Beautiful Horizons

The Real Tea Party - a revolt against corporate tax breaks

This is interesting & more evidence of the aggressive ignorance of these would-be "populists" who have grotesquely hijacked the spirit of the American revolution & "founding fathers" - Via Crooks & Liars

Top 10 Things Conservatives Don't Want You to Know About Reagan

ThinkProgress:

1. Reagan was a serial tax raiser. As governor of California, Reagan “signed into law the largest tax increase in the history of any state up till then.” Meanwhile, state spending nearly doubled. As president, Reagan “raised taxes in seven of his eight years in office,” including four times in just two years. As former GOP Senator Alan Simpson, who called Reagan “a dear friend,” told NPR, “Ronald Reagan raised taxes 11 times in his administration — I was there.” “Reagan was never afraid to raise taxes,” said historian Douglas Brinkley, who edited Reagan’s memoir. Reagan the anti-tax zealot is “false mythology,” Brinkley said.

2. Reagan nearly tripled the federal budget deficit. During the Reagan years, the debt increased to nearly $3 trillion, “roughly three times as much as the first 80 years of the century had done altogether.” Reagan enacted a major tax cut his first year in office and government revenue dropped off precipitously. Despite the conservative myth that tax cuts somehow increase revenue, the government went deeper into debt and Reagan had to raise taxes just a year after he enacted his tax cut. Despite ten more tax hikes on everything from gasoline to corporate income, Reagan was never able to get the deficit under control.

3. Unemployment soared after Reagan’s 1981 tax cuts. Unemploymentjumped to 10.8 percent after Reagan enacted his much-touted tax cut, and it took years for the rate to get back down to its previous level. Meanwhile,income inequality exploded. Despite the myth that Reagan presided over an era of unmatched economic boom for all Americans, Reagan disproportionately taxed the poor and middle class, but the economic growth of the 1980′s did little help them. “Since 1980, median household income has risen only 30 percent, adjusted for inflation, while average incomes at the top have tripled or quadrupled,” the New York Times’ David Leonhardt noted.

4. Reagan grew the size of the federal government tremendously. Reagan promised “to move boldly, decisively, and quickly to control the runaway growth of federal spending,” but federal spending “ballooned” under Reagan. He bailed out Social Security in 1983 after attempting to privatize it, and set up a progressive taxation system to keep it funded into the future. He promised to cut government agencies like the Department of Energy and Education but ended up adding one of the largest — the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, which today has a budget of nearly $90 billion and close to300,000 employees. He also hiked defense spending by over $100 billion a year to a level not seen since the height of the Vietnam war.

5. Reagan did little to fight a woman’s right to choose. As governor of California in 1967, Reagan signed a bill to liberalize the state’s abortion laws that “resulted in more than a million abortions.” When Reagan ran for president, he advocated a constitutional amendment that would have prohibited all abortions except when necessary to save the life of the mother, but once in office, he “never seriously pursued” curbing choice.

6. Reagan was a “bellicose peacenik.” He wrote in his memoirs that “[m]y dream…became a world free of nuclear weapons.” “This vision stemmed from the president’s belief that the biblical account of Armageddon prophesied nuclear war — and that apocalypse could be averted if everyone, especially the Soviets, eliminated nuclear weapons,” the Washington Monthly noted. And Reagan’s military buildup was meant to crush the Soviet Union, but “also to put the United States in a stronger position from which to establish effective arms control” for the the entire world — a vision acted out by Regean’s vice president, George H.W. Bush, when he became president.

7. Reagan gave amnesty to 3 million undocumented immigrants. Reagan signed into law a bill that made any immigrant who had entered the country before 1982 eligible for amnesty. The bill was sold as a crackdown, but its tough sanctions on employers who hired undocumented immigrants were removed before final passage. The bill helped 3 million people and millions more family members gain American residency. It has since become a source of major embarrassment for conservatives.

8. Reagan illegally funneled weapons to Iran. Reagan and other senior U.S. officials secretly sold arms to officials in Iran, which was subject to a an arms embargo at the time, in exchange for American hostages. Some funds from the illegal arms sales also went to fund anti-Communist rebels in Nicaragua — something Congress had already prohibited the administration from doing. When the deals went public, the Iran-Contra Affair, as it came to be know, was an enormous political scandal that forced several senior administration officials to resign.

9. Reagan vetoed a comprehensive anti-Apartheid act. which placed sanctions on South Africa and cut off all American trade with the country. Reagan’s veto was overridden by the Republican-controlled Senate. Reagan responded by saying “I deeply regret that Congress has seen fit to override my veto,” saying that the law “will not solve the serious problems that plague that country.”

