The Reagan Legacy

Jane Wyman is/was an Oscar award winner.

According to TIME, they got divorced in 1948. Wyman actually sued for divorce charging extreem mental cruelty, and she also complained in her own words......"I just couldn't stand to watch that dismal Kings Row one more time."

 

Lookie here.....look what I found.

 

I will NOT edit someone else's article because YOU have a problem with the way he wrote it. Besides, the article was on Reagan's DRUG WAR LEGACY and as such, did not have anything whatsoever to do with Carter.

You did what you felt you needed to do in posting that interview, but it would be completely WRONG of me to post an article and then sanitize it by taking out a paragraph. If I wrote an article and someone else did that, I would absolutely ream them and tell them to post ALL of my article or none at all.

 

yeah, ours arrived after 12 years...

 

Did you send him an email to tell him that you used his article?


But the Reagan administration's turning of a blind eye to other armed irregulars was to have even more long-lasting consequences, said Tree. "In Afghanistan, Reagan sought to give the Soviets their own taste of Vietnam, so the CIA funded and trained the fundamentalist mujahadeen, including Osama bin Laden. These forces quickly turned to opium poppy cultivation to supplement their CIA funding and now Afghanistan produces three-quarters of the world's heroin," the analyst said. According to numerous reports, profits from that trade are helping to finance Al Qaeda and the Taliban (not to mention warlords within the US-backed Afghan government of Hamid Karzai). "Reagan called these armies 'freedom fighters' and the 'moral equivalent of our founding fathers. The founding fathers grew hemp for peaceful purposes -- they didn't traffic in cocaine and heroin in order to wage war! In fact, one could argue that Reagan's foreign policy gave birth to the original 'narco-terrorists,' the Contras and the mujahadeen."


The policy of getting <i>fundamentalist mujahadeen</i> to fight against the Soviets originated with the Carter Administration as did the concept of giving the Soviets their own taste of Vietnam. Since the Carter Administration:

1) Came up with the idea of giving the Soviets their own Vietnam

2) Started the contacts and funding of the fundamentalist
mujahadeen

it does have plenty to do with the Carter Administration.

 

Not in that particular piece, which was about the drug war. The author chose to gloss over the minutae in favor of the commonly accepted wisdom that, though the policy may have started under Carter (as the "War on Drugs" started under Nixon), it was vastly expanded under Reagan and, as such, had as much or more to do with Reagan than with Carter (just as the vast expansion of the war on drugs has had as much to do with EVERY president since as it has to do with Nixon). IIRC, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan at virtually the 11th hour of Carter's presidency, which would mean that the vast majority of OUR support of the muhjadeen came from Reagan.

And I don't have to send him an email, he gives free permission to reproduce his works as long as a link or attribution is given. If you are going to create a stink about his view of the Afghanistan/USSR conflict, I suggest you contact him, you can find his email at www.stopthedrugwar.com.

 

Go back to discussing drugs because I have other things to do.

 

Another good read ...

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0301.green.html
Reagan's Liberal Legacy
What the new literature on the Gipper won't tell you.
By Joshua Green

It's conservative lore that Reagan the icon cut taxes, while George H.W. Bush the renegade raised them. As Stockman recalls, "No one was authorized to talk about tax increases on Ronald Reagan's watch, no matter what kind of tax, no matter how justified it was." Yet raising taxes is exactly what Reagan did. He did not always instigate those hikes or agree to them willingly--but he signed off on them. 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.

...

Reagan continued these "modest rollbacks" in his second term. 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. According to Wall Street Journal reporters Jeffrey Birnbaum and Alan Murray, whose book Showdown at Gucci Gulch chronicles the 1986 measure, "the conservative president's support for an effort once considered the bastion of liberals carried tremendous symbolic significance." When Reagan's conservative acting chief economic adviser, William Niskanen, was apprised of the plan he replied, "Walter Mondale would have been proud."

 

It's interesting that Bush found time to attend Reagan's funeral, but refuses to attend the services of men and women he sent to die.

 

Interesting: my parents were really pissed about all the pomp and circumstance about the funeral. They both voted for Reagan twice and generally liked him, but they thought the funeral was a big waste of taxpayer money.

My father said presidents really get to call their shots over their funerals, and apparently Truman was well-known for requesting the most modest funeral possible. He said something to the effect that "he wouldn't be there to enjoy it," and the US had more important things to spend money on.

Anyone know if Reagan got to leave wishes for his funeral? sorry if this has already been discusses, but I didn't see it explicitly.

 

How many war-time Presidents have gone to funerals of soldiers killed in action?

B-Bob, I believe when you first become President they ask you whether you want a 'state funeral' or not when you croak.

 

I heard that he started planning it in '81. Of course, that was reported on the "liberal media" (one of the big three, ABC, NBC, or CBS) so I can't vouch for the accuracy.

 

thanks Ima, and andymoon. I had read they get to say "state" or not, but my parents strongly believed that they get to say much more about the details than that.

ima, I don't think many presidents at all have attended soldier funerals. I would think two parts go like this: (1) do you end up showing special preference to a soldier since you can't attend all of them?, and (2) would the opposition party just blame you for taking advantage of death for a media appearance? You just can't win when soldiers are getting killed, it seems to me.

 

Apparently one of the first things a newly elected president has to do is plan his funeral.

 

i agree with you...but i might point out that i feel i've moved more to the CL in the past year or so. but you're right...we shouldn't be dividing, but trying to find our common ground.

thanks for your kind words!

 

Personally I love the pomp and circumstance surrounding Reagan's funeral. I would want more of it. The more ceremony the better, I think. I would like it if they had giant stone litres with raised images of the president on top of them to bury them in, much like was done with European nobility. One bagpiper playing one song was not enough.

 

Weird how that article keeps breaking into random questions. Guess journalism school ain't what it used to be.

 

censorship! bring back the intriguing questions!