Angry Reagan takedown...

[flintlock]

Re: Angry Reagan takedown...

I tried to read this article but it became a bit tedious and rambling. The basic theme seems to be guilt by association. You could substitute pretty much any politician there and the same thing could be said. They all surround themselves with obnoxious people because those types always show up in politics, on both sides of the political spectrum. I was hoping for some more detail and better constructed attacks on Reagan than this.

I have mixed feelings about Reagan. I do think he was genuinely sincere for the most part. He wanted to improve America and protect it. But he was no saint and a lot of the praise of him goes too far and drifts into hero worship. In the end he became surrounded with some bad advisors and fell into the trap so many do of trying to "make the end justify the means". Some of his fear of communism was justified, but at times it went too far and led him to allow some nasty stuff to occur, especially in South and Central America.

But overall he was a good LEADER and we have not had a President who was good at that since.

[Master Shake]

Re: Angry Reagan takedown...

Right, blame artists, as opposed to public officials that set policy?

I'm thinking you should not have been let out of the asylum.

Keep looking...

I left out the AC to hell with U, who viewed involuntary committment to mental institutions as a civil rights issue.

Policy makers/public officials take their cue from opinion leaders, the media, and the general public. Of course, it didn't hurt that de-institutionalizing saved $$$, but Kesey et. al. provided the intellectual/cultural foundation to make it palatable.

[sunskyfan]

Re: Angry Reagan takedown...

Sometimes History has to play out. For example, Jimmy Carter didn't demoralize the nation. The nation was demoralized by an immoral government and culture. He had to deal with the hangover from the sixties, Vietnam, Watergate, Nixon, American Peak Oil, the emergence of OPEC, crappy cars from Detroit, then end of the steel economy, Iran, and on and on. Jimmy Carter tried to appeal to our better natures with a cold slap of reality. Honorable but foolish considering the gullibility of the American people merged with the embracement of anybody who will tell them what they want to hear. Jimmy Carter's last budget proposal was a balanced budget. Most of the smart weapons used in the Persian Gulf wars, Bosnia, and Afghanistan were developed due to directed research instigated by Carter's Defense Secretary Harold Brown.
Carter was the President who appointed Paul Volcker.

Carter was a better man than a President no doubt but I wonder where we would be if we would have stuck to Carter's executive order than the US would never import more oil than it did in 1977. I wonder if we would have stuck it through with his fiscal discipline would we be better off now. I wonder if we would have fixed health care then as he proposed how much better off we would be.

I give Reagan his due in that he was optimist who had balls. Rare in American culture the last 40 years. The Republicans have made a whipping boy of Jimmy Carter for thirty years. Funny, as things played out, they were clearly wrong about their own policies perhaps they have also been wrong about Jimmy Carter.

[aaron]

Re: Angry Reagan takedown...

Really, when I look at all the iTulip charts, etc. it sure looks like Reagan gave birth to FIRE, debt, falling wages, etc.
I was really young, but I do remember Iran Contra affair being a big deal. "i cannot recall' or some other bullshit. (Only a few years later did we learn that he probably did not remember . We had a President who was losing his mind while in office)

Reagan was great for the wealthy. The wealthy make the rules and write history. Of course they would want to make a hero out of him.

[metalman]

Re: Angry Reagan takedown...

Really, when I look at all the iTulip charts, etc. it sure looks like Reagan gave birth to FIRE, debt, falling wages, etc.
I was really young, but I do remember Iran Contra affair being a big deal. "i cannot recall' or some other bullshit. (Only a few years later did we learn that he probably did not remember . We had a President who was losing his mind while in office)

Reagan was great for the wealthy. The wealthy make the rules and write history. Of course they would want to make a hero out of him.

check out...
Reagan redux or Keynes ahead?

[LorenS]

Re: Angry Reagan takedown...

Sometimes History has to play out. For example, Jimmy Carter didn't demoralize the nation.

I have also gained respect for Carter and lost it for Reagan over the years. Reagan started off as a quasi hero and Carter as a laughing stock for me.

Reagan's economics were worse than mediocre and the fact they "worked" was part luck and part fiction. Carter was dealt a poor hand and didn't play it particularly well.

I just think Dolan's article is poorly written, caustic and in poor taste.

