Reagan, Trump (and Other Republicans and Conservatives), and COVID-19

Ronald Reagan, as a candidate for president in 1980, kept telling us that government--at least big government--is a bad thing. Government is sprawling, bureaucratic, inefficient, corrupt. And anything that government does can be done better and cheaper by private industry.

And, as president, Reagan put this policy into practice, and cut, defunded, or eliminated many government agencies and programs. (For example, the day of his inauguration he stopped all Department of Energy funding for alternative-energy research, thereby setting back our work on sustainable energy sources by 30 years or more.  This ultimately cost me my job so--disclosure!--okay, maybe here I have an axe to grind.)

Reagan's continued railing against government convinced a lot of people--someone said, "Reagan won that battle"--and has perhaps become the prevailing philosophy in America. Certainly we see it in Trump, who also has been cutting and defunding a lot of government offices and programs. Just as an example, he cut funding to the Centers for Disease Control.

I want to quote a little publication called Catalyst, published by the Union of Concerned Scientists:

In 2014, the Obama administration established an office within the National Security Council to coordinate the federal government's future response to pandemics and provide accountable and organized leadership.

In 2017, the Trump administration abolished this office--and perhaps as a direct result, its response to the coronavirus pandemic was initially haphazard, inept, and lacking in overall accountability. We didn't have a clear sense of who is coordinating federal agencies to address public health and safety. We do have bungled efforts, like the failure to arrange for an adequate supply of testing kits. . . .

Conventional wisdom holds that private markets are the best way to satisfy society's needs, and the role of government should be primarily focused on ensuring that markets work properly. COVID-19 puts the lie to this proposition. When a crisis hits, there is no substitute for effective action directed and mandated by government.  Market signals alone will not ensure that the right people get tested, that emergency hospitals are set up, that ventilator manufacturing is ramped up, and so on.

 Catalyst, Volume 20, Spring 2020, pp. 2, 20

As of a few days ago, the death toll from this virus had surpassed 100,000. I believe that Trump and the philosophy I have cited here are at least partly to blame for these deaths. However much Reagan and other conservatives influenced public thinking and subsequent politics, I strongly believe that, as this article suggests, it's time to say that here we have a real-life situation that shows that this philosophy is flawed.

Critique of Conservative Philosophy

Conservatives believe that less government is better. They want to leave much to private industry, rather than having government involved in it (financing it, etc.) because they believe government is inefficient, wasteful, and even corrupt.

They also believe in lessening government regulation of business. This is a major conservative tenet. Rather than government ensuring that business takes measures to protect its workers (e.g., from factory injuries), protect consumers from unsafe products, and avoid polluting the environment--the air we breathe and the water we all must drink--conservatives believe that if you just leave businesses alone, they will do the right thing. This ignores the innumerable times that businesses have put their own profit and other business objectives before the health and welfare of their workers, customers, and the public.

Conservative economics have given us "trickle-down" economics under President Ronald Reagan (when it did not work) and now again under Donald Trump. This idea holds that if you cut taxes to the wealthy and to big corporations, they can invest the money they save on taxes and use it to expand their businesses; this creates new jobs--or so the theory goes. As I said, this theory did not work in Reagan's day, and today this same economic theory is being urged on Trump by an economic advisor of his who has been wrong over and over and over again.

Conservative individuals sometimes go so far as to say that they feel they should not have to pay taxes, that the income which they have legitimately earned (through hard work, or being enterprising, or being rapacious) should not be taken from them and given to the poor and needy who, they believe--usually with definite racist implications--simply do not want to work. The recent incident (caught on video and gone viral on social media) involving New York lawyer Aaron Schlossberg shows Schlossberg saying that his taxes go to support these immigrant, Spanish-speaking restaurant workers whom he is complaining about through "welfare". This makes little sense, because if they were on welfare they would not be there, working in the restaurant. And if they are there, working in the restaurant, they are not on welfare. But this is typical conservative thinking: Reagan and Trump both got elected by implying that these lazy people (African-Americans and/or Hispanics) don't want to work and simply take money away from the good, noble, hard-working (white) guy who pays taxes.

To go back to some of our earlier points: Public health has been one of the major successes of government. Government entities identify epidemic diseases (food-borne illnesses, diseases, and so forth), identify the sources, and put public-health countermeasures in place.

