President Reagan's Legacy

I don't know where the $7.8 billion came from.

Here's the data I have: AIDS Funding for Federal Government Programs: FY1981-FY1999 (from the Congressional Research Service).

Federal funding got a slow start in the Reagan years, but then ramped up -- especially in the 90's. I worked on the development of AIDS therapeutics and vaccines for a number of years (mid 90's to 2002).

 

Hmmm, according to the information from the link that oxpecker posted the highest increase in spending % percentages % occured during the 80's.

Out of 250 million people in the US of which many many more die of cancer and other illnesses than AIDS I would think that it might not be as much of a priority as you would have liked. However, as usual unless the Gov't is throwing money at something then it is not doing anything, and unless certain groups are always getting attention they will not be happy.

 

Excellent point. With few exceptions, AIDS is a behavior-based disease, while cancer makes no distinctions. Then there's these people, which leaves me speechless.

 

Another Reagan legacy is Iraq. Reagan supported Hussein throughout the Eighties, even during the gassing of the Kurds and Iranian troops. Reagans support, with Rumsfeld as special envoy to Iraq, undermines our current efforts in Iraq by making current U.S. policy look hypocritical.

 

Medicare is (and always has been) funded by intergenerational income transfer - the young pay for the medical costs of the old. In other words, what could have come from other younger-people to benefit your elderly parents apparently didn't. Perhaps it too tough to blame oneself?

If the price of the advancing welfare-state is the now measurable decline of technological progress, perhaps the "blame" belongs elsewhere? Or will the benefits of advancing medicine today and tomorrow never arrive because of the way welfare-state creep crowds out medical advances now.

Who will be around to lay proper blame for your premature death?

--Orson

 

True, he forced the USSR out...

but also eroded the way of life for millions of Americans. Since he fired the air traffic controllers, union membership has steadily declined and good manufacturing jobs are a distant memory. What about the Savings and Loan scandal or Iran/Contra. The "Christian" right seem outraged when Clinton got a blow job yet aren't concerned when national security is threatened. Still, Reagan was much better than the guy we have now...

 

Even that point's debatable. The Communist Party had a series of inept leaders, including the long time leader Leonid Brezhnev who led the Soviets into Afghanistan. Furthermore, Soviet communism had not progressed as Lenin said it would and world revolution and the subsequent Utopia never arrived, leading to disillusionment in the party and among the people. What is amazing is that the Soviet Union lasted as long as it did, not that it ended shortly after Reagan's term.

 

The lying about Reagan continue!

Clearly the best case against Reagan is made through the expanded War on Drugs - the criminalizing of victimless acts involving ingesting illegal substances into the mind, akin to reading banned ideas, absorbing them into the brain. This ruined the lives of many millions of innocent people.

But what did Reagan ACTUALLY beleive about homosexuals? How did they affect his policies?

About a year ago, this subject came up on National Review Online in relation to gay marriage, and a close insider revealed only one comment - apparently the only one made by the president on the subject of homosexuality - during an Air Force One flight before AIDs epidemic emerged.

Reagan said that in Hollywood, as president of of SAG, he knew lots of gays. He said they deserved to be left alone; that their path though life was dfficult enought without being left alone. In other words, don't stand in their way.

Far from some simple minded-bigotry or rabid hatred flowing from a Right-wing manic mind, Reagan prescribed benign neglect. If the leadership of gay liberation fails, then they fail on their own. But then some just can't accept their own self-responsibility!

Contrast this with the millions of people wrongly imprisioned, the tens and hundreds of thousands killed or wounded for the simple "crime" of chosing to consume substances others deem bad or hateful - where is the wailing and gnashing of teeth? - where are the condmnations of Reagan's evil here?!?! Blankout

There is a crucial difference between benign neglect and actual malice. The difference is one of force - coercion by the state. If only the state can save you, then only "force" can make you free, and you are a sorry dupe who is not really free.

The fact that the Left fails to honor the difference and perpetuates a hateful mythology does more to de-legitimate the Left than anything I can say.

--Orson

 

It was the state that freed many Americans in the Twentieth Century. The New Deal helped end the Great Depression freeing people from starvation and future financial ruin. Also, government intervention freed Americans from abuse at work through labor protection laws, and helped end Jim Crow in the South and other civil rights abuses. Remember, it's not only the federal government that can harm the people.

Many places today have all the qualities envied by the far Right, such as weak labor laws, little government regulation, and a weak central government, but unfortunately they exist mostly in the undeveloped world where everyone but a few starves.

 

Actually, the myth that the New Deal saved capitalism has no basis in fact. It prolonged the depression. The unemployment rate after many reforms was worse.

The problem that's long befuddled historians was the notion that it took WWII to pull the US out of the depression - apparently. The realiy was merely "apparent" for two reasons: the surplus labor pool was relieved by the war, of course; but the greater reality that wartime "emergency" of rationing and the simple inability of people to buy what they want (e.g., a new car - then impossible during the war), meant that "recovery" was masked. People's bank accounts built up - true - because of wartime employment, but real (pre-depression) spending did not return to normal until after the war.

Furthermore, the evidence of bond rates and public opinion polls also shows that the New Deals so-called reforms were responsible for the exceptional duration of the problem. Unemployment was falling and incomes were rebounding; such state reforms were a cuire, in fact, worse than the purporte disease!

