wonderful era under Reagan

[maynard]

Since the Reagan era was so wonderful, I vaguely remember a few bad items.

1. Double digit interest rates
2. high unemployment
3. trickle down economics
4. high rates of inflation


Can anyone help me out with a few other "wonderful moments" of this era?

[Atticus]

1. Iran-Contra. nt

[struggle4progress]

32. Blowing up rural health clinics in Nicaragua. Supporting drug-runners. Shipping missiles to Iran.

Glorious days

[Greyhound]

2. Exploding the debt while dumping social burdens on the states.

The militarization of our police forces.

[LWolf]

3. De-regulation.

Reduction in social services.

Privatization.

Increase in political activity from the religious right.

[madrchsod]

10. de- regulation started under carter....

ronnie finished it....

[madrchsod]

12. george bush "installed" over reagan`s objection

the real center of power was with the boys in the basement and their "script writers". reagan was their willing sock puppet.

[LWolf]

20. I was still young during Carter's administration.

I don't remember everything. I do remember that he seemed to take a "middle of the road" policy; neither the more robust de-regulation that one side favored, nor the nationalization that the other side favored. Do I remember this incorrectly?

[Atticus]

4. Firing union air traffic controllers. nt

[KILL THE WISE ONE]

5. like cutting student pell grants

not fixing bridges, roads.etc.
spending social security surpluses for tax cuts to the richest among us.
union busting

I guess it depends on what side of the class war you are on.

[nebenaube]

6. Dumping schizophrenics on the street...

Essentially destroying mental health care in this country.

[madrchsod]

9. i forgot about that...happened right here in ronnie`s home town.

there were people who died during the ride to another facility. hundreds were dumped on the streets of chicago. there people were the mentally/physically handicapped. now the facility is a prison. over a thousand people lost their jobs

[madrchsod]

7. my parents made a bundle of money during the high interest craze...

neither one of my parents made over 12 an hour but they ended up with well over a hundred thousand cash and annuities for the next 25 yrs. they bought 30-60-90 then longer term notes and rolled them over. by the time the craze was over they had a sizable amount of notes that the savings and loan still had to honor at the original interest rates. they finally begged my mother into buying annuities which she did.

that was the only bright spot during the 80`s for our family. i was out of work for 8 years,started our own business,we lived with my parents for a year,and finally got a job in 88.my wife worked for around 6 years before she was axed....the 80`s sucked...but the music was good!

[Warpy]

8. Robbing children by decreasing school lunch funding

and calling ketchup on their fries a serving of vegetables.

[Greyhound]

11. Taxing all kinds of benefits and unproved income. The war on the muddle class. n/t

[goclark]

13. When he was Gov. of CA ~ he was cruel to Mental Patients

Some where released from hospitals or could not afford to be put in a appropriate setting.

I will never forget the photo in the Los Angeles Times with a Mental patient sitting on a backyard fence and screaming.
It was awful.

[Kievan Rus]

14. It's a miracle that moron didn't start a USA vs. USSR nuclear war

[prairierose]

The S&L crisis....that was the forerunner, the trial run ...

for what the banksters have done now and it was not very wonderful for many people or the taxpayer.

[DBoon]

15. my personal experience...

1. Higher taxes, as the deductions previously made available to a single employed renter were phased out. Also the social security deduction went up

2. Wages that fell behind inflation

3. Housing prices that soared beyond belief (yes inflation in other core commodities was tamed, but in a foreshadowing of Bush II asset inflation in real estate was unbated)

4. The only people I knew who made well were folks working in the defense industry or in various sorts of asset speculation (real estate, stock market, etc.)

5. A meaner, nastier, more racist culture overall. It startled me to start hearing crude racial epithets from supposedly educated people.

6. Homeless people living on the streets and the cruel mocking attitude of people to them

7. Expensive foreign luxury cars with bumper stickers that said, "The one who dies with the most toys wins"

[Kyril Enko]

16. I've never trusted the Russians

So I actually LIKED his foreign policy! Hey, I was in my mother's womb during the Cuban Missile Crisis, so cut a little slack here, wouldya?

[Sherman A1]

17. Prefer not to cut him any slack.....

The USSR was pretty much on the ropes. There was a book published in the 1970's (which I forget the name) to that effect which I am sure someone in his little group read.

What he did was push it a bit over the edge by bankrupting them and almost bankrupting us with defense spending.

[Kyril Enko]

19. "USSR: Decline of An Empire" (No "The")

Sorry 'bout that, chief!

[Kyril Enko]

18. "USSR: The Decline of An Empire"

But Reagan kinda/sorta/buevista helped it along!

[Sherman A1]

29. As did

Truman, Ike, JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Ford & Carter.

The USSR was pretty much a house of cards, it was a matter of time as to when it imploded. As I said his defense build up plan (with all the goodies for the MIC) merely pushed it to a tipping point earlier than later by bankrupting them and almost bankrupting us.

I considered the Esteemed Mr. Reagan to be the single worst President we have ever had until #43 arrived on the scene.

[FailureToCommunicate]

54. Reagan greatly expanded the arms race - declining under Carter- and USSR was

spending more of its GDP on military then we were. The analogy is of two old men huffing and puffing up a hill and one has a heart attack first. Does that make the other guy the "winner"?
The rewrite of the Cold War era with Reagan as Captain America is done to fit the narrative of U.S. always GOOD and RIGHT.