Also, as I have said, government (except to the extent that Trump is doing his best to undermine and even stop these functions) helps keep our food and medicine safe, our air and water clean, pure, and safe, and nearly every aspect of life in our country as  many of us would like it to be.

Update: A conservative (unfortunately I can't tell you who it was) appearing, I believe, on Fox News, said of the children detained at the US border and wrenched from their parents, "Well, they're not our kids. This exemplifies what I believe to be a very common characteristic of conservative people: no empathy--that is, the  ability to imagine themselves in someone else's shoes.
One time, while I was on a business trip and pleasantly enjoying dinner in Lake Tahoe, I quoted a US Supreme Court justice (I think it was Justice Frankfurter, and I don't recall what the topic of conversation was or what prompted me to come out with this) as saying something to the effect, "Better nine guilty men should go free than that one innocent man should be unjustly punished." To this my colleague said, "See, I don't agree with that!"
But what if the innocent, unjustly accused person had been his spouse, or child, or parent, or sister or brother? I think that, were the matter to touch home in that way, he might feel differently.

Copyright © 2018.

Donald Trump, Ronald Reagan, and Their Attitudes toward Their Predecessors

I have to believe that Donald Trump has multiple staffers in the White House whose main or perhaps only job is to look over everything that former President Barack Obama did while he was in office, and especially his "executive orders" --so that Trump could reverse every one.

"Obama did this? Okay, now it's reversed." "Obama did that? I'll reverse it!"

I am not the first one to point out that Trump seems hell-bent on reversing every single thing that Obama did. "We don't like you, never did, and we're going to wipe out every last little bit of your legacy." Yes, Trump is that childish.

But this thumbing your nose at your predecessor reminds me of at least one thing that President Ronald Reagan did, some 30 years ago. His predecessor, Jimmy Carter, had installed solar panels on the White House roof. Reagan ordered the solar panels removed and dismantled.

Why on earth would he do this? Were there any bad or harmful results of having those solar panels there? Possibly Mr. Reagan thought that the hot water for his bath was not hot enough and so the entire water-heating system, as it was, needed to be substantially modified.

But I doubt that the reason was anything like that. I think Reagan just wanted to thumb his nose (or give the finger, or flip the bird. . .) to Carter. Jimmy Carter had told the American public that fossil fuels were a finite resource that needed to be conserved. He advocated for a more serious attitude toward energy use, perhaps even a bit of belt-tightening.

Reagan, on the other hand, comes along and, while campaigning for President, says, basically, We don't need to tighten the belt. Screw conservation. We are America and austerity is not for us. There is plenty of oil.

Incidentally, and at risk of straying from my subject: Reagan did not believe in government support of research into alternative energy sources. The day he took office he froze Department of Energy funding of alternative-energy research projects, thereby setting American alternative energy programs back by 30 years.

Copyright  © 2017

Is Less Government Better?

When Ronald Reagan was running for President of the United States, in 1980, he argued that government was too big—and even was evil. (Logically, one might have wondered why he wanted to be the head of something which he believed was bad. Presumably to cut it and gut it, and he did, cutting and rendering ineffective many government regulatory agencies.)

Someone said that "Reagan won that debate." Maybe he did insofar as many people today believe that less government is better. Economic conservatives and libertarians believe that the economy would be better, and everything would be rosy, "if we could get  government off our backs." Something—presumably the workings of the marketplace—would ensure that businesses did not screw their customers, the public, and their employees.

I have said much of this before but I want to remind us of some of the things government does for us.

Government builds and repairs roads. It puts up stop lights, stop signs, and road signs.

It provides us with police and fire protection.

It ensures the safety of our food and our medications. Someone said that public health is the big success of government. Government finds the causes and sources of food-borne illnesses. It ensures that there is vaccine to protect us against flu and epidemic diseases. These are only a few of thousands of possible examples.

But I really want to look at one story, auto safety, because I was recently reminded of this by an article I read.

Consumer advocate Ralph Nader published a book called Unsafe at Any Speed. As a result of the changes in US cars to make them safer that were the ultimate result of Nader's crusading efforts and his book, US deaths from auto crashes dropped by 32%.

You just have to contrast the situation in the US with that of Brazil. In Brazil, safety standards for cars are very lax or nonexistent. The Brazilian government is just getting around to requiring air bags and anti-lock brakes in cars made and sold in Brazil. Worse, there are no government crash standards for cars in Brazil. If and when cars are crash-tested, the testing is neither carried out nor validated by the government.

