Ronald Reagan was a bad president. (PLEASE only respond if you are: Skipper, Tickers, Morgan, Pablo, Pit Bull, Andrew West or Ariyel. Thanks!)
DonkeyDude said 05/25, 12:03 AM
His rhetoric focused on shrinking gov't, cutting taxes & spending, and defeating Communism, but he failed to live up to his hype, had bad policies & appointed bad people.
He enacted policies that expanded the role and size of the fed. gov't by 90%. His "voo-doo economics" tax cuts benefited the rich, while his budgets slashed spending in areas that most affected the poor: housing, job training, school funding,drug treatment, mass trans. The decreased social spending created a homeless problem by turning innumerable mentally ill people out on the streets.
Deficits skyrocketed because of wildly increased defense spending. Rather than cut the budget, he transfered funds from social programs to nuclear arms building.
His 1981 tax cuts created such a large debt that his raising taxes each of the next 6 years didn't make up for it. And while he streamlined the income tax, his changes created the largest-ever shift of tax burden from the wealthy to the middle-class & working poor.
More appointed officials were indicted and convicted of crimes than under any other prez.
Bombing Libya, the horrific "War on Drugs," giving chemical weapons to Saddam, Iran-Contra scandal, Khmer Rouge...
MorgMcA said 05/25, 04:57 PM
OK...
1 Failed to live up to his campaign promises, so? Name one president, who has. Bill Clinton promised to have "the most ethical administration in the history of the US" :)
2A alright, i thought we lived in a demo-republic, shouldn't the majority of the people be paying the majority of the taxes as opposed to the top 5% paying 90% of taxes
B yes ketchup was classified as a vegetable, so? are school lunches really more important than national security or economy
C yes people who lived off welfare and other gov hand outs were put on the streets while people who could work, if they could find it, got jobs
3 We were trying to outspend the Soviet Union in defense into oblivion, and it worked. Name one president that hasn't tapped Social Security, SS was designed to be tapped
4 see 2a
5 spent all night looking for this one, found a page run by the progressive reveiw called the RR myth (liberal rant site if i ever saw one). it basically confirmed your point, but still called the Clinton and Nixon admin more corrupt
6 i don't want to write an essay for a few scattered arguements
A1 Who are you comparing to? you can't say RR was worse than Buchanan, Carter or Wilson
DonkeyDude said 05/25, 07:48 PM
1) While traditional conservatives love nothing more than slashing the federal budget, RR slashed social spending but also dramatically increased defense spending, giving us a massive debt. The social services cut were not limited to welfare and other programs anathema to conservatives (b/c they encourage "victimization" mentality, etc). But perhaps you don't live in a city littered with crazy homeless people like I do. His War On Drugs did nothing but increase gang violence here, too. The spending he cut hurt our country, and it wasn't done in the name of small government.
2) If you want to argue that the Cold War arms race was a good thing, be my guest. Now we have a stockpile of nuclear arms capable of ending life on earth - as does Russia.
3) I'm not saying Clinton was a great president or RR is better or worse than anyone in particular. RR was bad, or certainly nowhere near as good as history seems to remember him.
4) Suffice it to say that we will not convince each other w.r.t. distributive justice.
5) Yes, ketchup was classified as a vegetable. And most pollution came from trees. National security isn't everything..
6) Fine. Just consider the Iran-Contra affair.
MorgMcA said 05/26, 01:14 AM
1 Seattle suburbs don't have a lot of homeless people, however i have lived in a few cities with very high homeless rates. These cities were in Poland. Homeless people are everywhere. Poles will tell you, under socialism, everyone had a home, granted you shared a 3 bedroom apartment w/ 3 other families. everyone had a job, too. Granted they really didn't get anything from it, money was worthless, the only way to buy anything was with a ration card. point being the Poles see the homeless all around them and want to help, but they know the gov. can't afford to do it for them
2 the arms race ended the cold war, whether we're better off now that the cold war is over, that's a different subject altogether
3 well, personally i don't like JFK, but i have to admit he sold a vision, much like RR. only when RR took office America needed a vision, 4 years of stagflation, Iran hostage, oil shock, all of these needed fixing, but more than that americans had lost faith in America. RR changed that
6 Iran-Contra: A president skirting a congressional check in order to make RealPolitik decisions. at least better than A Jackson ignoring the Supreme Court. I wish we had more RealPolitik
DonkeyDude said 05/26, 03:18 AM
1) I missed your point here. I wasn't saying we should adopt Communism, but rather that Reagan's policies created a huge homelessness epidemic, as well as substantially underfunding schools, transportation, drug treatment programs, etc.
3) Well, conservatives remember him more fondly now than they perceived him in the 80's. He was generally seen as an amiably sleepy, forgetful bumpkin who couldn't tell the difference between his old movie plots and his actual life (claiming to have helped liberated Auschwitz, etc).
6) This was an impeachable offense, and he lied to the public numerous times about it. Not to mention the bloody puppet war he was funding. RR & Co. also trained and armed terrorists, including Islamic Afghan radicals who later formed Al Qaeda, the death squads of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala...
He ignored the AIDS epidemic, dooming millions, because its principal victims at the time were gays and drug users. Nor did his policies fit with conservative agenda: He increased gov't & gave millions of illegal aliens amnesty. He did almost nothing well, but neocons love him because he was pro-biz/oil/military-industrial-complex.
