Prickly City by Scott Stantis for October 21, 2021

Just because he’s been gone a long time doesn’t mean you can’t debate his legacy. Take Iran-Contra, for example. Reagan admitted illegally trading arms for hostages, but there were no consequences.

Funding the Contras with illegal arms sales to Iran to do despicable acts!!!

Is that an awful lot of good Carmen???!!!

Yeah, where would we be without ever increasing wealth inequality?

And, let’s not forget his California legacy — the very first thing he did after being elected was to raise the sales tax by 25%.

I cannot think of a single good thing President Reagan did as president. He meant well, perhaps, but he was a clueless has-been actor in a job too big for him.

Geez, it’s not because you like him. It’s because we hate what he did. Even if we let him slide on his crimes. He started the successful brainwashing of the white working class on behalf of the robber barons. I’m not sure that can be recovered from in this generation.

Reagan taught Americans to hate their own Government, and started us on a downward path of division and ignorance.

Before Reagan, those awful Government programs put a man on the moon, laid the interstate, built huge hydro-electric dams that powered rural America, developed the internet, and split the atom. A third of the private workforce was unionized. We had strongly progressive taxation. And America THRIVED and led the world.

Now the nations of Europe – whom we call “socialist” – have shot ahead of us in innovation and technology. They have internet speeds four times faster than we do. They have the high-speed rail. They have the state-of-the-art dams. They are developing inexhaustible energy sources while we refuse to stop digging coal out of the ground.

But in the United States, we can’t fix a stinking bridge anymore, because some billionaire might lose his almighty tax cut. We make educators making $50,000 a year take a 20% pay cut so that people making $50,000,000 a year don’t have to take a 3% tax hike. It not only doesn’t make good sense, it doesn’t even make BAD sense.

The United States used to lead the world in damned near everything. After 40 years of Reaganomics and tax cuts for billionaires, we now lead the world in damned near nothing.

To paraphrase Reagan himself, “Are we better off now than we were 40 years ago?”

Like Caesar, the evil he did lives long after he’s gone

When you make a god from someone it is natural for others to point out their mortality, it can feel like war to the followers, it feels like truth to those who are trying to restore perspective.

I give Reagan credit for a couple of things: willingness to work with Gorbachev when the hawks in his administration were itching for more confrontation and a willingness to work with Tip O’Neill to actually get things done in government. I also think he “played” president well at times, as in his speech after the “Challenger” disaster. The rest was a disaster as many have eloquently documented/stated above.

He did a little good, when he did the same thing Democrats would have done, but he lost credit for that by pretending that if Democrats wanted to do anything it was bad. And he made it Republican doctrine to not give a $#1+ about the environment.

Reagan’s particular brand of amiably dishonest, fact-free salesmanship helped pave the way for George W. Bush and Trump. And he ensured that we’ve spent my entire adult life having to prove, again and again, that trickle-down economics does not work.

I’ve also been reading a lot of 1947 newspapers lately for a side project, which reminded me of when Reagan (and Walt Disney!) cozied up to HUAC while others were going to jail or fleeing the country.

The laughable concept of trickle down economics was pushed by him into the mainstream. With that Reagan did irreparable harm to us all. He was a likable cuss though.

Republicans worship vile liars and cruel humans.

Show me ONE single thing that was improved by privatization, and I’ll reconsider. Meaning that it helped the “general welfare”.

Still better then what we just duped. At least he seemed to believe in conservative values (perhaps too much), but at least he didn’t try o dodge around the Constitution and run the Office as a money-making venture.

The name has changed, the vitriol remains the same. Same old, same old. The wheel keeps turning, wonder what name will be next?

His administration started the tax cuts for the rich.

Apparently some conservatives think that a Republican must be gone for a long time in order to be “remembered” fondly… but any who are only recently departed are fair game to go to war against (like Colin Powell)…

Somewhere around 50% of Americans agrees with the “thinking” of ^^Iseau^^ up there.

Jesus.

I’m convinced that critical thinking must be included in US school curriculum grades 5 – 12 (at minimum) for democratic society to stand any chance of not being undone, and autocracy/totalitarianism to replace it, by the “thinking” of the likes of Iseau.

I blame Reagan for doing away with the Fairness Doctrine, thus enabling Faux “News,” the Republican propaganda network.

If we had a President in the 80’s who saw AIDS as a disease that will kill countless people instead of something that was just happening to gays (so who cares?)…there would have been a lot less suffering over the last 40 years.

He cut taxes on the rich from 70% to 40%, raised my taxes from 22% to 28% and stole 60% of the Social Security because I worked for the USPS later. He called it a windfall. He was irony deficient. He destroyed unions also. He was great for the greedy rich, but did nothing for the millions of working people. May he burn in hell.

The trumplican party, the party of the GROSSLY wealthy that DESPISE Americans, is Ronny the Dementia-case’s shared baby. The lesson? ACTORS WILL KILL YOU.

After Hinckley gave Reagan lead toxemia, and they sped him instead of the nearest hospital, to the Air Force base aircraft hangar, to ‘reprogram’ him before delivering him to the hospital. Reagan’s mind frame was never the same since.

I still remember his famous (or infamous) quote, telling all of us to beware of anyone saying “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” Yeah, we don’t want to to wast time and tax money on vaccine research, climate change amelioration, earthquake/flood/drought/wildfire preparedness, or anything else that might require an extended and expensive investment. Y’all just leave us alone!

I was never a fan of President Reagan until I had to grow up and pay for my own way in life. I hope you all enjoy the next three years.

In California, Governor Reagan’s response to several civil rights violation cases against mental health institutions was to release people with serious mental disabilities into the street.

It took way too long for him to even say "AIDS’. Horrid and irredeemable.

Being gone a long time means being critical of all the awful stuff he did that we’re still suffering for is irrational, but worshiping him is for brain geniuses.

Gawd, this piece is lame……………robby hood, you ok with my comment?

Ronny was the one that lead the Gop TO the cliff. 60+ years later, donny lead them OFF the cliff. It’s over, guys.