Therefore, cars made in Brazil (by Volkswagen, Fiat, GM, and Ford) are often made without many of the spot welds to the body structure that the very same models would have if built in Europe. As someone put it, where the welds should be, "there's just a gap." With Brazilian car manufacture virtually unregulated, cars in that country are not safe and the rate of serious injuries and deaths in car accidents is much higher than in the US.

The US auto industry did not improve auto safety out of concern for the public's safety, and they did not improve auto safety until they were forced to—by the government and ultimately because of the activism of Ralph Nader. That has not happened yet in Brazil and will not happen until the Brazilian government enforces crash-safety rules similar to those of the US.

The case of the respective US and Brazilian auto industries speaks for itself, but I feel compelled to add: So much for government keeping hands off, just letting business alone and trusting that they will do the right thing.

Update July 8, 2013
The recent collapse of a clothing factory in Bangladesh is another example of what can happen in an environment of lax or even totally lacking government regulation and oversight. I believe about 100 workers were killed. Bangladesh has poor, if any, oversight of building construction and nothing like our OSHA which exists to ensure the safety of workers.

Update August 18, 2013
I learned something interesting not long ago. Maybe Ronald Reagan does not get all the credit (or blame, depending on your politics) for the "government is evil" idea. It seems that in the 1960s, when Governor George Wallace of Alabama was trying to preserve segregation and keep black students from entering schools in his state, he faced the prospect of federal intervention and began to rail about the goverment in Washington being too powerful and evil-ly trying to dictate to the sovereign state of Alabama and tell them what to do and make them change their long-cherished ways. That should make people look at motivations of those who complain about "interference" from the federal government.

Copyright © 2013

Ronald Reagan: More on His Legacy

Maybe one of the biggest and most lasting parts of Reagan's legacy is that he made many Americans believe that government is evil—though this idea may in fact be deeply rooted in the American consciousness; one only has to look at the Declaration of Independence.

He persuaded us to make him head of that which he despised, namely the government. Evidently it didn't occur to anyone—least of all Reagan himself—that there was an irony there.

He tried to gut, undermine, and render powerless regulatory agencies such as the EPA and the FDA by cutting funding and causing staff cuts. Some of these agencies are still not restored to the funding or staffing that they need: thus Reagan's legacy lives on.

(These regulatory agencies protect consumers. Republicans--Reagan and more recent ones--argue that anything that impedes business is bad for all of us. So the argument comes down to this: Who do you trust to be on your side--"you" meaning the average Joe--corporations or the government? People mistrust the government but, to my mind, we've had plenty of cases of greedy, even evil and corrupt corporations. And, think of this: We don't elect corporations, so how do you expect them to be accountable, if they are free of all restrictions?)

It may well be due to Reagan that many people today feel that the government takes away their money—which they have earned and are thus entitled to keep—to give to people who don't want to work. (There is more than a hint of racism in this idea; I remember well Reagan's campaign speeches, which to me at least clearly included an appeal to racism. But you only have to look at photos or video clips--such as have appeared over and over—of job fairs that have been accessible to minorities, to see that there have been enormous, incredible, numbers of people willing to expend great amounts of time standing in long lines in hopes of getting a job.)

Further, to this type of thinking, this "redistribution of wealth"—that is, taxing their incomes--is outright socialism. Never mind that we have had an income tax for 150 years now, and the government's power to levy such a tax was confirmed by the Sixteenth Amendment 100 years ago.

Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein

Get God into Government?

As American politics approach the famous or infamous "Iowa caucuses," of course that is very much in the news. One particular item of comment concerned which candidate so-called Evangelical voters are going to favor. Accordingly, the news reporters interviewed a few such.

One of them said, "We've got to get God back into this country." Another said, "We have to get God into government."

I dearly wish I could have asked them exactly what they meant. But absent that, my reaction would be to say that America is not a theocracy, never has been, and anyone who thinks that a theocracy is in any way desirable should look at the example of Iran, where the opinions of the ruling ayatollahs trump the views of the more secular organs of government such as, indeed, President Ahmadinejad. Considering the freedoms that prevail in Iran—or rather the lack of them—should make anyone think twice before wishing for a theocracy in this country. (But they'd probably try to argue that a Christian theocracy is a good thing even if a Muslim theocracy is a bad thing.)