More:
http://prorev.com/extreme.htm
MorgMcA said 05/26, 03:45 PM
Sorry, point was under socialism, where everyone was taken care of, noone really got help. (Sidenote, the Poles consider RR one of real heroes of the cold war)
RR cut those programs to allow biz breathing room from gov restrictions. yes a housing-price ceiling is a retriction, one that encourages landlords to leave the housing market for another more profitable one. after years of social programs and regulations choking the economy, stagflation and rising misery index, this was not an economic hiccup. RR allowed biz to reduce costs and stay in business. and hej people got jobs instead of being laid off
actually, there was never any proof that RR had anything to do w/ I-C. his admin, yes, himself, no. and I still like the RealPolitik of it all
WOW-suprised you would use an admittedly "extreme" site
if you've finished reading your daily dosage of liberal rant sites, one thing even they can't argue is that RR sold a vision. one where America wasn't suffering the effects of vietnam (demoralizing), cold war, oil shock, Iran hostage crisis, miserably failing economy. a vision where America was great again. RR sold that vision when we needed a vision as much as anything else
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Isn't much of the good economy during the Clinton years actually due to Ronald Reagan?
theyoungdem | 05/25/08
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Why is it only those users were allowed to accept this challenge?
strongleader | 05/25/08
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Strong, you probably would've been fine, he just didn't want to take the chance that someone would take it and say "oh, yeah, well you're wrong, because you are!!!" so he specified people whose styles he's seen.
MorgMcA | 05/25/08
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I'm offended. I bring alot to the table, and I'm a Reagan buff.
Evangelical | 05/25/08
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Youngdem: the economy is cyclical, and I believe that too much credit (good or bad) for its swings are given to whomever is sitting in office at a given moment. Reagan's economic policies created an astronomical national debt, which nobody can seriously say contributed to the prosperity of the 90's. In that sense, the best thing Reagan ever did was appoint Greenspan. Strongleader: Morg is right; I didn't start this debate to win it so much as test my own convictions to see if they hold up under fierce scrutiny. I know that the people I named would give me a run for my money. No offense meant. Evangelical: After your other debate, in which you claim that rules of physics only apply if they please God and you think it possible that God made a big pile of cash materialize on a bench, etc., I really don't have any interest in debating you on anything.
DonkeyDude | 05/25/08
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Sorry, Morg. Those numbers weren't necessarily in sync with your numbered points.
DonkeyDude | 05/25/08
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But Reagan got rid of the Soviet Union. They spent 25% of their GDP on the arms race, and it screwed them. I don't know how much of that was because of Reagan, but it justifies his spending money on nukes. Besides, "social programs" don't actually help anybody, and I shouldn't have to pay for them.
majestik | 05/25/08
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The Soviet Union was already in a state of collapse before Reagan. Mikhail Gorbachev himself acknowledged this openly when he came to power in the 80's.
DonkeyDude | 05/25/08
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Well not exactly DD, Gorbachev acknowledged that the Communist party was suffering problems, it was in the late 80's that glasnost and pierestoika came out.
MorgMcA | 05/26/08
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Youngdem, yes it was due to Reagan's ability to overcome stagflation, while DD is right the economy is cyclical, it also takes the occasional nosedive that doesn't simply end when the cycle is up, for another example FDR and the great depression. I'd say more but it would probably distract from the debate in the forum. I really wish i had more than 1200 characters for this, but nobody would take the time to read it morethanlikely.
MorgMcA | 05/26/08
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anybody ever do a character count of Elizabeth's comments? i haven't but it might help people actually read them, instead of skim or skip over them.
MorgMcA | 05/26/08
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haha, I kind of just look for buzzwords. If I see "Nader," I move on.
DonkeyDude | 05/26/08
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Tough to choose sides here (mainly because I think Reagan was an OK president, not good or bad) But so far DD gets my votes. DD was never arguing that the country should turn its back on capitalism so the whole Polish argument to me doesn't work. He also never stated that Reagan was the worst president. Also, the govt. can assist the needy without turning its back on capitalism and turning into a socialist govt. I think Morg could do more if he provided his own examples of what Reagan accomplished as opposed to simply responding to DD's claims.
Skipper04 | 05/26/08
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I don't know DD, Nobel Prize winners Milton Friedman and Robert A. Mundell, who were economists, argue that Reagan's tax policies invigorated America's economy and contributed to the economic boom of the 1990s. He also implemented policies based on supply-sde economics and advocated the laissez faire policy. Also Reagan having a role in the downfall of the Cold War is generally agreed. Haha, General Secretary Gorbachev even said he was "a man who was instrumental in bringing about the end of the Cold War"
theyoungdem | 05/26/08
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lol, I wonder why theyoungdem who is part of the trio, according to ProudOfSmallTown, was not included. I however have no opinion on this, I niether thought he was a good or bad president.
strongleader | 05/26/08
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Noted skipper, it's hard to put in something independant when there's so much to address. also i don't have to change your mind, all i have to do is show he wasn't horrible
MorgMcA | 05/26/08
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Uh, you mean "bad." Don't try to raise the bar on me, Morg. ;-)
DonkeyDude | 05/26/08
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Your main argument seems to be that he sold some kind of optimistic image of America when we needed it (his terrible foreign policy be damned). I suppose John Wayne could have done the same.
DonkeyDude | 05/26/08
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Foreign policy was guided by RealPolitik, something i like, is it perfect no, is it better than pure idealism, yes, does it shape the world, yes. take a look at the Contra-Sadistas election, the Contras won, in part because of RR, morethanlikely.
MorgMcA | 05/26/08
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Please keep it clean. Bad words will get filtered, and offensive comments will be removed.
Only Axl Rose remains in the group, but since 1987 GnR has been rocking with fury
More than 50 years of cover stories about the 35th President
This should be pretty good. Looking forward to this debate.
Ariyel | 05/25/08
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