially encouraged the rich to be greedy. Greed went from being a moral sin to a policy goal.

Gordon Gekko, the fictional corporate raider played by Michael Douglas in Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street,” summed up Reagan’s new paradigm: “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.”

Consolidating an Orthodoxy

In the 1984 presidential campaign, Reagan and the Republicans turned their radical tax policies into a national orthodoxy when Democratic nominee Walter Mondale announced that he would raise taxes if elected and Reagan then mocked campaign hecklers with the smiling rejoinder, “I’ll let Mondale raise your taxes.”

When Mondale was crushed in Reagan’s 1984 landslide, it became clear that the American electorate had bought into this theory that lower taxes would be good for all.

Reagan’s Vice President George H.W. Bush followed the beloved “Gipper” in 1988 with a Reagan-like promise: “Read my lips: no new taxes.”

Though Bush eventually retreated somewhat from his pledge, lifting the top tax rate to 31 percent in 1991 as part of a deficit-reduction deal with Democrats, Reagan’s low-tax orthodoxy had settled in as a permanent feature of U.S. politics, despite the huge deficits that it created.

Even modest efforts to roll back Reagan’s folly have proved costly to politicians. Many congressional Democrats went down to defeat in 1994 after they supported President Bill Clinton’s boost in the top marginal rates from 31 percent to 39.6 percent.

After the Republican landslide of 1994, Clinton tacked to the right and accepted more Republican plans for “freeing up” the economy from government regulations.

With the support of Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and other neoliberal economic advisers, Clinton signed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley bill, removing Glass-Steagall restrictions that separated commercial and investment banks, a Depression-era rule that had stopped Wall Street from gambling with depositors’ savings.

That repeal opened the floodgates for Wall Street speculation as the United States shifted further and further from a country that made things into a country that made things up, often by using exotic financial products to shift money around while giving the bankers a fat cut.

After George W. Bush grabbed the White House in 2001, the Republicans scaled back the top marginal rate again, this time to 35 percent, quickly turning Clinton’s budget surpluses into a new round of deep deficits. On Wall Street, bubble followed bubble, finally blowing up with such force in September 2008 that the entire world’s economy was devastated.

So, the results of Reagan’s greed experiment are now in. Rather than “the shining city on a hill” and “morning in America” that Reagan had promised, many Americans are experiencing a nightmarish midnight, barely surviving in decaying cities, 14 million out of work and millions more out of their homes.

The Luxurious Rich

Under Reaganomics, the bounty for the rich from lower taxes was supposed to “trickle down” to the rest of the American population, creating a rising tide that would lift all boats. However, in reality, it floated only a handful of yachts – filled with beautiful people flaunting Tiffany jewelry, Prada crocodile handbags ($41,000 each) and Louboutin boots ($2,495 at Saks).

As author Barbara Ehrenreich wrote in last Sunday’s Washington Post, this era’s “‘hyper-luxury’ is represented by the 123-room Los Angeles mansion just purchased by 22-year-old British heiress Petra Ecclestone, which might be able to comfortably house 50 homeless families while leaving plenty of room for its owner should she care to remain on the premises.

“The term probably also applies to the new vogue of high-end children’s playhouses, one of which sells for $248,000. As one leading purveyor of such air-conditioned toys put it, ‘A special playhouse is not the sort of thing you can put off until the economy gets better.’” [Washington Post, Oct. 2, 2011]

Other beneficiaries of Reaganomics, the youthful and macho hedge fund managers, have turned Lower Manhattan and other favorite haunts into locations for Maserati dealerships, trendy restaurants, expensive bars, high-priced escort services and the finest cocaine.

Meanwhile, other Americans have to count their change before taking the family to a fast-food joint or before fitting the kids for school with discount clothes at Wal-Mart.

But many struggling Americans still vote Republican and cheer GOP candidates who call for even lower taxes on the rich. That’s due in part to the fact that during the Reagan era, the Right also built a powerful propaganda infrastructure to reinforce the message that low taxes on the rich somehow equated to both sound economics and American “liberty.”

Over time, this propaganda machinery churned out an altered American history in which the Founders supposedly despised a strong central government, even though they were the ones who replaced the weak Articles of Confederation with a dynamic federal structure under the Constitution in 1787. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Tea Party Gets the Constitution Wrong.”]