I have a feeling that these respondents, if I were to expostulate with them on the notion of church-state separation, would give me the standard Religious Right line that church-state separation is a "myth." And I would point out that it was Thomas Jefferson who, in a famous letter to the Danbury Baptists in 1802, wrote of a "wall of separation" between church and state. (And the idea has even earlier roots, going back 150 years earlier still, to Roger Williams who was exiled from the Bay Colony in Massachusetts and established Rhode Island to provide religious freedom.)

If I did have my hypothetical chance to interrogate these same (presumably) caucus-bound Republican voters in Iowa, I have a feeling that before too long we'd hear that they want to see things like a return of prayer to the public schools; posting of the Ten Commandments in courthouses, city halls, etc.; total outlawing of abortion and same-sex marriage. These have been issues for, and aims of, the Religious Right for a long time—in some cases for decades.

Just as an aside, when they helped elect Ronald Reagan, and maybe ditto for George W. Bush, they were very disillusioned that these objectives of theirs were not realized. That those policies were not enacted, even by presidents whom these people thought were one of them or at the very least largely on their side, shows that these are not popular (in the original sense) or mainstream positions.

I think some polls have shown that about one-third of American voters consider themselves Evangelicals. Even if that is so and is not an inflated statistic, that number still is not a majority. Yet this minority aspires to political power such that it can trample on those who don't agree with it. The majority in the US gets to wield power via elections; but when it comes to rights (e.g. the civil rights of minority groups), the government is set up so that the majority cannot impose its religious views or practices on a minority. Nor a minority on the majority. The arbiter of any disputes about that is our court system.

Some of the earliest polities in America—for example, the seventeenth-century colony settled by Puritans in Massachusetts—were in fact set up as theocracies. A dissenter such as Roger Williams was kicked out of Massachusetts and went on to found Rhode Island. But the Framers of the Constitution, a century and a half later, in envisioning the shape of a federal government, wanted to avoid any government like that.

Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein

Update, January 4, 2012
This posting received a comment from a faithful follower of this blog. While I have the power to moderate all comments—that means I can allow or not allow a comment to be posted—I am pledged to allow dissenting opinions to be expressed on my blog.

However, I have to object to what was said; and I at first did so by writing a comment myself, commenting on the reader's comment.

However, I think I will use this avenue, an "update" to my original posting, to further express my refutation of what this person says.

He accuses liberals of being opposed to "school choice." Now, what exactly is school choice?

First, the term is a euphemism of the sort that I particularly hate because it obscures what is really being talked about. To me that is deceptive and downright evil.

"School choice" means what are also called school vouchers. Vouchers are given to parents of school-age children who can take them and use them as payment for school tuition; that is, tuition at private schools, and that usually means parochial--religious--schools.

So, school vouchers are beloved by the Religious Right. I, however, am strongly opposed to them. They allow tax money—my tax dollars—to be used to pay for religious education. I don't think I should be forced to pay for religious, sectarian, doctrinal education—which might, for example, teach Creationism instead of evolution. I believe that breaches the Constitutionally-mandated separation of Church and State.

Here is an interesting slant on school vouchers from the article on that subject in Wikipedia:

In some Southern states during the 1960s, school vouchers were used as a method of perpetuating segregation. In a few instances, public schools were closed outright and vouchers were issued to parents. The vouchers, in many cases, were only good at privately segregated schools, known as segregation academies.[6] Today, all modern voucher programs prohibit racial discrimination. [Wikipedia, s.v. school vouchers]

Public school teachers and teacher unions such as the National Education Association oppose vouchers. For all of the arguments both in favor of and against vouchers, see the Wikipedia article.

An interesting alternative, which does not seem to me to be as objectionable, is called "education tax credits." This basically says that if you pay to send your children to private school, you don't have to pay taxes which go to finance public schools. That seems fair, but I'd hasten to add that by the same logic, people such as myself, who have no children, probably should not pay for public schools, either.

There was an important ruling by the Supreme Court: in "2002 in a landmark case before the US Supreme Court, Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, . . . the divided court, in a 5-4 decision, ruled the Ohio school voucher plan constitutional and removed any constitutional barriers to similar voucher plans in the future. . . " [Wikipedia, ibid.].

However, in Florida vouchers were struck down:

In 2006, the Florida Supreme Court struck down legislation known as the Florida Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP), which would have implemented a system of school vouchers in Florida.[67] The court ruled that the OSP violated article IX, section 1(a) of the Florida Constitution: "Adequate provision shall be made by law for a uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and high quality system of free public schools" [Wikipedia, ibid.].