10. Reagan helped create the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. Reagan fought a proxy war with the Soviet Union by training, arming, equipping, and funding Islamist mujahidin fighters in Afghanistan. Reagan funneled billions of dollars, along with top-secret intelligence and sophisticated weaponry to these fighters through the Pakistani intelligence service. The Talbian and Osama Bin Laden — a prominent mujahidin commander — emerged from these mujahidin groups Reagan helped create, and U.S. policy towards Pakistan remains strained because of the intelligence services’ close relations to these fighters. In fact, Reagan’s decision to continue the proxy war after the Soviets were willing to retreat played a direct role in Bin Laden’s ascendancy.

(I would add a #11:  Reagan's complicity in Saddam Hussein's war crimes - i.e. using gas and chemical "WMDs" against Iranian troops, after having launched an invasion of their country - in the form of an explicit National Security Directive to aid Saddam's war effort through intelligence and "dual use" equipment and materials.) 

Thank God we live in a country...

...that wasn't founded by raving anti-private property communists, like this guy:

A Jerry Brown flashback...

I'm excited that former Governor Jerry Brown seems poised to return to his old office in Sacramento.  He's always been one of the most interesting figures in our politics.  He's had his ups and downs, most of the "downs" being associated with his seemingly quixotic Presidential bids.  Here's a piece from Madison, WI's Brava magazine, recalling a particularly spectacular - and unfortunate - moment in Brown's 1980 bid, with none other than Francis Ford Coppola in the director's chair:

President Obama on MLK and 2010

The President gave a very good "sermon" this past Sunday, at Washington DC's Vermont Ave. Baptist Church,  in recognition of Dr. Martin Luther King, reflecting on his relevance to our own present moment and to real gains and deep frustrations over the past year:

We gather here, on a Sabbath, during a time of profound difficulty for our nation and for our world.  In such a time, it soothes the soul to seek out the Divine in a spirit of prayer; to seek solace among a community of believers.  But we are not here just to ask the Lord for His blessing.  We aren't here just to interpret His Scripture.  We're also here to call on the memory of one of His noble servants, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Now, it's fitting that we do so here, within the four walls of Vermont Avenue Baptist Church -- here, in a church that rose like the phoenix from the ashes of the civil war; here in a church formed by freed slaves, whose founding pastor had worn the union blue; here in a church from whose pews congregants set out for marches and from whom choir anthems of freedom were heard; from whose sanctuary King himself would sermonize from time to time.

Reagan was "extreme" and supported by "blockheads and dummies."

 Who knew? Well a most of us liberals and, apparently, one other guy who knew Reagan well.

A core belief of mine dating back to the '60s when Ronald Reagan was Governor of California - that Reagan's conservatism was, in fact, extreme and that his supporters who weren't simply cynical and mendacious were a gaggle of simpletons -   has been confirmed by none other than his former Vice President, who conveyed that very thought to Mikhail Gorbachev back in 1987. Thanks GHWB, at least, for letting the Russians know. That and some other interesting observations from the  Soviet Premier responsible for ending the Cold War, here and here (full interview with Gorby by Russia scholar Stephen Cohen and Nation Editor, Van den Heuvel.)

Fidel Castro - Dumbass?

So let me get this straight: Fidel Castro did not realize that a nuclear attack on the US could result in a radioactive cloud over Cuba?

In the early 1980s, according to newly released documents, Fidel Castro was suggesting a Soviet nuclear strike against the United States, until Moscow dissuaded him by patiently explaining how the radioactive cloud resulting from such a strike would also devastate Cuba.
[...]

The Pentagon study attributes the Cuba revelation to Andrian A. Danilevich, a Soviet general staff officer from 1964 to ’90 and director of the staff officers who wrote the Soviet Union’s final reference guide on strategic and nuclear planning.

In the early 1980s, the study quotes him as saying that Mr. Castro “pressed hard for a tougher Soviet line against the U.S. up to and including possible nuclear strikes.”

The general staff, General Danilevich continued, “had to actively disabuse him of this view by spelling out the ecological consequences for Cuba of a Soviet strike against the U.S.”

That information, the general concluded, “changed Castro’s positions considerably.”

Wow. I believe I did a report on the danger of nuclear fallout when I was in the sixth grade. One would think that the spread of nuclear fallout would be common knowledge by the 1980's.

There's plenty more to be seen at the National Security Archives website.

Book Recommendation

In February 2007 while we were staying in Florence, Italy, we took a day trip by bus to Siena [ed. note: A traveler's tip: travel by bus to Siena is better than travel by train. Trust me]. From the highway I noticed something that I was unaware of: The Florence American Cemetery and Memorial. I was, frankly embarrassed by not being aware of the cemetery. My sole relative killed in WWII was a great uncle killed on a submarine.

I was also embarrassed by my lack of knowledge about the military campaign to liberate Italy from the Nazis. I knew some basic place names: Anzio, Monte Cassino, San Pietro and Salerno. I knew a few facts such as the Nazis destroying every bridge across the Arno in Florence except for the Ponte Vecchio; that Rome was left an open city when the Nazis fled. I did not know much of the details including the wholesale and horrid destruction of Naples by the Nazis.

