XPost: alt.religion.mormon, alt.religion, alt.atheism
XPost: alt.bible.prophecy

On Sun, 06 Feb 2011 14:38:15 -0200, John Manning
<jrobertm@terra.com.br> wrote:

The top 10 things conservatives avoid mentioning
when talking about President Reagan:

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.

Unemployment jumped 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 to 300,000 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 known, 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.

Links to sources here:
http://thinkprogress.org/2011/02/05/reagan-centennial/

https://i.postimg.cc/VkvJVwC8/images.jpg

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