War Creates a Climate Hostile to Liberals

In the last decade we've seen the "9/11" attack and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (and possibly we can add Libya). The terrorist attacks and the wars have given a boost to a brand of conservative, hawkish patriotism that does not want to brook any criticism of America.

After 9/11 we saw lots of cars flying American flags. Where I live, and where we have many older people who tend to be conservative, you can still see cars flying American flags. Time was, any car flying the American flag was the President's car or the car of an American ambassador abroad.

So 9/11 stirred up a lot of patriotism. I think partly it was an expression of defiance to the terrorists but also perhaps sort of having a chip on America's collective shoulder. Just as my sister, living in Germany with her US Army husband around 1955, wore a Jewish star around her neck, sort of saying, "I dare you to discriminate against me—because I'm American, we whipped your Nazi, anti-Semitic ass, and now we're occupying your country."

As a bit of a digression: The wars we've been engaged in have produced a lot of "Support Our Troops" decals and bumper stickers on cars—and they're still there. I'd like to reply to the "support our troops" crowd that I support the troops by advocating bringing them home. Certainly they'd be safer that way and we'd save all the human suffering of war injuries and deaths. On the other hand, it's undoubtedly true that some soldiers want to be "over there." Some will say they want to defend their country--but my feeling is that that's based on incorrect ideas. It's not clear to me that the US invaded Iraq because our country was being threatened (remember, the "weapons of mass destruction" were never found).

Being engaged in a war calls up patriotism. This is fine except that, along with that patriotism there often can be an intolerance of criticism of the country. I remember during the Vietnam War I was told things like, "We don't need your kind in this country," and "Why don't you get out of the country if you don't like it?" People were saying, "My country, right or wrong"—which I thought was a well-nigh appalling idea. Quite recently, in response to a comment I wrote on Huffington Post, I was called "commie"--which if nothing else strikes me as a rather anachronistic term. I thought the McCarthy Era was long past and that we had stopped calling people "commie."

You can view the current climate in this post-9/11 US as an upsurge of patriotism. But it might be that America has moved to the Right. One of my professors used to be fond of saying that the prevailing philosophy is a pendulum that continually swings between liberal and conservative.

And now I learn of some of the things that were said by the Republican Presidential candidates in their most recent debate. They strike me as militaristic, chest-beating comments. (We used to hear the terms hawk and hawkish, in the Vietnam War era.) Mitt Romney mentioned that attacking Iran should not be out of the question, and Cain said he wants to bring back waterboarding of prisoners or detainees:

But Cain also provided one of the most striking moments when he argued in favor of the use of "enhanced interrogation" -- including the now-rejected technique of waterboarding -- in the fight against terrorism, a proposal that is likely to outrage many who thought the era of American-sponsored torture was over.

"I will trust the judgment of our military to determine what is torture and what is not torture," Cain said. Asked about waterboarding in particular, he replied, "I would return to that policy. I don't see it as torture, I see it as an enhanced interrogation technique." [HuffPost: Politics]

(To again digress: I have to comment on that term. My reply to Cain is that "enhanced interrogation technique" was an abominable euphemism coined by the Bush administration simply to call torture by some other name. Politicians know very well the power of words, the power of a name, that what you call something matters. When the United States was supporting anti-government fighters in Nicaragua during the Reagan administration, they were "freedom fighters." Whether people fighting against their government are "freedom fighters" or "rebels" simply depends on whether our government views them as on our side or not.)

I wish I could figure out why advocating cruel things like waterboarding and capital punishment seems to correlate with holding a number of other views. Is it a matter of very general personality type or world view? In an earlier post I mentioned a student who called himself a libertarian and was defending property rights to the degree that he favored punishing a man who stole a loaf of bread to feed his starving family. Extreme conservatives like that--in my view, at least--have no humanity, no empathy, or no imagination that would enable them to see themselves in the other person's shoes.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

Some Roots of the Conservative Mindset in America

Norway may be the classic example of what at one time in America was called the welfare state. The government provides for many human needs, including health care; and in turn, taxes are high.

A majority of the people in Norway—of course not everybody—think it's a good system and are happy with it.

This would never fly in America. I even think that if Social Security were up for a vote in our Congress right now, it would not pass.

