Berkeley CSUA MOTD:Entry 30633
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2025/07/08 [General] UID:1000 Activity:popular
7/8     

2004/6/6 [Politics/Domestic/President/Reagan] UID:30633 Activity:very high
6/5     Reagan was right about almost everything.
        http://www.andrewsullivan.com/people.php?artnum=20010204
        \_ "Thanks to the peace dividend of the post-Cold War world, and the
            free market expansion that Ronald Reagan initiated, America is now
            enjoying record surpluses."
            \_ ob you mean clinton's surplus
               \_ "The era of big government is over."  Your boy Clinton was
                  smart enough to realize that he better start parroting
                  Reagan to stay popular, political affiliations be damned.
                  \_ You make a far better case saying, "Because Reagan won
                     the Cold War, Clinton could reduce defense spending".
                     What do you think?
                     If you're going to credit Reagan / the Republicans for
                     Clinton's budget surplus, you might as well credit
                     Kerry / the Democrats for trying to get Bush bringing
                     the UN back into Iraq, and a still-functioning
                     safety net in the U.S.
                     \_ ... Wow.
        \_ 28% tax for the filthy rich instead of 70% is good? Bull. Lets
           get it back to the Carter era and maybe the rich oil/construction
           bastards could pay back what they stole from us.
           \_ What makes someone filthy rich?  At what point have you decided
              someone is making *too* much money and should not be allowed to
              have any more?  And where should that money go, exactly?  To
              people who have done nothing to improve their lot in life or
              society as a whole?  Taking money from one person to buy votes
              from another is not what democracy or this country was supposed
              to be about.  If you don't like what you're paying for oil or
              building materials, go off grid, sell power back to the rest of
              us and build your own house somewhere.  Others have done it.  I
              don't want to pay 70% taxes because you're unwilling to live up
              to the demands of your own philosophy.
              \_ Filthy rich: making money off of the misery of other human
                 beings; squeezing out more profit by slashing workers'
                 healthcare and human dignity; indulging in immoral business
                 practices but using your enormous profits to buy votes for
                 legislation to keep those practices legal.
                 \_ So where's the legal distinction between "filthy rich" and
                    someone who's just rich?  Do you believe that all people
                    who have a lot of money are evil and opportunistic and
                    should have that money taken away from them?  Or would
                    you pass tax laws for the rich based on some subjective
                    criteria of their individual merits?  How much money
                    constitutes "rich"?  What about evil opportunistic middle
                    class people who indulge in immoral business practices?
                    Do you believe it's wrong to have a lot of money,
                    however it was acquired?  I really appreciate your well
                    thought-through, differentiated political views.  -John
                    \_ Actually, John, I'm not for new laws, just the equal
                       and fair enforcement of existing labor and business
                       laws and the elimination of the numerous tax-shelters
                       and dodges that allow unscrupulous corporations to
                       avoid paying taxes and fines on crimes committed.
                       \_ This is fair enough, but your original phrasing left
                          a lot to be desired.  I am personally envious of
                          people who inherited a lot of money or have it for
                          whatever reason (no judgment about whether or not
                          they deserve it) and feel that yes, they should
                          pay more taxes than joe sixpack, but that's a far
                          cry from punitive wealth taxes (a la Swedish
                          attempts at wealth redistribution.)  -John
                       \_ That's the only question of John's you answered?  Wow.
                          \_ Well, I thought the rest of the questions
                             hinged on the assumption that I wanted new
                             laws to punish the filthy rich; since I dispelled
                             that misapprehension, it seemed pretty clear to
                             me that I didn't need to actually come out and
                             say that I have no problem with people making
                             all the money they want through fair, legal, and
                             ethical business practices.
                             \_ Except ... will you introduce a 70% tax for
                                'the rich' or 'the filthy rich?'  Reagan
                                repealed it for all the wealthy Americans,
                                while are you bitching about the criminal
                                wealthy.

        [Freeper link deleted because you are an ass who uses ip addresses
         to hide the freepness of it all]
         \_ You would've deleted it anyway.  Freeperboy only tries to hide
            his links because you always deleted them instantly when he was
            not trying to hide them.  I think the freepers are a bunch of
            idiots no different than the leftist echo chamber on soda but
            you can't hold it against him for trying to hide his links when
            being honest only got him purged (probably by you) that much
            faster.  If you left his links alone and just did the mature
            thing (ignore them), then he would post a link every other day or
            so, get no replies and eventually just go away.  You only make it
            worse by highlighting his posts through endless post/restore wars.
            You give power to something by trying to silence it.  You should
            know that long before now.
                --conservative but not a member of the freeper echo chamber
                \_ Somebody else might have deleted it, but I would have
                   let it stay.  -op
            \_ If a freeper link added any value to the link it points to,
               I could understand keeping it around.  As it stands, there's
               no reason (apart from freeper vitriol) not to simply post a
               direct link to a credible news source.  I'd feel the same way
               if someone started posting fark links.
        \_ free economy-- rich gets richer and poor gets poorer. I support
           the 70% tax.
           \_ Die communist scum die.
2025/07/08 [General] UID:1000 Activity:popular
7/8     