The problem? Private investment dried up in the face of the regime uncertainty that FDRs socialism positied. Investors were rational actors in the face of state mandated irrationalism. (See economic historian Robert Higgs, The Independent Review, Spring 1997
"Regime Uncertainty: Why the Great Depression Lasted So Long and Prosperity Resumed after the War" Available online at
http://www.independent.org/tii/content/pubs/review/tir14.html)

--Orson

 

You might want to research the labor laws of that period as they were Jim Crow. The trade unions were blatantly racist and wished to eliminate competition from blacks who were successfully advancing economically. They got their wish.

 

What about the FDIC? One of the reasons for the Great Depression in the first place was little government regulation of America's financial system.

Another was that America's working class didn't earn enough money to support the economy by purchasing goods and products. Roosevelt did put millions of the unemployed back to work, but the economy was not going to recover overnight and WWII started only 8 years after he took office. The New Deal raised the standard of living for working Americans which we still benefit from today.

 

In the 1950's and 1960's it was Federal government intervention which ended Jim Crow. And it wasn't only the labor unions who like Jim Crow. Southern textile mill owners liked it too because it divided the work force and kept them from unionizing.

 

Re: The lying about Reagan continue!

Marijuana could be legalized tomorrow, and I couldn't care less. I'd much rather deal with someone who just smoked a bowl than someone who just polished off a couple of 40 ounce malt liquors. I wouldn't use it myself, since I hate all types of smoke, but good luck to anyone who wants to get high.

However.....cocaine, crack, oxycontin, meth, heroin, etc. are truly evil. People addicted to those drugs are total wastes who do nothing for society except commit crime and drain services. Anyone who wants to legalize "hard" drugs should do a ride-along with a city police department and see the damage they cause. Legalization of those would be sheer lunacy.

 

First, good question. There were no bank failures in Canada where there was no FDIC. Why? In Canada, as elsewhere, bank consolidations were not interferred with and therefore the problems of bank inefficiencies that have long plagued the US were not allowed to fester. Instead, bank size and growth was not the false bogeyman that they were here. (Yup! The Great Depression WAS largely as made in the USA!)

Second, did "the New Deal raise the standard of living for working Americans?" No. Refer to the Higgs article (Spring 1997 Indepedent Review) for citation of the specific evidence, all from official sources. It is pretty damning.

--Orson

 

Also, for a non-technical treatment, Marquette University economist suvewys The Great Deoression and its economic facts and theories in his recent "Rethinking The Great Depression," based on his economic history of the 20th Century.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1566634717/qid=1087180804/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-7404885-0148166?v=glance&s=books

--Orson

 

Re: Re: The lying about Reagan continue!

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Bruce - listen to your rhetoric. If something is "truely evil," then the "problem" - whatever it is, is self-limiting. I have live in Boulder, Colorado for many years- Here, drugs for the rich (and techically "poor" students) are widely available and - with the stark (and ludicrously hypocritical) exception of alcohol - widely available. If you don't know someone who has what you want, you can meet someone who has it a most any party.

Is Boulder going down the toilet? NO. Is Amsterdam (where I also once lived)? NO. (Or rather if they are, it has nothing whatever to do with the "lure" of drugs - rather, demonstrably false ideas.) Drug demonization is supersition born of good ole yankee Puritanism. I recommend Thomas Szasz "Our Right To Drugs: The Case For a Free Market" (1993) - even Milton Freidman endorses it!

--Orson

 

Re: Re: Re: The lying about Reagan continue!

It's not rhetoric, it's 16 years of experience of dealing with drug addicts. I am loathe to blow my own horn, but for the sake of credibility, I'll say that I work the busiest sector car in the worst area of my city. Before being hired by the city PD, I was a Housing cop, working the worst housing projects in Boston. I have a bit of experience in dealing with illegal drugs. Probably more than you, I'd wager.

Are you kidding me? Boulder is nursery school compared to other major US cities.

Is Boston going down the toilet because of illegal drugs?

Yes.

Is every other city/town bordering Boston going down the toilet because of illegal drugs?

Yes. That's why I retreated 11 miles south.

Orson....instead of reading books, I'd highly suggest doing an extended ride-a-long with the Boulder Police Department. Even though their call volume is probably not close to a major city, I think you'd get the idea.

 

Re: Re: Re: The lying about Reagan continue!

I wonder how long a herion or crank addict would live if you gave them all the drug they want? My guess is not long, but it would also be a state sanction execution. Not something I am willing to endorse or tolerate.

 

Re: Re: The lying about Reagan continue!

I was acquinted with a few people that I knew in high school that got into drugs heavy after high school. I found it kind of interesting how the different drugs seemed to mess up people in similar ways. What is the order of hard drugs that turn people into the most evil misfits to least evil misfits?

1. Meth (seemed the worst)
2. Heroin (second worst, although they might be sorry that they stole from you or hit you on the head, they would still do it)
3. Crack (okay my second hand experience doesn't include this one so it's just a guess)
4. Cocaine (I only knew a couple of people that were into this and they didn't seem to be too bad off, except that they were always broke. I would guess that alcohol might be worse if the cocaine didn't cost so much?)
5. oxycontin ? no clue, I never heard of this stuff before today.