Ronald Wilson Reagan 1911-2011

[Submariner]

Ronald Reagan: An Autopsy

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard60.html

[montanadave]

Ronald Reagan: An Autopsy

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard60.html

Heavens to Bonzo! Even I have to admit this assessment might be a tad harsh on the ol' Gipper.

[chadbag]

Ronald Reagan was a great man.

I was in High School during his first administration. (Class of 1984). I remember when he was shot.

He was a great President.

Was he perfect? Heck no. Did he have faults? Of course. Did every decision he or his administration make work out? Or was right? No.

What made him great was his belief in his fellow man and in America and its greatness and goodness. He did not look down on others nor strive to any sort of political correctness. He bid you follow him.

If he had a fault, it was in being trusting too much in others. He surrounded himself with people, some of which used his name to do dumb things or to convince him to do dumb things.

When he died, I was very emotional in gratitude for this great man.

RIP Ronnie

[Jake'sDad]

Heavens to Bonzo! Even I have to admit this assessment might be a tad harsh on the ol' Gipper.

Ya think?

[SteyrAUG]

Ronald Reagan was a great man.

I was in High School during his first administration. (Class of 1984). I remember when he was shot.

He was a great President.

Was he perfect? Heck no. Did he have faults? Of course. Did every decision he or his administration make work out? Or was right? No.

What made him great was his belief in his fellow man and in America and its greatness and goodness. He did not look down on others nor strive to any sort of political correctness. He bid you follow him.

If he had a fault, it was in being trusting too much in others. He surrounded himself with people, some of which used his name to do dumb things or to convince him to do dumb things.

When he died, I was very emotional in gratitude for this great man.

RIP Ronnie

Right there with ya.

Yes he gave us an amnesty, but he didn't have benefit of previous examples it wouldn't work. I do still disagree with his decision regardless.

And yeah we got a MG ban, but it was part of FOPA 86 and he didn't have a line item veto. Without FOPA the country could be a very scary place these days, although ATF is taking baby steps to undo much of FOPA.

But in the larger sense, I think he always tried to do what was "best for the country and the people" and not what was best for the government. I consider him the last "real" President we've had.

[chadbag]

And yeah we got a MG ban, but it was part of FOPA 86 and he didn't have a line item veto. Without FOPA the country could be a very scary place these days, although ATF is taking baby steps to undo much of FOPA.

I read somewhere but don't know if it was true, that he wanted to veto the whole FOPA because of the MG Ban but was prevailed upon to sign it because the trade-offs were worth the net gains.

[SteyrAUG]

I read somewhere but don't know if it was true, that he wanted to veto the whole FOPA because of the MG Ban but was prevailed upon to sign it because the trade-offs were worth the net gains.

He didn't know what to do but basically the gun community and the NRA told him to sign it. Back then NFA owners were a fringe element of the gun community that got little or no consideration.

The average gun owners was far more concerned with reigning in ATF abuses (which ironically was the reason most were too afraid to own NFA weapons), being able to direct order ammunition (prior to FOPA it had to go through a dealer and was logged in a bound book like firearms) and being able to import cheap surplus firearms like SKS rifles.

There were also many who believed that FOPA "as written" wouldn't actually ban the registration of new MGs and that if it tried to it would be struck down by the judicial branch.

More importantly, the domestic ban was probably an inevitability. If not passed in 86 it would have certainly been part of the 89 import ban or 94 domestic ban. That is assuming it wasn't simply passed as a stand alone bill and every successive President would have signed it. The recent video showing the circumstances of how it was added to FOPA shows the lengths members of Congress were willing to go in order to ban machine guns.

But the same cannot be said for FOPA, ever since the passage of the 86 GCA legislation similar to FOPA had been attempted. 1986 was the first time it actually got to the Presidents desk and there is no reason to believe any President since Reagan would have signed it even IF they managed to get it to the desk of the President a second time.

The reality is, were it not for Reagan, we could have just as easily ended up with a 1988 or 1992 domestic machine gun ban WITHOUT the protections of FOPA.

That means nobody would be able to mail order ammo directly to their home, there would be no cheap $100 surplus guns, people would get arrested while traveling through "ban states" with their firearms and private individuals selling their personal guns would still be getting arrested at gun shows in "sting operations" for dealing firearms without a license.

[rickrock305]

I find it strange that Reagan gets the love he does from conservatives being that he went against pretty much everything they stand for.

[John_Wayne777]

I find it strange that Reagan gets the love he does from conservatives being that he went against pretty much everything they stand for.

He didn't.

Reagan had a set of ideals he was an expert at communicating and an overall philosophy that most Americans shared. Implementing those ideals into policy was not an easy task for him. I hear people complain that Reagan didn't "fix" social security. I respond that he also did not raise the dead to life again or turn water into wine, and then I ask if these are really legitimate criticisms. Reagan faced stiff opposition in Congress and from the left on practically every measure he proposed. Getting legislation through a hostile Congress is not an easy task.

