Republican/conservative idealogy has failed.
It's time the American people adjusted their thinking to that fact. It's necessary for that fact to become clear so our Country can move forward; Republican/conservative idealogy has failed.
Under Reagan and Bush, we have witnessed the results of the application of conservative principles, and it ain't been pretty.
Under Bush, we had six years of complete Republican/conservatieve leadership in Congress and the Administration.
What has it gotten us? The highest record deficits since Reagan's highest record deficits.
The biggest record funneling of taxpayer money to corporate profits since Reagan's biggest record funneling of taxpayer money to corporate profits.
And so much more.
We've known this for a long time. When you enact huge tax cuts for the rich while engorging the government in order to enrich your already rich friends (I know, conservatives claim that they WANT small gov, but look at what we got with Bush, and even the con hero, Reagan, corporate welfare), you ensure massive budget deficits for future generations to pay off.
And this trickle-down theory is absolutely bogus. They make more money, they keep more money. Simple.
More below the fold.
When you remove almost all regulations from business, you get people dying and environments being poisened. Hey, just to let you Republicans in on a little seceret, businesses exist to MAKE MONEY. That's the crux of their focus over everything else, including people's or the planet's welfare.
They really don't care about that. That's why it's the government's job to ensure that its people and the planet are protected from their greed.
So, how do we get the rest of America to understand this simple truth?
There are so many areas of historical revisionism that need to be debunked about conservatism and American life as we now know it, and this site has contributers who deserve vast praise for their work in doing so.
In healh care, nyceve has led the way.
On economics and economic policies, Jerome a Pari and bonddad are all over it.
The rampant Christian Right movement to turn America into a theocracy? We can always count on troutfishing to keep us informed.
When it comes to the Commonweatlth of the Northern Marianas Islands, and their forced prostitution, forced abortion, slave labor, dengre is a vital source of information.
And lukery keeps us well updated on the Sibel Edmonds case.
Thank you all, and to all who I haven't listed, for your dedication to exposing many of the problems America must face up to.
An area I see that need some new attention is the Reagan myths.
The idea that Reagan was the true conservative and that the Reagan years were some sort of "Golden Years", which can absolutely NOT be backed up by fact, and the claim that he PROVED that conservatism was the best model on which to run this country (HA!) can easily be disproven.
Count on hearing a lot of hype about Saint Ronnie between now and November. McCain would be Bush on steroids, retaining the disastorous tax cuts, maintaining the occupation in Iraq indifinitely, rolling back none of the Unitary Executive power grabs (probably adding to them), but numerous conservatives have gotten their nose out of joint about him, claiming that he's not conservative enough (go figure).
But Saint Ronnie was a conservative's conservative? In fact, all the talking heads claim to be "Reagan conservatives". The irony is lost on them.
We all know Saint Ronnie was the king of tax cuts (conservative wet dream), right...right?
In fact, overall taxes for the poor and middle class ROSE during his administration. The only ones to benefit were the wealthy (why does that sound familiar?).
Paul Krugman of the New York times debunks this myth quite well in a June 8, 2004 article chronicled here at commondreams.org.
But Ronald Reagan does hold a special place in the annals of tax policy, and not just as the patron saint of tax cuts. To his credit, he was more pragmatic and responsible than that; he followed his huge 1981 tax cut with two large tax increases. In fact, no peacetime president has raised taxes so much on so many people. This is not a criticism: the tale of those increases tells you a lot about what was right with President Reagan's leadership, and what's wrong with the leadership of George W. Bush.
The first Reagan tax increase came in 1982. By then it was clear that the budget projections used to justify the 1981 tax cut were wildly optimistic. In response, Mr. Reagan agreed to a sharp rollback of corporate tax cuts, and a smaller rollback of individual income tax cuts. Over all, the 1982 tax increase undid about a third of the 1981 cut; as a share of G.D.P., the increase was substantially larger than Mr. Clinton's 1993 tax increase.
Mr. Reagan's second tax increase was also motivated by a sense of responsibility — or at least that's the way it seemed at the time. I'm referring to the Social Security Reform Act of 1983, which followed the recommendations of a commission led by Alan Greenspan. Its key provision was an increase in the payroll tax that pays for Social Security and Medicare hospital insurance.
For many middle- and low-income families, this tax increase more than undid any gains from Mr. Reagan's income tax cuts. In 1980, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates, middle-income families with children paid 8.2 percent of their income in income taxes, and 9.5 percent in payroll taxes. By 1988 the income tax share was down to 6.6 percent — but the payroll tax share was up to 11.8 percent, and the combined burden was up, not down.
Hey, at least Ronnie was a pragmatist about this. He saw the disaster his tax cuts were causing in the country and tried to do something about it (unfortunately, only going after the middle class and below). Bush seems bound and determined to push for more tax cuts in spite of the fiscal disaster they have created.
And yet Reagan still managed to create the largest budget deficit in American history, adding trillions to the national debt.
I just don't understand why Ronnie maintains the mantle of the tax-cutting President, when he only maintained them for the rich.
Then there's the Iran-Contra scandal, which should be an event that lives in infamy, but is largely being re-written.
PBS has some of the info at the link:
Ronald Reagan's efforts to eradicate Communism spanned the globe, but the insurgent Contras' cause in Nicaragua was particularly dear to him. Battling the Cuban-backed Sandinistas, the Contras were, according to Reagan, "the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers." Under the so-called Reagan Doctrine, the CIA trained and assisted this and other anti-Communist insurgencies worldwide.
Assisting involved supplying financial support, a difficult task politically after the Democratic sweep of congressional elections in November 1982. First Democrats passed the Boland Amendment, which restricted CIA and Department of Defense operations in Nicaragua specifically; in 1984, a strengthened Boland Amendment made support almost impossible. A determined, unyielding Reagan told National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane, "I want you to do whatever you have to do to help these people keep body and soul together."
And after the investigations?
Poindexter resigned, and North was fired, but Iran-Contra was far from over. The press hounded the president: Did he know about these illegal activities, and if not, how could something of this magnitude occur without his knowledge? In an investigation by the Reagan-appointed Tower Commission, it was determined that, as president, Reagan's disengagement from the management of his White House had created conditions which made possible the diversion of funds to the Contras. But there was no evidence linking Reagan to the diversion.
Maybe there's no evidence of his involvement because he pulled a Gonzales; "I don't recall?".
It's really time to try to pull down this myth that Saint Ronnie single-handedly turned this country into a Garden of Eden. That he felled the Soviet Union, all by himself and was a beacon of conservatism in a liberal world.
Historical revisionism has turned him into a hero. Nothing more.