The supremacy of the Union was reaffirmed in the Nullification battles of the 1830s and was finally settled in the Civil War in the 1860s. However, many of today’s ideological descendants of the defeated Confederacy discovered that knowledge of American history is now so weak that they could simply substitute a revised one – and that few voters would know better.

The “Reagan legacy” and this revisionist history of the Founder’s “originalist” intent have combined to ensure that Reagan’s failed tax experiment is far more enduring than it deserves to be. Much like Prohibition lingered on for years after its destructive impact – undermining respect for law and fueling organized crime – had become obvious.

Resistant to Reality

Reversing a disastrous experiment (once it has surrounded itself with entrenched interests) turns out to be very difficult. Reagan’s incentivized greed has proved especially impervious to facts, although the recent Wall Street protests indicate that reality may finally be seeping through.

A 2009 study by former International Monetary Fund chief economist Simon Johnson showed that in the years before Reagan’s deregulatory frenzy took effect, banks accounted for no more than 16 percent of domestic corporate profits. Yet by the middle of last decade, that number had risen to 41 percent – and with those bigger profits, Wall Street compensation soared.

However, the greed was not confined to Wall Street. Across the landscape of corporate America, compensation for chief executives and other top officials skyrocketed while pay for their employees stagnated.

Median CEO pay jumped from around $1 million in the 1970s and early 1980s to around $2 million by 1990 to around $5 million by the middle of last decade, according to data compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

It also didn’t seem to matter much that many CEOs were mediocre in their performance. As the Washington Post’s Peter Whoriskey wrote, corporate boards often applied a “Lake Wobegon Effect” that raised their CEO’s pay by pegging it to the overall rise in CEO pay.

For instance, Amgen CEO Kevin W. Sharer got a raise last March from $15 million annually to $21 million although shareholders in the biotech firm had lost 3 percent on their investment in 2010 and 7 percent over the past five years. [Washington Post, Oct. 4, 2011]

Yet, as bankers, CEOs and the occasional heiress feathered their luxurious nests, Reagan’s economic experiment had disastrous consequences for middle- and working-class Americans. Wages slumped, unions shrank, factories closed, jobs grew scarce and proud industrial cities endured rising poverty and worsening decay.

Though it should now be clear what Reagan wrought with his social experiment in incentivized greed, those lessons have not been accepted by many leading politicians and pundits. The prevailing “conventional wisdom” remains that taxes on the rich must stay low. Politicians approach this “third rail” of higher taxes very gingerly.

Even as President Obama called for a new jobs program, he recommended paying for it, in part, by raising taxes on some rich Americans so they don’t pay a lower tax rate than their secretaries. Yet, Republicans responded to even that modest proposal by accusing Obama of “class warfare.”

Missing a Great Opportunity

It is another bitter irony of history that Reagan’s ascension in 1980 coincided with a moment when the United States was on the cusp of what could have been a golden age. Federal investments in transportation, technology and science had brought the country into sight of a new horizon where a broad prosperity was possible for the entire population.

Through the tax structure of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, Americans had footed the bill for a wide range of advancements. However, some temporary economic reversals in the 1970s – from the Vietnam War’s inflationary hangover to oil shocks in the Middle East – created a national malaise that Reagan promised to cure with his cheery personality and tax policies.

So, instead of the country profiting from all those government investments – from the highway system under Eisenhower to microprocessors from Kennedy’s space program to the Pentagon’s early development of the Internet – the profits went almost entirely to big corporations and the rich who devised ways to take advantage of this taxpayer-financed progress.

Some of the new rich, who piggybacked onto government-funded projects like the Internet, claimed they were the worthy ones who deserved their sudden wealth. Republicans continue to warn that it is wrong to punish society’s “winners,” even though many online moguls might be delivering pizzas today if it weren’t for the taxpayer money used to create the Internet.

Meanwhile, average Americans lost out in two ways: first, the higher productivity from the technological breakthroughs eliminated many middle-class jobs, from factory work to accounting, and second, the adoption of “free trade” policies shipped many jobs overseas to lower-wage countries.

