Kudos! to Mr. Prosterman who made a list!! Lest we forget.....
http://g21.net/amdream79.htmlH. Scott Prosterman
"What am I not remembering here? What are THEY not remembering here?"
"Reagan and his cadre never were good sports. I remember The Great Communicator as being the master of double-speak, namely of accusing the opposition of his own sins. Reagan and his boys paved the way for all the excesses of both Bush administrations; "excesses" is a euphemism for a lot of bad things:
*Reagan was the first president to brazenly place foxes in charge of the henhouses at the Cabinet level. Reagan Attorneys General Edwin Meese and William French Smith viciously attacked the very civil rights and equal protection laws they were charged with upholding. Until Reagan, affirmative action was a sacred program that gave hope to impoverished Americans. Under Reagan's watch it became fashionable to punish people for being poor;
*Under Reagan, school lunch programs were severely cut back or eliminated:
*Under Reagan, pre-natal medical and nutritional programs for low-income and working mothers were ended. Children died as a result; so did some mothers before they could give birth;
*Under Reagan, James Watt and Ann Burford Gorsuch were placed in charge of the Interior Department and Environmental Protection Agencies. Their legacies were to auction off the precious natural resources they were charged to protect. Watt gave us the side show of ethnic jokes that managed to offend blacks, women and Jews in one spiel. Gorsuch gave us the Superfund scandal. Remem ber?
*Under Reagan, more high-level government officials were indicted than in any administration in history
*Under Reagan, the bizarre fantasy known as "Star Wars" was given billions of dollars and legs. More than 20 years later, it is still walking and soaking up even more billions to protect us from a threat that no longer exists. But it's great campaign fodder, so it lives.
*Under Reagan, most Federal job training and employment programs were ended.
*Under Reagan, food stamp allowances were reduced and the new requirements made many needy people ineligible.
*Under Reagan, the Legal Aid Corporation was eviscerated. This has enabled unscrupulous landlords, corporations and utility companies to abuse consumers, with the confidence that the people they're stealing from wouldn't be able to get effective legal assistance to fight them.
*Under Reagan, the US went from being the world's largest creditor to being the largest debtor nation. Until Reagan, a balanced budget was a sacred cow of the Republican philosophy. Under Reagan, the federal budget suddenly became a tool to eliminate the many programs that Roosevelt and LBJ initiated to help people get fed, find housing and jobs, and get medical care. This ushered in the mean-spirited conservative agenda; they eliminated programs they didn't like by eliminating the revenue through tax cuts and budget cuts. Out of this evolved Newt Gingrich's now dubious "Contract With America" and the mean-spirited, draconian policies of both Bush Administrations.
*Under Reagan, the US military became a tool of political jingoism not seen since Theodore Roosevelt. Superfluous excursions in Grenada and Panama, among other {countries]< did a lot to boost ratings, but not much for national security. [br />
*Under Reagan, ketchup became a vegetable. That's always been my favorite. Reagan's cutbacks in the federal school lunch program elicited criticism that there was no longer funding to provide a "balanced diet" to schoolchildren, including fresh vegetables. Reagan argued that ketchup is a vegetable because it is red and comes from tomatoes. The "liberal" media yucked it up about that one for few days and then forgot about it as soon as the next outrage got their attention.
*Under Reagan, we had our first American president honor Nazi war dead at Bitteburg, Germany.
*Under Reagan, it suddenly became dangerous for Americans to travel abroad to countries where we had previously been welcomed. US Foreign Policy under Reagan manifested a profound ignorance about geopolitics, the balance of power and other issues. This led to an epidemic of American diplomats and businesspeople getting kidnapped or killed, including one of my undergrad professors, Mr. Adolph (Spike) Dubs.
*Under Reagan, it became OK to sell military supplies to a declared enemy (Iran) and use those profits to prosecute an illegal war (Nicaragua), and oust other popular elected officials (El Salvador). Under Bush Jr., it became OK to re-hire the people who enabled that scandal into sensitive national security positions.
*Under Reagan, it was considered acceptable to have made a deal with the regime of Ayatollah Khomeini in advance of the 1980 Election, in order to ensure that the American hostages would remain in captivity until after the election. What could be more unconscionable? Reagan used American lives as political fodder before he was even elected. They were released the day he was inaugurated.
*Under Reagan, the American ayatollahs were also empowered. Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and other religious right-wing ideologues were brought into the policy-making fold. That led to the ongoing agenda to eliminate a woman's right to choose a full range of health care options, and not just abortion. It led to censorship of textbooks that didn't give equal time to creationism as the theory of evolution. It's not unfair to argue that Reagan's giving political legitimacy to Falwell and Robertson, was the precursor to Bush Jr.'s "Faith Based Initiatives" that so brazenly dishonor our separation of church and state.
*Under Reagan, the need to humor and dignify the religious right led to years of denial and inactivity, while the AIDS crisis reached epidemic proportions. Since AIDS was considered a "gay disease", Reagan didn't dare utter the word for his first six years in office.
*Under Reagan the Camp David plan for peace in the Middle East came to a grinding halt. ...."
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