There is no better nor readable book on this subject than The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 by Rick Atkinson. The book is not light reading, but it is comprehensive and, indeed, one can marvel at the amount of detail invested in the book: there are some 135 pages of endnotes.

One of its greatest strengths is the ability to draw the reader into the lives of soldiers of all ranks: hundreds of personal narrative from enlisted men, NCO's, lieutenants through the 5th Army commander, General Mark Clark are interwoven with accounts from the enemy and civilians.

While many of the participans are glorified, you cannot read the book without feeling a sense of the appalling waste of war: the wholesale destruction of the countryside, the tens of thousands of lives destroyed, the horrific human suffering both among the civilian population and the military. One need not deny the necessity of driving the Germans out of Italy by being horrified by the events that took place in order to effect the liberation.

There is no greater human failing than war. As Bill Mauldin witnessed General Lucian Truscott on Memorial Day 1945 at the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery in Nettuno, turn on his back on the living and addressed the dead:

He apologized to the dead men for their presence here. He said everybody tells leaders it is not their fault that men get killed in war, but every leader knows in his heart that this is not altogether true. He said he hoped that anybody here through any mistake of his would forgive him, but he realized that was asking a hell of a lot under the circumstances . . . .He promised that in the future he ran into anybody, especially old men who thought death in battle was glorious, he would straighten them out.

Amen.

Deconstructing Reagan

Paul Krugman traces our current crisis back to its beginnings.

For the more one looks into the origins of the current disaster, the clearer it becomes that the key wrong turn — the turn that made crisis inevitable — took place in the early 1980s, during the Reagan years.

Attacks on Reaganomics usually focus on rising inequality and fiscal irresponsibility. Indeed, Reagan ushered in an era in which a small minority grew vastly rich, while working families saw only meager gains. He also broke with longstanding rules of fiscal prudence.

On the latter point: traditionally, the U.S. government ran significant budget deficits only in times of war or economic emergency. Federal debt as a percentage of G.D.P. fell steadily from the end of World War II until 1980. But indebtedness began rising under Reagan; it fell again in the Clinton years, but resumed its rise under the Bush administration, leaving us ill prepared for the emergency now upon us.

The increase in public debt was, however, dwarfed by the rise in private debt, made possible by financial deregulation. The change in America’s financial rules was Reagan’s biggest legacy. And it’s the gift that keeps on taking.

... The S.& L. crisis has been written out of the Reagan hagiography, but the fact is that deregulation in effect gave the industry — whose deposits were federally insured — a license to gamble with taxpayers’ money, at best, or simply to loot it, at worst. By the time the government closed the books on the affair, taxpayers had lost $130 billion, back when that was a lot of money.

But there was also a longer-term effect. Reagan-era legislative changes essentially ended New Deal restrictions on mortgage lending — restrictions that, in particular, limited the ability of families to buy homes without putting a significant amount of money down.

These restrictions were put in place in the 1930s by political leaders who had just experienced a terrible financial crisis, and were trying to prevent another. But by 1980 the memory of the Depression had faded. Government, declared Reagan, is the problem, not the solution; the magic of the marketplace must be set free. And so the precautionary rules were scrapped.

Together with looser lending standards for other kinds of consumer credit, this led to a radical change in American behavior.

We weren’t always a nation of big debts and low savings: in the 1970s Americans saved almost 10 percent of their income, slightly more than in the 1960s. It was only after the Reagan deregulation that thrift gradually disappeared from the American way of life, culminating in the near-zero savings rate that prevailed on the eve of the great crisis. Household debt was only 60 percent of income when Reagan took office, about the same as it was during the Kennedy administration. By 2007 it was up to 119 percent.

All this, we were assured, was a good thing: sure, Americans were piling up debt, and they weren’t putting aside any of their income, but their finances looked fine once you took into account the rising values of their houses and their stock portfolios. Oops.

Now, the proximate causes of today’s economic crisis lie in events that took place long after Reagan left office — in the global savings glut created by surpluses in China and elsewhere, and in the giant housing bubble that savings glut helped inflate.

But it was the explosion of debt over the previous quarter-century that made the U.S. economy so vulnerable. Overstretched borrowers were bound to start defaulting in large numbers once the housing bubble burst and unemployment began to rise.

These defaults in turn wreaked havoc with a financial system that — also mainly thanks to Reagan-era deregulation — took on too much risk with too little capital.

There’s plenty of blame to go around these days. But the prime villains behind the mess we’re in were Reagan and his circle of advisers — men who forgot the lessons of America’s last great financial crisis, and condemned the rest of us to repeat it.

It's time to call the Republicans, whose knees jerk everytime Reagan's name is invoked and who frankly have little else than the Reagan mantra to offer voters, on the Reagan legacy - which teeters on a fortuitous alliance with Mikhail Gorbachev and the demonization of Jimmy Carter for even a shred of credibility. 

Seymour Hersh on My Lai 40 Years Later

On WNYC's On the Media, Seymour Hersh recounts how he broke the story of the My Lai Massacre. Click here for the MP3 file.