Those two developments alone ensured super-profits to multinational corporations and their wealthy owners. However, instead of a large chunk of that money going to pay back the nation for the crucial investments and for the global security that made the “free trade” possible, the money mostly went to buy expansive mansions and expensive baubles.

If the pre-Reagan higher marginal tax rates had stayed in place, the extra money could have been reinvested in the country’s infrastructure and recycled into additional scientific research, creating millions of new jobs to replace those lost to both technology and globalization.

That lost opportunity represented not only a personal tragedy for the millions of Americans who then frantically sought to maintain their living standards by working more hours and borrowing against their homes, but it marked a historic tragedy for the entire planet because there was a chance for people everywhere to enjoy the fruits of this new technology.

Instead, the ill-timed arrival of Ronald Reagan on the world stage changed that history. But that is not the narrative that most Americans hear. Instead, Ronald Reagan has been transformed into a national icon with recent U.S. polls rating him the greatest president ever.

Populist Voices

Until recently, the loudest “populist” voices in America have come from angry right-wing talk show hosts and Tea Party protesters who hail Reagan and advocate more tax cuts for the rich and more reductions in the role of the federal government.

Many working- and middle-class white men have allowed their anger over their declining status to be redirected away from the rich and toward minorities, women and the “guv-mint.” These members of the Reagan cult remain convinced that the “guv-mint” is a threat to their “liberty” and that their “freedom” depends on giving nearly unlimited power to the rich and the corporations.

Some of these “populist” right-wingers wear their racial/ethnic/religious bigotry on their sleeves, treating the African-American in the White House as the ultimate symbol of their “oppression” and vowing to “take our country back.”

This mix of fear and prejudice helps explain the stubborn appeal of the ugly falsehood about Barack Obama being born in Kenya and thus not being a “naturally born” American.

But finally a counter-movement to this right-wing orthodoxy has begun to take shape, spearheaded by young Americans who see their future much dimmer than that of their parents. Though their “99 Percent” movement may lack specific policy remedies, it does recognize the harm caused by the concentration of national wealth in the top one percent.

Instead of the Tea Party approach of taking the side of (and organizational money from) billionaires like the Koch brothers, the “99 Percent” movement takes aim at the greedy Wall Street banks and America’s super-rich. These protesters at least have identified the real culprits.

Official Washington, which has served as a reliable handmaiden for the wealthy over the past several decades, is nonplussed by these anti-capitalist sentiments being expressed in this new movement as it occupies a park near Wall Street and spreads to other cities.

Washington’s think tanks and other policy centers remain dominated by Reagan’s “free-market” devotees, but those sentiments also pervade the major U.S. news media, especially mainstream outlets like the Washington Post and the New York Times. A key reason is that many well-paid media stars have profited handsomely from the current political/economic climate.

Offering ersatz “reform,” the likes of best-selling author (and Times columnist) Thomas Friedman have begun calling for a third party of “radical centrism” that would support some modest increases in tax revenues while continuing “free-trade” policies and taking the “courageous” stand of slashing “entitlement” programs, like Social Security and Medicare.

It should be recalled that during the run-up to George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, Friedman enthusiastically supported the illegal war and deemed himself a “Tony Blair Democrat,” thinking that associating himself with the glib but unprincipled British prime minister was a good thing.

There will be many media talking heads who will urge Americans to get behind the supposedly brave Friedman and his “centrist” third party. However, if serious change is to come to the United States – and the world – more is needed than Friedman’s chic centrism.

For now, the new protest movement of the “99 Percent” may wish to stay focused on its anti-capitalist critique. That’s all well and good. However, if the American economy is to be revived, concrete proposals will eventually be needed.

A good place to start might be to relearn the lessons of earlier generations – from the economic progressivism of Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt through the government pragmatism of Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy to the early environmental initiatives of Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.

A key starting point for this national rebirth might be to restore the pre-Reagan marginal tax rates on the rich, with the extra revenue reinvested to create jobs and to rebuild America. Senate Democrats have made a modest move in that direction by proposing a five-percentage-point surcharge on people earning $1 million or more to pay for Obama’s job program.

In other words, the time may finally be ripe for the country to bring Reagan’s failed experiment to an end and to start dis-incentivizing greed.