There is a lot of anti-government feeling in America and even a conviction that the government cannot do things well because it is too bureaucratic and wasteful of taxpayers' money. Conservatives would like many things left to private enterprise and, for example, would like to privatize Social Security.

Okay, maybe you know all this. Let's look at sort of a history of ideas in America for a bit. I've blamed Ronald Reagan for boosting the idea that big government is a bad thing. But he didn't originate that way of thinking, it's a result of the history of this country. For a long time there's been an ethos in America that esteems personal independence and self-reliance. It's the vision of the pioneer on the frontier who might have had no one around to aid him. Maybe even the Army or Cavalry was not available, most of the time, to help him defend himself against hostile Indians.

So the noble American pioneer is the very picture of self-reliance. He does it all himself, building his house, plowing his fields, making most of what he needs, etc.

But this figure is pretty much obsolete. And why should not needing the government mean despising the government and saying that the government should not aid that guy over there? I'm not sure, but there seems to be a strong idea of "What I need and want (or don't want) should be okay for you, too."

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

A Word for Conservatives

Ronald Reagan, when he was running for president, did a pretty good job of convincing a lot of Americans that "government is the problem," and we'd all be better off with less government regulation, smaller government bureaucracy, and so on. A lot of people believed what he said, and still, some 30 years later, it's common to hear people say that government is bad.

To these people I say, if you don't like government, let me make a suggestion for you. Move to Mississippi, where there are very low taxes. Also--just coincidentally--they have the worst education, the lowest literacy, the lowest life expectancy, the greatest rate of obesity. They rank at the bottom of almost every list. All because of very low government spending--which correlates with the low taxes they have.

At the other extreme might be a country like Norway, where taxes are very high but the government provides nearly everything everyone could want, pretty much cradle-to-grave.

Maybe, my imaginary anti-government friends, once you've abolished the government, you might find you need to try to get together with your neighbors to arrange for fires to be put out, criminals to be caught, roads to be built, traffic lights and stop signs to be put up--oh, and how about trying to ensure the safety of the food you eat, the medicines you take. . .

Sure, you could form some kind of association with your neighbors to do these things--but then you'd have a government!

By the way, I posted this (in pretty much these words) as a comment on an AOL/Daily Finance article on the Republican candidates--and a reply to my comment called me a "commie." Nice, reasonable refutation of my ideas.

Copyright (c) 2011 by Richard Stein

Buffet Says Rich Should Pay More Tax

Warren Buffet, one of the wealthiest men in America, has gone on record publicly saying that the wealthiest in America should pay more taxes, should pay their share and "share the sacrifice."

That that is true seems to me should be non-controversial, a no-brainer. Yet a local TV station in Chicago polled its viewers, "Do you think that the wealthiest Americans should pay more taxes?" Even though a pretty good majority—91%--voted "Yes," I am surprised that 9%--that is roughly one in 10—voted "No." I wonder why not. Maybe they buy that often-voiced Republican and Conservative argument that taxing the wealthy stifles job creation. But sparing the wealthiest individuals and corporations from taxes is trickle-down economics. It was tried during the Reagan years and it does not work.

Anyway, Congress take note of these poll results: There is very wide public support for raising taxes on the wealthy.

Warren Buffet is a good guy, there's no doubt. He has partnered with his fellow-richest guy Bill Gates to form a little group that lobbies other wealthy people to get them to be more philanthropic. Buffet said he pays some 17% of his income in taxes. Unfortunately, with the many loopholes that exist, many wealthy individuals are able to shield almost all their income from taxes. The rich can afford clever attorneys who help them to exploit a large number of ways of avoiding the income tax. Thus wealth, as always, begets wealth, and the rich and super-rich, under current policies, just get richer. Those in the upper 1% by income now control 33% of assets in this country.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

How Three Republican Presidents Got Elected

Perhaps arguably, three of the last four Republican presidents to be elected--Nixon, Reagan, and G. W. Bush--stole their elections.

First, Richard Nixon. A week before the presidential election of 1968, Hubert Humphrey achieved a big lead over his opponent, Nixon, by finally distancing himself from President Lyndon Johnson and his Vietnam War policies. Peace talks between the North Vietnamese and the Americans were underway in Paris at the time.

Then, on the very eve of the election, Richard Nixon persuaded the premier of South Vietnam to withdraw from the peace talks by promising him a better deal if he, Nixon, got elected.