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Cache (7466 bytes)
www.andrewsullivan.com/people.php?artnum=20010204
Links Copyright 2001 Andrew Sullivan A Mash-Note Reagan was right about almost everything. He will turn 90 this Tuesday, but in all likelihood he will barely be aware of it. The cruelty of Alzheimer's has robbed Ronald Reagan of the capacity for clear memory. He seems, in some respects, an historical oddity now, his political and cultural presence obscured in America by the Clinton psychodrama and the Bush dynasty. But the truth is, his successors do not begin to compare either in achievement or legacy. Reagan is still, in my view, the architect of our modern world, and nowhere is this clearer than in the United States. Reagan stood for two simple but indisputably big things: the expansion of freedom at home and the extinction of tyranny abroad. When he came to office, top tax rates in the United States were in the 70 percent range. Against the odds, Reagan slashed the top rate to 28 percent and ignited an economic boom that, in some respects, is still with us. Bill Clinton nudged taxes up a little, but to nowhere near the levels of the Carter's America, and all signs now point to a reduction this year back to Reagan levels. But unlike George W Bush, and certainly unlike the hopelessly confused Michael Portillo, Reagan understood what tax cuts were about. Back in 1976, he made the case in one of his innumerable radio addresses, the transcripts of which have just been released by the Free Press in a mammoth 500 page tome. Here's the relevant passage (in his idiosyncratic style), just excerpted in the Weekly Standard: "Our system freed the individual genius of man. Released him to fly as high & as far as his own talent & energy would take him. If something seems too high-priced we buy something else. Thus resources are steered toward those things the people want most at the price they are willing to pay. It may not be a perfect system but it's better than any other that's ever been tried." Some people believe he was a moron, incapable of argument or intellectual engagement. A brief perusal through these dozens of talks will put the lie to that. He wrote constantly, and grappled directly and bravely with the main issues of his day. He was a believer in the press and the media as a way to communicate as powerfully as possible ideas that could change lives. In this sense, he was one of the most intellectual presidents in history. He took great pain with words, and spent a lifetime learning how to craft them. And if he was right about taxation and the role of government, he was also right about the other great question of his day: the Soviet Union. "Isn't that what a farmer has with a turkey until Thanksgiving?" I will never forget the moment I heard his "evil empire" speech. It was broadcast on Radio Four in snippets, festooned with sceptical British commentary about this inflammatory and dangerous new president, this cowboy who knew nothing about geo-politics or the complexities of late-Communism. But for all the criticism, what came through to my teenage brain was an actual truth. But who in a position of power said so when it mattered? He alone saw that communism was destined to be put on the "ash-heap of history," as he told the House of Commons. His achievement in this respect was so monumental that a whole generation of former peaceniks now take it for granted. And yet both now thoughtlessly enjoy the soft and easy fruits of a greater man's courage. The critics harp on the enormous deficits of the Reagan era, and see them as an indictment of all he stood for. But the truth is, federal revenues boomed on Reagan's watch. Tax cuts didn't destroy public finances they helped them. What created the deficits was an unprecedented increase in defence spending the bargaining chip that eventually forced the Soviets to surrender. And you could easily argue that this was a price worth paying for an early end to an extremely expensive conflict. Thanks to the peace dividend of the post-Cold War world, and the free market expansion that Ronald Reagan initiated, America is now enjoying record surpluses. Even the straggling defenders of perestroika now concede that Reagan's intransigence and skill speeded the collapse of the Soviet empire. The deficits, from the standpoint of history, were therefore a fiscal bargain. And on most of the current pressing issues, Reaganism still has plenty of credibility. The main cloud on the fiscal horizon the long-term insolvency of the government-run pension system stems from a program Reagan opposed. The partial privatization of the program that George W Bush is now contemplating is straight out of the Reagan hand-book. The most significant change in American social policy in the 1990s the end of the federal welfare entitlement was also presaged by Reagan. In the early 1970s, when Reagan was governor of California, the question of whether to federalize that entitlement was in front of the National Governors' Association. The governors voted to have Washington guarantee the benefit 49 - 1 Guess who the hold-out was. It took thirty years and Bill Clinton to finally recognize the validity of Reagan's point. And Reagan's unlikeliest dream - nuclear missile defence - is also still with us. Lampooned at the time as "Star Wars," it will soon regain the preeminence it deserves in America's military defence, as Donald Rumsfeld aggressively moves it forward. Clinton was a group-hugger, a man in command of every detail of government, a sex-addict, even to being fellated by a staffer in the White House itself, obsessed with the press, fixated on spin, devoted to polls. 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A natural populist, Reagan spent hours as president hand-writing letters to friends and often obscure pen-pals from around the country he had befriended some time in the past, never dreaming for a second that he was too important to ignore such little tasks of courtesy. He was a democrat to his fingertips who didn't need a 'common touch' because he was so effortlessly a common man himself. It takes time to recognize greatness and it sometimes appears in the oddest of forms. A B-actor from Hollywood, a cold fish, a man unknown even to his own children at times, a hack-radio announcer for General Electric, and easily the finest president of the last fifty years. For Americans know in their hearts that this unlikely man understood the deepest meaning of their country in a way no-one else has done for a generation. He gave them purpose again, and in return they still give him love.