News has it that President Obama is installing solar energy-producing panels on the roof of the White House.
This item, and earlier ones, reminded us that President Jimmy Carter had also installed solar panels on the White House roof—and then Ronald Reagan removed them. Why would he do this, when it must have cost taxpayers money to remove them? My guess is, simply to thumb his nose at environmentalists.
Also, as is not very well known, on the day of his inauguration, Reagan froze all funding of alternative energy research by the Department of Energy. I can tell you that a lot of alternative energy research that is being called for today or has recently been started up, was going on in 1981 when Reagan halted it. On the smaller scale, Reagan's move cost many jobs (including, ultimately, mine—so yes, I have a personal axe to grind here) but it also set back the efforts to find new energy sources by 30 years.
Many of the bad things that Reagan did (okay, bad at least from my perspective, or any liberal perspective) were not publicized at the time. Reagan was very popular—remember, he was called "the Teflon President," and the Press was afraid to criticize him because of that popularity.
For example, he gutted federal regulatory agencies such as the EPA and FDA that were intended by Congress to safeguard our food, water, air, and so forth. He appointed as heads of these agencies industry-sympathetic people or even industry insiders who had no intention of allowing these agencies to function effectively.
Similarly, Congress passed laws to beef up (no pun) government inspections of food-processing plants. Had these measures taken effect, they might have prevented some of the recent outbreaks of food-borne illnesses such as Salmonella and E. coli from eggs, peanut butter, and so forth (there have been many in the last few years). But the stiffer inspection schedules were never implemented, because of eight years of foot-dragging by the Bush administration.
Update, August 26, 2011
I recently learned that Rodger Mudd, of CBS TV news, did at the time report on Reagan removing the solar panels from the White House. It was a very brief news item and didn't mention any possible explanation.
Copyright © 2010 by Richard Stein
Showing posts with label Bush administration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bush administration. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Blame Obama?
The news today shows that President Obama and the Democrats have very low approval ratings. Also, people do not think Obama has improved the economy, and they also (by 90%, according to the polls) feel the economy is in bad shape.
It's a year and a half since Obama took office. When he took office, the U.S. and in fact the world economy was on the verge of total and disastrous collapse, as many economists and other scholars have said. Obama acted very quickly to enact measures (mainly the now infamous "bail-outs") that staved off that collapse that would have ruined us, as individuals and as a country.
It's true that not everything is rosey. There are mixed indicators of the state of the economy. Many economists say the economy is improving; it's growing, albeit slowly and not quickly enough to appease Obama's critics.
Obama is not to blame for the economic problems of our country. A year and a half should not be too difficult a period to remember back. Many problems were caused by (1) the banking industry, which had made loans ("subprime loans") to many, many people who could not afford them; and (2) by Wall Street, with innovative and overly complicated new investment vehicles (generally those called "derivatives"). (3) Lack of government regulation and oversight permitted (1) and (2) to occur. This deregulation of the financial sector was not Obama's doing nor even George W. Bush's, but went back through several presidential administrations.
No one should expect any miraculous turnaround in the time that Obama has been president. When the U.S. was in the grips of the Great Depression, President Roosevelt instituted many programs to stimulate the economy, but full recovery from the Depression did not occur until there was the stimulus to industry provided by arming for World War II.
Copyright © 2010 by Richard Stein
It's a year and a half since Obama took office. When he took office, the U.S. and in fact the world economy was on the verge of total and disastrous collapse, as many economists and other scholars have said. Obama acted very quickly to enact measures (mainly the now infamous "bail-outs") that staved off that collapse that would have ruined us, as individuals and as a country.
It's true that not everything is rosey. There are mixed indicators of the state of the economy. Many economists say the economy is improving; it's growing, albeit slowly and not quickly enough to appease Obama's critics.
Obama is not to blame for the economic problems of our country. A year and a half should not be too difficult a period to remember back. Many problems were caused by (1) the banking industry, which had made loans ("subprime loans") to many, many people who could not afford them; and (2) by Wall Street, with innovative and overly complicated new investment vehicles (generally those called "derivatives"). (3) Lack of government regulation and oversight permitted (1) and (2) to occur. This deregulation of the financial sector was not Obama's doing nor even George W. Bush's, but went back through several presidential administrations.
No one should expect any miraculous turnaround in the time that Obama has been president. When the U.S. was in the grips of the Great Depression, President Roosevelt instituted many programs to stimulate the economy, but full recovery from the Depression did not occur until there was the stimulus to industry provided by arming for World War II.
Copyright © 2010 by Richard Stein
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
U.S. Involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan
Before the Vietnam War ended, some 56,000 American soldiers had been killed, to say nothing of a perhaps-unknown number—but hundreds of thousands--of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians. Plus enormous suffering and property damage—loss of families' homes and environmental devastation.