This act on Nixon's part might have constituted treason, and Nixon had no standing to interfere in such talks. As a result, Nixon won, very narrowly--by half a percentage of the vote, the smallest margin of victory ever.

And, as a result of Nixon winning and the peace talks having come to an end, the war went on for another seven years and thousands more Americans were killed.

Of course that is not the only wrongdoing that Nixon ever did. Much earlier, when he was running for Congress, he accused his opponent of being a Communist. When a journalist said to him, "But Mr. Nixon, you know that [your opponent] is not a Communist," Nixon said, "Yes, but I wanted to win." That should speak for itself.

And, for those who know history or can remember back 40 years, Nixon gave us the Watergate scandal, which would have gotten him impeached if he had not resigned to avoid it. Mr. "I Am Not a Crook" was indeed a crook.

Okay, now Reagan, who did something similar. University students in Iran, during that country's revolution which ousted the Shah and brought in the current "Islamic Republic," had captured a number of Americans from the US embassy and were holding them hostage. Then US President Jimmy Carter had been powerless to get those hostages released.

Behind the scenes, and again illegally, Reagan (then candidate for US President) got the Iranians to promise NOT to release the American hostages until after the US presidential election was over. That helped continue the image of Carter as helpless in the face of the hostage "crisis" and helped Reagan get elected. Not coincidentally, the hostages were released on the very day that Reagan was inaugurated.

And--again parallel with Nixon--once in office Reagan continued his illegal acts. In the scandal called "Irangate," Reagan's staffers were illegally selling arms to Iran in order to get money to aid the so-called Contras in Nicaragua, in defiance of the US Congress, which had voted that no aid should be given to the Contras. (The Contras were right-wing forces trying to overthrow the Leftist government in Nicaragua. Seems that rebels whom our government wants to support are "freedom fighters," but when we are not on their side, they're rebels or some such.)

And last but not least, George W. Bush. (Hopefully you remember this one.) In the election of 2000, the results of voting were very close and the outcome depended on the vote count in Florida. There were a lot of ambiguous ballots, which were being manually examined. (Remember "hanging chads"?)

The matter at one point was under the control of the (Republican) Florida Secretary of State. Plus, the governor of Florida just happened to be George W. Bush's brother!

Many ballots--from areas which might have favored Gore--were not recounted because the recount was halted by the Secretary of State. And then, the US Supreme Court, with a Conservative majority, ruled that Bush should be President. Many Americans were very angry at that, and considered that Bush had stolen the election.

Update, October 11, 2011
Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens says this, in a recently published memoir, about the Bush campaign's petition to the Supreme Court to stop the Florida vote recount:

By a five-to-four vote, the court granted the stay [that is, stopping the recount]. "What I still regard as a frivolous stay application kept the court extremely busy for four days," he writes. He adds that no justice has ever cited the opinions that provided the basis for their ruling.

Kinda of makes it sound like it was politically and partisanly motivated, doesn't it?

Copyright (c) 2011 by Richard Stein

Remembering Ronald Reagan

I never liked Reagan—not as a candidate, not as president, not now.

Because he was "the Teflon president," the press never had the guts to criticize him—so we began to hear about all the bad things he had done only once he had left office.

When he was campaigning for the presidency, his speeches had a blatant appeal to Americans' racism. Also while a candidate, he negotiated with the Iranians—in violation of U.S. law—so that they would not release the American hostages they were holding until the campaign and election were over with. Sure enough, the hostages were released on the day of Reagan's inauguration.

Also on his Inauguration Day in 1980, he immediately halted all government funding for alternative energy research. If, 30 years later, we still don't have much in the way of alternatives to petroleum-based fuels, that's directly and simply due to Reagan.

There was an anecdote that on the eve of a big international conference, his aides provided him with a lot of briefing papers; but instead of reading them and doing his "homework," he spent the evening before the big conference watching movies.

Also, he greatly undermined environmental regulation by the EPA; and regulation of our food supplies, our medications, and so forth by the FDA. We are still suffering from inadequate governmental oversight of public health because of him.

The best thing I can sat about Reagan is that the Religious Right folks who helped elect him were sorely disappointed that he did not deliver for them everything they had hoped or wanted.

Update, August 24, 2011
A recent PBS TV program on energy showed an expert who stated that, as I indeed said here, Ronald Reagan set back US alternative energy programs by 30 years.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

Reagan (and Bush) on Energy and Consumer Protection

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

Reaganomics and Republicanomics

Remember Ronald Reagan and his "Reaganomics"? Reagan espoused the "trickle-down" theory, supposedly scribbled on a napkin by the young (and previously relatively obscure) economist Arthur Laffer, with his "Laffer curve."