[Spider]

well to play devils advocate here , at the time we needed Red ink's stimulus economic plan , It just got taken to far and for to long ....Anyone remember Land , sea and air company ? well they was the first bailout I noticed , I sure hope obama remembers what happened back then and uses better judgment with his stimulus economic plan ...so far he has

[Rohirrim]

A good place to start might be to relearn the lessons of earlier generations – from the economic progressivism of Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt through the government pragmatism of Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy to the early environmental initiatives of Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.

A key starting point for this national rebirth might be to restore the pre-Reagan marginal tax rates on the rich, with the extra revenue reinvested to create jobs and to rebuild America. Senate Democrats have made a modest move in that direction by proposing a five-percentage-point surcharge on people earning $1 million or more to pay for Obama’s job program.

I would also cap the trade deficit and start using a VAT to punish those American corporations who take jobs overseas, and reward those who bring jobs home. I would also begin to punish China for their currency manipulation and wherever they are abusing markets (ie, flooding the market with cheap solar panels to control the market) I would start using tariffs. **** them. If the want a trade war, we've got the food. Since when is it right for Americans to give up their jobs so greedy corporate pigs can help build a stronger communist dictatorship across the sea?

I would also start some major audits on corporations who are hiding profits offshore, kill the corporate welfare state and all its assorted subsidies, and create a flat tax for corporations with no loopholes.

[baja]

I have said many times the fall of America was sped up greatly by Reagan's policys if fact Reagan's election was a big part of my decision to move to Mexico. The fall started with the creation of the Federal Reserve over Thanksgiving break in 1913. As the forefathers warned when the banks gain control of the money supply Americans will lose there freedoms and their prosperity and that has happened.

[Bronx33]

The cartoons really cemented the thread they always do ( rolls eyes)

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by Bronx33

The cartoons really cemented the thread they always do ( rolls eyes)

Had to make sure there was something in this thread for you.

Lord knows it's too much to expect you to process the articles.

[Rohirrim]

Originally Posted by baja

I have said many times the fall of America was sped up greatly by Reagan's policys if fact Reagan's election was a big part of my decision to move to Mexico. The fall started with the creation of the Federal Reserve over Thanksgiving break in 1913. As the forefathers warned when the banks gain control of the money supply Americans will lose there freedoms and their prosperity and that has happened.

Reagan's primary theme was that we are not all in it together anymore. During the war and depression years, the country came together, which created a time of great power and the largest, richest middle class in history. Reagan took down that economic framework and created a new direction for the country: Greed is good. That basically created a Hobbesian world with all against all. The next thing we heard was CEOs proclaiming that the only thing they cared about was their shareholders, in other words, the top five percent. We call that the Junk Bond Era (which gave us the Savings and Loans crisis). That's where Romney made all his money. Then, those CEOs could simply move their manufacture and jobs offshore without guilt, because, even if it destroyed American communities, they owed nothing to America. They only owe fealty to their shareholders. Thus, we find ourselves today on the brink of national decay. The corporations get stronger while the country gets weaker. Why? Because the richest owe their loyalty to their corporations and their investments. Not to their country.

[barryr]

Originally Posted by Rohirrim

Reagan's primary theme was that we are not all in it together anymore. During the war and depression years, the country came together, which created a time of great power and the largest, richest middle class in history. Reagan took down that economic framework and created a new direction for the country: Greed is good. That basically created a Hobbesian world with all against all. The next thing we heard was CEOs proclaiming that the only thing they cared about was their shareholders, in other words, the top five percent. We call that the Junk Bond Era (which gave us the Savings and Loans crisis). That's where Romney made all his money. Then, those CEOs could simply move their manufacture and jobs offshore without guilt, because, even if it destroyed American communities, they owed nothing to America. They only owe fealty to their shareholders. Thus, we find ourselves today on the brink of national decay. The corporations get stronger while the country gets weaker. Why? Because the richest owe their loyalty to their corporations and their investments. Not to their country.

Talk about rewriting history if you think that was what Reagan was about. Try reading actual history instead of BS lefty blogs.