Reagan's important contributions mattered in the long run. A revitalized military (badly in need of rebuilding after Vietnam), a lower tax burden, the idea living among the people that Washington is an absurd place with absurd ideas and absurd results, and appointments to the Supreme Court that revived the idea that the Constitution places meaningful limits on the power of the federal government.

Reagan's accomplishments are not insignificant. Those who like to bash the man because he didn't completely overhaul Washington all by himself have an unsophisticated understanding of politics and reality.

[rickrock305]

First, his initial tax cut cause unemployment to soar to almost 11%

http://reagan.procon.org/view.resour...ourceID=003988



Then, Reagan raised taxes 11 times.

Former Senator ALAN SIMPSON (Republican, Wyoming): Ronald Reagan raised taxes 11 times in his administration. I was here. I was here. I knew him. Better than anybody in this room. He was a dear friend and a total realist as to politics.

Reagan tripled the budget deficit.



He started the trends that caused income inequality to explode. “Since 1980, median household income has risen only 30 percent, adjusted for inflation, while average incomes at the top have tripled or quadrupled,”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/22/bu...ardt.html?_r=1



Reagan grew the federal government tremendously.



He gave amnesty to 3 million illegal immigrants.



Then there was Iran Contra.



And he helped create the uprising of Islamic extremism we are battling today.

A sober review of Reagan's presidency doesn't yield the seamlessly conservative record being peddled today. Federal government expanded on his watch. The conservative desire to outlaw abortion was never seriously pursued. Reagan broke with the hardliners in his administration and compromised with the Soviets on arms control. His assault on entitlements never materialized; instead he saved Social Security in 1983. And he repeatedly ignored the fundamental conservative dogma that taxes should never be raised.

After his initial victories on tax cuts and defense, the revolution effectively stalled. Deficits started to balloon, the recession soon deepened, his party lost ground in the 1982 midterms, and thereafter Reagan never seriously tried to enact the radical domestic agenda he'd campaigned on. Rather than abolish the departments of Energy and Education, as he had promised to do if elected president, Reagan added a new cabinet-level department--one of the largest federal agencies--the Department of Veterans Affairs.

In fact, the budget grew significantly under Reagan. All he managed to do was moderately slow its rate of growth. What's more, the number of workers on the federal payroll rose by 61,000 under Reagan. (By comparison, under Clinton, the number fell by 373,000.)
At the start of his administration, with Social Security teetering on the brink of insolvency, Reagan attempted to push through immediate draconian cuts to the program. But the Senate unanimously rebuked his plan, and the GOP lost 26 House seats in the 1982 midterm elections, largely as a result of this overreach.

The following year, Reagan made one of the greatest ideological about-faces in the history of the presidency, agreeing to a $165 billion bailout of Social Security. In almost every way, the bailout flew in the face of conservative ideology. It dramatically increased payroll taxes on employees and employers, brought a whole new class of recipients--new federal workers--into the system, and, for the first time, taxed Social Security benefits, and did so in the most liberal way: only those of upper-income recipients. (As an added affront to conservatives, the tax wasn't indexed to inflation, meaning that more and more people have gradually had to pay it over time.)

One year after his massive tax cut, Reagan agreed to a tax increase to reduce the deficit that restored fully one-third of the previous year's reduction. (In a bizarre bit of self-deception, Reagan, who never came to terms with this episode of ideological apostasy, persuaded himself that the three-year, $100 billion tax hike--the largest since World War II--was actually "tax reform" that closed loopholes in his earlier cut and therefore didn't count as raising taxes.)

Faced with looming deficits, Reagan raised taxes again in 1983 with a gasoline tax and once more in 1984, this time by $50 billion over three years, mainly through closing tax loopholes for business. Despite the fact that such increases were anathema to conservatives--and probably cost Reagan's successor, George H.W. Bush, reelection--Reagan raised taxes a grand total of four times just between 1982-84.

The historic Tax Reform Act of 1986, though it achieved the supply side goal of lowering individual income tax rates, was a startlingly progressive reform. The plan imposed the largest corporate tax increase in history--an act utterly unimaginable for any conservative to support today. Just two years after declaring, "there is no justification" for taxing corporate income, Reagan raised corporate taxes by $120 billion over five years and closed corporate tax loopholes worth about $300 billion over that same period. In addition to broadening the tax base, the plan increased standard deductions and personal exemptions to the point that no family with an income below the poverty line would have to pay federal income tax. Even at the time, conservatives within Reagan's administration were aghast.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/fea...301.green.html



I just find it ironic that we have people like Palin invoking Reagan's name, when most of what he accomplished flies in the face of their small government rhetoric.