The idea was that tax cuts and other economic policies that would help large businesses and rich individuals get richer would ultimately benefit everybody, because the benefits to them would "trickle down" the ladder to lower income levels. The rising waters would float everybody's boat--or so the theory went.

What happened is that under Reagan, the U.S. national deficit rose to unprecedented levels--a fact that those on the Right who are lambasting Obama for a rising deficit are conveniently ignoring.

Now, since the numbers are in, we can see similarly that the Bush economic policies, such as the famous "Bush tax cuts" that are now up for renewal, and that had the most benefit for the rich, hurt the total U.S. national income.

Here is an article by former U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Reich on that subject:

www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/the-super-rich-get-richer_b_737792.html?utm_source=DailyBrief&utm_campaign=092410&utm_medium=email&utm_content=BlogEntry

If you want to go into the economics of it more deeply (and you have patience), here is an article replete with tables (in .pdf format).

www.tax.com/taxcom/taxblog.nsf/Permalink/CHAS-89LPZ9?OpenDocument

Here is an article that shows the lasting, systemic harm to America's economic structure that was done by Reagonomics:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-white/rethinking-reaganomics-wh_b_749839.html

Copyright (c) 2010 by Richard Stein

Politics, Energy Policy, and Financial-System Reform

Anyone who pays attention to current news has heard about the environmental disaster in the making, due to an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. An offshore oil-drilling platform caught fire and then sank. This has resulted in loss of lives (I think 11 at latest estimate), plus some 40,000 gallons of oil per day are being spilled into the gulf waters.

Such accidents are a constant risk of offshore oil drilling. Yet President Obama recently issued an order to expand offshore oil drilling off the U.S. coast.

Yes, we need energy. For now, unfortunately, we need oil. But it still is surprising, disappointing, and saddening to Obama's liberal constituency and anyone concerned with the environment that he has done this. It seems to be a philosophy of "more oil at any cost." Well, I say, let people driving 3-ton SUVs pay more for their gas than they are currently. They don't care about the environment, and I'd like to see them bear more of a burden for their actions. (The U.S. still has gasoline for half of what it costs in Europe.)

Lest I seem to be attacking Democrats and a (supposedly) liberal president, let me hasten to lay some blame at the door of Republicans. The energy problem goes back at least 30 years. Or rather, 30 years ago, when things could have been done, they were not. The day of his inauguration, Ronald Reagan halted all U.S. Department of Energy funding for research on alternative energy. (I know this because I was working for a nonprofit engineering research group that did a lot of research into fuel from biomass, ocean thermal energy, fuel cells, and so forth. This institution depended very heavily on DOE contracts and was extremely impacted by Reagan's actions, and had to cut, eventually, two-thirds of their staff.) Other commentators have said that we have lost 30 years out of the alternative-energy program.

Ronald Reagan even stamped out or undid what was viewed as Jimmy Carter's last legacy: a solar water-heating system Carter had installed on the White House roof. I don't know what reason, if any, Reagan gave for this action. It was not publicized at the time, if I recall. I have to think it was just thumbing his nose at Carter, liberal policies, and environmentalism.

Also on the subject of Republicans: Right now they are opposing legislation in the Senate that would reform the financial system. During the years of laissez-faire, some of the reforms of the post-Depression era—such as the Glass-Stiegel Act, which separated banking from investment business--were repealed. That was a cause of the recent economic mess. (I think some of this occurred, in fact, under Clinton. Any reader, please correct me if I am wrong here.)

The Republican approach clearly is, "If the Democrats want it, we're going to oppose it." That's called obstructionism. In fact they are filibustering, which is nothing more nor less than an obstructing tactic.

But there is lots of evidence that the people want these reforms. The Republicans in Congress surely are professional politicians; we will see if they are astute politicians as well. To oppose the will of the people should result in their being voted out of office. That message probably is just now starting to penetrate their osseous skulls.

Note added April 29: The news on the oil spill continues to get worse. Yesterday they said it is much worse than originally estimated. Today they said that 210,000 gallons of oil are leaking into the Gulf every day. This promises to be one of the worst environmental disasters ever.

Copyright © 2010 by Richard Stein