[baja]

Originally Posted by Rohirrim

Reagan's primary theme was that we are not all in it together anymore. During the war and depression years, the country came together, which created a time of great power and the largest, richest middle class in history. Reagan took down that economic framework and created a new direction for the country: Greed is good. That basically created a Hobbesian world with all against all. The next thing we heard was CEOs proclaiming that the only thing they cared about was their shareholders, in other words, the top five percent. We call that the Junk Bond Era (which gave us the Savings and Loans crisis). That's where Romney made all his money. Then, those CEOs could simply move their manufacture and jobs offshore without guilt, because, even if it destroyed American communities, they owed nothing to America. They only owe fealty to their shareholders. Thus, we find ourselves today on the brink of national decay. The corporations get stronger while the country gets weaker. Why? Because the richest owe their loyalty to their corporations and their investments. Not to their country.

Excellent post Ro, great points.

[baja]

Originally Posted by barryr

Talk about rewriting history if you think that was what Reagan was about. Try reading actual history instead of BS lefty blogs.

Try writing a coherent rebuttal.


Instead of saying "You're dumb, look it up."

[Spider]

talking to a friend of mine that owns his own business , well he owns a tire shop , his biggest problem isnt taxes , it is the lack of customers .....

[baja]

Originally Posted by Spider

talking to a friend of mine that owns his own business , well he owns a tire shop , his biggest problem isnt taxes , it is the lack of customers .....

Garcia would tell him to get a night job - get out late at night an slash tires that would generate business. Yes, Garcia would say your friend is lazy and unimaginative.

[Spider]

Originally Posted by barryr

Talk about rewriting history if you think that was what Reagan was about. Try reading actual history instead of BS lefty blogs.

that is exactly what Reagan was about , when he threw the government weight into the air traffic controllers strike ..........

[Spider]

Originally Posted by baja

Garcia would tell him to get a night job - got out late at night an slash tires that would generate business. Yes, Garcia would say your friend is lazy and unimaginative.

garcia is an idiot , I have personally told him that on several occasions ....and probably will be telling him that for years to come

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by barryr

Talk about rewriting history if you think that was what Reagan was about. Try reading actual history instead of BS lefty blogs.

@ your dumb ass thinking you actually refuted any of the facts he listed.

[Rohirrim]

Originally Posted by barryr

Talk about rewriting history if you think that was what Reagan was about. Try reading actual history instead of BS lefty blogs.

I was referring more to actual policy, than rhetoric. Although his rhetoric was probably more divisive than even Nixon's. Remember the "welfare queens in their Cadillacs" going down for their food stamps? He launched his presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi (where the three voting rights activists were murdered in the 50s) and gave a speech extolling "states rights" (ie, the Southern Strategy). As Wiki puts it, ...exploiting anti-African American racism and fears of lawlessness among Southern white voters and appealing to fears of growing federal power in social and economic matters (generally lumped under the concept of states rights). And remember the "Moral Majority" he exploited? The explicit message there was that you were either a god-fearing, Christian, capitalist, Republican or an enemy of America; The politics of divide and conquer used against his own people for his personal, political gain.

I was living in California when he was governor. He wanted to reopen the Japanese internment camps of WWII to incarcerate all the Vietnam War protestors.

[baja]

Originally Posted by Rohirrim

I was referring more to actual policy, than rhetoric. Although his rhetoric was probably more divisive than even Nixon's. Remember the "welfare queens in their Cadillacs" going down for their food stamps? He launched his presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi (where the three voting rights activists were murdered in the 50s) and gave a speech extolling "states rights" (ie, the Southern Strategy). As Wiki puts it, ...exploiting anti-African American racism and fears of lawlessness among Southern white voters and appealing to fears of growing federal power in social and economic matters (generally lumped under the concept of states rights). And remember the "Moral Majority" he exploited? The explicit message there was that you were either a god-fearing, Christian, capitalist, Republican or an enemy of America; The politics of divide and conquer used against his own people for his personal, political gain.

I was living in California when he was governor. He wanted to reopen the Japanese internment camps of WWII to incarcerate all the Vietnam War protestors.

GWB was even more to the point. Bush,"Either you are with us or you are against us". Course many at the time did not understand when he said "us" he meant neocons.

[Requiem]

Reagan was terrible. I remember having night terrors of him when I was a baby.

[Play2win]

War + Tax Cuts + Outsourcing = No more Well-Oiled Economic Machine.

[Play2win]

For a Country, Fiscal Discipline IS Taxing Appropriately.