I think the issues like defunding education and counter productive tax laws are way more complex than Dolan makes out too. Prop 13 had some serious unintended consequences, but the rationale of the law was based in frustration from the horrible inflation of the 70's. People with fixed income and property were horribly overtaxed based merely on the inflationary "increase" in property "value".

Even with Prop 13 Ca remains one of the most heavily taxed states in the union, how is it they can't afford schools? Other states make do with a lot less.

Bill Bonner is fond of saying that in a democracy you get what you deserve good and hard. It seems CA is a perfect example of democracy gone off track. Reagan was a symptom.

[metalman]

Re: Angry Reagan takedown...

Bill Bonner is fond of saying that in a democracy you get what you deserve good and hard. It seems CA is a perfect example of democracy gone off track. Reagan was a symptom.

bill bonner?

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
H. L. Mencken

[c1ue]

Re: Angry Reagan takedown...

I just think Dolan's article is poorly written, caustic and in poor taste.

That may be, but the point of the article was quite straightforward: Reagan was not the kindly grandfather figure historical revisionism and his national image has made him out to be.

From the facts in the article, it seems quite clear to me that Reagan in fact was the angry iron-fisted hammer of the liberals. And as I noted earlier, clearly this behavior was represented in the national sense also - the difference being that Reagan had other people to do the hatchet job for him by then.

Even with Prop 13 Ca remains one of the most heavily taxed states in the union, how is it they can't afford schools? Other states make do with a lot less.

Dr. Michael Hudson has repeatedly stated that taxation, if denied from property, leaks out into income, sales, and fees. This demonstrably occurred in California.

[vinoveri]

Re: Angry Reagan takedown...

From the facts in the article, it seems quite clear to me that Reagan in fact was the angry iron-fisted hammer of the liberals. And as I noted earlier, clearly this behavior was represented in the national sense also - the difference being that Reagan had other people to do the hatchet job for him by then.

Perhaps some context would help. The liberal agenda of 1960 was certainly vastly different than the wacko lefty stuff going on the 1970s (think JF Kennedy vs Ted Kennedy) When your gut tells you things are spiralling out of control fast, perhaps an iron-fisted response is understandable.

Frankly, I would gladly have Reagan OR Carter OR even Truman for that matter than what has passed for "leadership" over the last 20 yrs.

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Angry Reagan takedown...

From a 2004 obituary in the UC Berkeley News

http://berkeley.edu/news/media/relea...8_reagan.shtml

Kerr (UC President) was fired three weeks after Reagan took office. The act was the culmination of a process that began long before, when then-FBI director J. Edgar Hoover first tried to persuade Kerr to crack down hard on Berkeley students involved in the 1964 Free Speech Movement, which Hoover alleged was a front for communist sympathizers. Unable to convince Kerr, Hoover turned to gubernatorial candidate Reagan, a rising conservative star. As revealed by a 2002 investigation by San Francisco Chronicle reporter Seth Rosenfeld, Reagan and the FBI interacted throughout the campaign about dealing with Kerr and the student protesters.

Cheit said Kerr's firing galvanized the campus. "The firing of Clark Kerr really caught the attention of everybody on campus and to a great extent unified the students and faculty. It was a very emotional time. Most fundamentally, because of the constitutional independence of the university, the idea that a governor could force out a president was very disturbing."

John Douglass, a historian and senior research fellow at UC Berkeley's Center for Studies in Higher Education, faulted Reagan for a "failure to understand the importance of the University of California in the life of the citizens of this state." Douglass said that after his election in 1966, Reagan proposed cutting the UC budget by 10 percent across the board. He also proposed that, for the first time, UC charge tuition and suggested that Berkeley sell collections of rare books in the Bancroft Library. By and large, Douglass said, these measures were not approved by the Legislature, but lesser funding cuts were imposed.

Ray Colvig, the chief public information officer for the campus during these years, said the notion to sell rare books was quite telling. "Reagan did not think you needed a great university supported by public funding," said Colvig. "He thought if you wanted a world-class university, let the students pay for it. The idea of selling rare books went along with that."

In some sense, said Colvig, "Reagan's bark was worse than his bite about the university. He wanted to establish a special process to select faculty in several disciplines. In other words, he wanted to set a political standard for appointing faculty members. This idea was widely opposed, and it went away. Often, nothing came of these things. But sometimes it did. The financial cuts were real, and they introduced new special fees that, in effect, were the beginning of charging tuition."