[struggle4progress]

37. His foreign policy mostly revolved around killing poor folk in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and

Nicaragua. The total death toll was horrendous (hundreds of thousands) and it's all well-documented.

Here are a few links on one of the better known incidents:

The Truth of El Mozote
By Mark Danner
http://www.markdanner.com/articles/show/127

U.N. Truth Commission Report on El Mozote
http://www.parascope.com/articles/0197/el_moz05.htm

Rufina Amaya, Survivor of the El Mozote Massacre
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=8972597

[zbdent]

21. had it occurred under a Dem nowadays,

Beirut barracks bombing reaction would have been called "cutting and running" ... that's forgotten in the minds of the "liberal media" ...

[Zoeisright]

22. Creating the homeless underclass.

Cutting medical research funding.
Lying about welfare.
Destroying the environment.
Making abortion less accessible with sneaky laws.
Breaking laws left and right - most indictments of an administrative EVER.
Iran-Contra.
The fact that the asshole had Alzheimer's already and the country suffered for it.

[1776Forever]

23. Remembering Reagan and wishing he was never in office - Read on:

Remembering Reagan
By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
6/10/2004

Read on:

http://www.jacksonprogressive.com/issues/mokhiberweissman/reagan061004.html

........

:nopity:

[Sherman A1]

30. Great Listing

:toast:

[Dr.Phool]

24. Free Cheese! And Butter!

[Art_from_Ark]

46. And ketchup was made an "official vegetable"

for school lunches!

[bobburgster]

25. No Kidding!

I always listen to all the bs of him getting the country righted..properous etc. and think, "What the hell are they talking about? I lived through his misery."

[Itchinjim]

26. '84 National League playoffs.

F**king Cubs

[Oldtimeralso]

49. Any Team Can Have a Bad Century or Two! n/t

[randr]

27. The fact that he made a deal with the Irani's

to win is all the proof history will need to condemn him.

[EFerrari]

28. Ignoring the AIDs epidemic, the US funded slaughter all over Central America

killing off labor. Memories.

[maynard]

31. Thanks..............

I have a great list to pass on to people who believe Reagan walked on water..................

[struggle4progress]

33. Let's not forget it was perhaps the most criminal administration in history:

"... investigation, indictment, or conviction of 138 administration officials, the largest number for any president to date ..." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reagan_administration_scandals

Reagan's criminal cabinet
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1770216

[EFerrari]

43. That's right. The Official Story is so powerful, even I forget this,

Thanks, s4p.

[Politicalboi]

48. And this

http://www.voxfux.com/features/bush_child_sex_coverup/franklin.htm

Oh and the war on drugs.

[struggle4progress]

34. Scrapped the FCC fairness doctrine

[Hannah Bell]

35. destruction of small town downtowns during the reagan recession - they never came back.

[FarLeftRage]

36. Turned the USA into the world's greatest debtor nation

from being the world's greatest creditor nation...

[defendandprotect]

38. Regan cut off benefits of disabled -- thousands committed suicide . . .!!

[EFerrari]

44. He gutted Housing and Urban Development. Reduced their budget

by 3/4 and so made homelessness an American way of life. The old felon. I wish I still believed in hell.

[defendandprotect]

56. GOP are expert at destruction . . .

[defendandprotect]

39. "October Surprise" = another stolen election -- !!!

[FailureToCommunicate]

40. "Welfare Queens" Also, Raygun's financial guru, David Stockman, axed my job at

the time - cutbacks on federal funding for disability non-profits.

[FailureToCommunicate]

41. Raygun fought hard against Section 504 of Rehabilitation Act (disability rights)

[change_notfinetuning]

42. The beginning of the dumbing down spiral, which we are now suffering the

effects of thanks to the almost completely dumbed down electorate.

Simple solutions for simpletons. Sound bites for the 30-second attention span. $600 toilet seats, which he justified by saying it was a toilet seat "assembly".

[burrowowl]

45. My Father worked with ICAO in Guatemala

During the Ray-gun years, A Maryknoll priest in his plane was shot down while delivering medicine to Native American villagges, the authorities wanted him to testify that the plane crash was pilot error, my Father said 50 caliber bullets are no accident. The rightist regime was funded, aided and abetted by the Ray-gun regime and 250,000 Guatemalan Indians died by his Iran-Contra hand.

[EFerrari]

47. Our authorities or theirs?

When I was at Cal in the late 80s, there was a huge display of drawings by Guatemalan children about the war in Dwinelle Hall. I couldn't even go by it after seeing it once until it was down three months later. Horrific.

[Oldtimeralso]

50. Making Grenada Safe

For rich American students that could not get admitted anywhere else.:sarcasm:

[Oldtimeralso]

51. Promising that "we would never cut and run"

and then 241 Marines were killed by a truck bomb. Adios Lebanon.

[Tabasco_Dave]

52. Destroyed the Small family farm system

and boosted corporate farms.

[live love laugh]

53. Gas lines. nt

[GoCubsGo]

55. Foreclosed houses being sold for a buck...

I remember all of what's been mentioned here-joblessness, inflation, homelessness, fear of nuclear obliteration, etc., all plastered over by that nauseating "Morning in America" pseudo-patriotic jingoism.

Several years ago, I met some punk kid who was raving about how wonderful that decade was. He was dumbfounded when I said that, no, my family did not make out just great during that time, and neither did anyone else I knew. His dad was one of those responsible for slapping up all those strip malls that wound up sitting empty. He made a killing on them. His dumbass son didn't understand that his dad was the only one who benefited from that.