And what was gained in return for all this loss? If anyone can still recall, or even care, 30 or 40 years later, the purpose of the Vietnam War was supposed to be to keep South Viet Nam from being taken over by the communists of North Vietnam. And what happened in the end, after all that loss? No one seems to like to think about it, but Vietnam was reunified. In other words, the North Vietnamese did in fact take over the South, the very thing the war was supposed to prevent. So, to put it very plainly and even harshly, the war was for nothing. But no one wants to dwell on the fact that many American lives were sacrificed for, in the end, no purpose.
During the Bush years I kept thinking of parallels between the Vietnam War and the Iraq war. In both wars, Congress and the American Public had been manipulated by the White House and the Defense Department into supporting the war by means of false and distorted information. It became clear that the danger to America from Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction" was trumped up. (And Colin Powell, who was U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, has said he regretted the speech he gave to the U.N. about Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction" because he was unwittingly basing it on incorrect information.) Plus, another reason the Government used to try to sell the war, the link between Saddam Hussein and al Quaeda, was also very dubious.
So the original rationale for the war was very questionable. Yet once Hussein was toppled, we had to keep Iraq from descending into a religious civil war. Thus we are still there, after—what is it now, eight years? And we no longer even hear the statistics on how many Americans have been killed in Iraq. Last I heard, it was over 4,000, but that was quite a while ago.
And there's Afghanistan. How many Americans could immediately and clearly tell me why we are fighting in Afghanistan? Waging a war against the Taliban in Afghanistan might have a little more direct connection to the security of the U.S. than was the case with invading Iraq. But again, consider this: The Russians left Afghanistan in defeat and the U.S. succeeded them. It's too similar to the U.S. taking over in Vietnam after the French withdrew in defeat. It's a very sad fact that the lessons of history are not learned.
Living in an area which is in some ways rather conservative—it's pretty much believers in "God and Country"—I see a lot of bumper stickers saying "Support Our Troops." Since I was opposed to the U.S. invasion of Iraq from the very beginning, some people would say to me, Well, you can support the troops even if you don't support the war.
I have a problem with that logic. I'd say Yes, I agree—if the troops were all there involuntarily. Then they'd just be poor pawns, as was the case in the Vietnam War. However, remember that we do not presently have a draft. Every Army soldier, National Guardsman, Marine in Iraq is a volunteer. Many of these men enlisted because they felt their country called, and they should respond. That's putting the best construction on it—rather than saying, for example, that their belief that they were defending their country was based on incorrect information they had been fed by the Government.
Copyright © 2009 by Richard Stein
And what was gained in return for all this loss? If anyone can still recall, or even care, 30 or 40 years later, the purpose of the Vietnam War was supposed to be to keep South Viet Nam from being taken over by the communists of North Vietnam. And what happened in the end, after all that loss? No one seems to like to think about it, but Vietnam was reunified. In other words, the North Vietnamese did in fact take over the South, the very thing the war was supposed to prevent. So, to put it very plainly and even harshly, the war was for nothing. But no one wants to dwell on the fact that many American lives were sacrificed for, in the end, no purpose.
During the Bush years I kept thinking of parallels between the Vietnam War and the Iraq war. In both wars, Congress and the American Public had been manipulated by the White House and the Defense Department into supporting the war by means of false and distorted information. It became clear that the danger to America from Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction" was trumped up. (And Colin Powell, who was U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, has said he regretted the speech he gave to the U.N. about Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction" because he was unwittingly basing it on incorrect information.) Plus, another reason the Government used to try to sell the war, the link between Saddam Hussein and al Quaeda, was also very dubious.
So the original rationale for the war was very questionable. Yet once Hussein was toppled, we had to keep Iraq from descending into a religious civil war. Thus we are still there, after—what is it now, eight years? And we no longer even hear the statistics on how many Americans have been killed in Iraq. Last I heard, it was over 4,000, but that was quite a while ago.
And there's Afghanistan. How many Americans could immediately and clearly tell me why we are fighting in Afghanistan? Waging a war against the Taliban in Afghanistan might have a little more direct connection to the security of the U.S. than was the case with invading Iraq. But again, consider this: The Russians left Afghanistan in defeat and the U.S. succeeded them. It's too similar to the U.S. taking over in Vietnam after the French withdrew in defeat. It's a very sad fact that the lessons of history are not learned.
Living in an area which is in some ways rather conservative—it's pretty much believers in "God and Country"—I see a lot of bumper stickers saying "Support Our Troops." Since I was opposed to the U.S. invasion of Iraq from the very beginning, some people would say to me, Well, you can support the troops even if you don't support the war.
I have a problem with that logic. I'd say Yes, I agree—if the troops were all there involuntarily. Then they'd just be poor pawns, as was the case in the Vietnam War. However, remember that we do not presently have a draft. Every Army soldier, National Guardsman, Marine in Iraq is a volunteer. Many of these men enlisted because they felt their country called, and they should respond. That's putting the best construction on it—rather than saying, for example, that their belief that they were defending their country was based on incorrect information they had been fed by the Government.
Copyright © 2009 by Richard Stein
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