May 1969 was the low point in the relationship between Reagan and UC Berkeley. Students and activists had begun an attempt to transform a vacant plot of university property into "People's Park." Attempting to head off the activists, the university engaged a fencing company, accompanied by 250 police, to erect a chain-link fence around the land at 4 a.m. on May 15, 1969. Five hours later, a rally was called on Sproul Plaza to protest the action. Resource, a current UC Berkeley reference guide for new students, relates the story of how Reagan intervened, sending in the National Guard:

"The rally, which drew 3,000 people, soon turned into a riot, as the crowd moved down Telegraph (Ave.) towards the park. That day, known as Bloody Thursday, three students suffered punctured lungs, another a shattered leg, 13 people were hospitalized with shotgun wounds, and one police officer was stabbed. James Rector, who was watching the riot from a rooftop, was shot by police gunfire; he died four days later.

"At the request of the Berkeley mayor, Governor Ronald Reagan declared a state of emergency and sent 2,200 National Guard troops into Berkeley. Some of these guardsmen were even Cal students. At least one young man had participated in the riots, been shot at by police, gotten patched up, and then returned to his dorm to find a notice to report for guard duty. In the following days approximately 1,000 people were arrested: 200 were booked for felonies, and 500 were taken to Santa Rita jail."

From the standpoint of campus administrators attempting to manage the situation, Reagan's actions were counterproductive.

Said Cheit, "The campus and other academics were appalled that the Guard came in, that tear gas had been sprayed on campus from a helicopter. Sending in the Guard was quite peremptory. There were local and campus police available. The Guard, in some ways, inflamed the situation. Within the administration, this was considered provocative. To the outside observer, it might have appeared justifiable. To those of us who were trying to control the situation, it seemed to exacerbate it."

Cheit added that, ultimately, "Reagan's political career owed a lot to the people who used the campus as a radical base for political activity. It is an irony that helped elect him."

The late Clark Kerr agreed with that assessment. In The Free Speech Movement: Reflections on Berkeley in the 1960s, an anthology of essays edited by Robert Cohen and Reginald Zelnik, Cohen discusses Kerr's essay for the volume. Kerr details the progress he had made in expanding free speech at the university and ending the "repressive 1950s" at Berkeley, documenting his battles with the Regents and the Legislature in defense of the principle of free speech.

"In the Kerr narrative," writes Cohen, "it is the FSM [Free Speech Movement] and its heirs that set in motion the political backlash that allowed Ronald Reagan to capture the California governorship by promising to 'clean up the mess in Berkeley.' According to Kerr, the FSM's significance rests less with its role in the emergence of the New Left than with its displacing his careful, effective liberalism by a reckless mass movement that inadvertently facilitated the ascendancy of the New Right."

[doom&gloom]

Re: Angry Reagan takedown...

I have also gained respect for Carter and lost it for Reagan over the years. Reagan started off as a quasi hero and Carter as a laughing stock for me.

Reagan's economics were worse than mediocre and the fact they "worked" was part luck and part fiction. Carter was dealt a poor hand and didn't play it particularly well.

I just think Dolan's article is poorly written, caustic and in poor taste.

I think the issues like defunding education and counter productive tax laws are way more complex than Dolan makes out too. Prop 13 had some serious unintended consequences, but the rationale of the law was based in frustration from the horrible inflation of the 70's. People with fixed income and property were horribly overtaxed based merely on the inflationary "increase" in property "value".

Even with Prop 13 Ca remains one of the most heavily taxed states in the union, how is it they can't afford schools? Other states make do with a lot less.

Bill Bonner is fond of saying that in a democracy you get what you deserve good and hard. It seems CA is a perfect example of democracy gone off track. Reagan was a symptom.

I always found it hard to respect Carter myself. he was just so.... wishy washy. People made fun of him being a peanut farmer, and it often came across as if he were in some ways a real simpleton. yes, he was completely right about energy, no doubt. But he jst conveyed everything so lamely and miserably.

Now in the after years he just could not help inserting himself into all kinds of events without being asked. he was the only ex-Prez who ever did. It was like the pair he couldn't find while in office he somehow found as he became an oldster. Most ex-Prez's (Clinton excluded) go off and observe the rule of not criticizing their replacements. Carter just could never shut his mouth. It's like the coach of a losing team drummed out of the league telling the new coach all the things he is doing wrong.

Carter's best work came with Habitat, his worst with the Iran Hostages (which Nightline harrangued him on for years). Carter allowed America to "bow down" to a bunch of thugs. Even the Iranians in later years admitted they were scared of what would happne after the Embassy thing -- except nothing happened. At least Clinton had the balls to park a few ships off the coast of Somalia to get our guys back after "Blackhawk Down" occured. Carter just rolled up and cried at night I imagine.

Reagan's best was his willingness to do what he said he would do. He told PATCO he would fire them all, and he did. Everyone knew where he stood. There was no wishy-washy going on. I would much rather have a leader who stands for something, even if I disagree, than one who blows in the wind and bends in all directions. This Egyptian thing just showed us what kind Obama is, and it is not the former.

The days of the American Empire are done, and that is a good thing. It is too costly in lives and money. But you gotta take a stand. You gotta tell the world where your line is, and you gottatell your people what is important. Reagan had that quality.

[cmalbatros]

Re: Angry Reagan takedown...

This what I remember of Reagan, bum chums with Maggie - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yovzZkf6OFQ

[flintlock]

Re: Angry Reagan takedown...

A recurring theme on the Itulip forum is the idea of the bogey man. There must always be some evil persona to blame things on. As if these jokers were not fairly elected. As if they were all pure evil and not instead merely acting in their own best interest or what they thought was best for the country. There seems to be this need to put things into a simple black and white, good vs evil depiction, rather than see thing as they really are, which is complex. Reagan was evil. Carter was an idiot, etc. We sit in our comfortable chairs, our bellies full, typing away about how bad things were and how these evil demons led us to this miserable existence. There never has and never will be a time when politicians do not have to make compromises with their own beliefs in order attain power and hold onto it. None of these jokers are the saints some try to portray them as. But people take for granted or overlook the accomplishments of past leaders . We take for granted that Germany is not a divided nation anymore. That we no longer live under the threat of a major war with a superpower like the USSR. Now our biggest threat is that some terrorist might use his shoe to bring down an airplane. Don't get me wrong, some of the crap Reagan pulled was just wrong, but the ultimate goal was fighting communism, which he saw as a huge threat. Carter tried to do what he thought was the right thing to do, but came off looking like a wimp and emboldened our enemies. Take your pick.

[metalman]

Re: Angry Reagan takedown...

A recurring theme on the Itulip forum is the idea of the bogey man. There must always be some evil persona to blame things on. As if these jokers were not fairly elected. As if they were all pure evil and not instead merely acting in their own best interest or what they thought was best for the country. There seems to be this need to put things into a simple black and white, good vs evil depiction, rather than see thing as they really are, which is complex. Reagan was evil. Carter was an idiot, etc. We sit in our comfortable chairs, our bellies full, typing away about how bad things were and how these evil demons led us to this miserable existence. There never has and never will be a time when politicians do not have to make compromises with their own beliefs in order attain power and hold onto it. None of these jokers are the saints some try to portray them as. But people take for granted or overlook the accomplishments of past leaders . We take for granted that Germany is not a divided nation anymore. That we no longer live under the threat of a major war with a superpower like the USSR. Now our biggest threat is that some terrorist might use his shoe to bring down an airplane. Don't get me wrong, some of the crap Reagan pulled was just wrong, but the ultimate goal was fighting communism, which he saw as a huge threat. Carter tried to do what he thought was the right thing to do, but came off looking like a wimp and emboldened our enemies. Take your pick.

actually, i think a view of the world as shades of grey... a continuum... a process... is the hallmark of itulip.

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Angry Reagan takedown...

Berkeley in this 60's
is a good movie to rent regardless of political persuasions past or present.
"I sat in that patrol car for 32 hours.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MufwTCgodmM&NR=1
Reagan speech...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGd_EsNCM4Y
This conversation with John Searle is interesting
http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/peo...arle-con5.html
This website looks promising
http://conversations.berkeley.edu
Anyone read this biography of Mario Savio?
"FREEDOM'S ORATOR is a superb book about a major figure from the 1960s. As an historian, I've thought many times about the mysterious process by which certain people appear and seem to be made for their moment, by reason of personal qualities of high principle, magnetism and decency. Mario Savio was such a person in Berkeley in 1964."

or this?
http://www.amazon.com/They-Marched-I...ref=pd_sim_b_2