Ironically, he is one of the worst Presidents we ever had.

How ironic that there are all these people who worship this man, who idolize his askew ideology and short of putting him on an altar and lighting candles to him he has become the icon and standard bearer of Republican-Teahadist political ideas…yet, if he were in our midst today the Republicans would deem him “too liberal” a true RINO.

I never liked the man even from the very first day I met him back in 1965 when he was running for governor of California and I was working for Mariani Tailors on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills where he got his suits made. I can’t forget Mrs. Mariani calling me to come to the sidewalk and meet “THE NEXT PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES”

Well, if you read my blog you know that I have a formula that has served me well over the years and it was taught to me by my grandfather the patriarch Valiente. He said: “son, when you meet someone, stretch out your hand, grab the person’s hand you are greeting, then bring your other hand to encapsulate the handshake…look at the person in the eyes and try to determine what you feel. Invariably, if they are honest and a good person, they will also be looking at you straight in the eye…but if they don’t it is because they either have something to hide, they are not too thrilled about meeting you or you are too insignificant for them to bother” And Ronald Reagan looked down to the sidewalk and never made eye contact.

I saw him on at least half a dozen more occasions at the tailor shop but never again did we even exchange hellos. When he became governor I was surprised but not as surprised as I was when he became President…no, not with all those radical, right wing ideas and a very lousy history as California governor.

Here is a very good post that Jerry Critter, one blogger I admire tremendously on the occasion of Ronald Reagan’s 100^th birthday posted on CRITTERS CRAP:

“Happy Birthday, Ronnie! You were a crappy Governor and you were a crappy President...but you are the best the republicans have.

That's right. Sarah Palin is trying to cast herself as Reagan. Republicans continually point to Reagan as a great President. We hear, from republicans, that Reaganomics was the greatest thing for our economy since sliced bread.

Well, let's take a little closer look at Reagan and how the economy did under him. There is a great post over at Angry Bear from which I am going to pull some facts and figures. I will give a little detail, but they have more.

I said that Reagan is the best they have. It's true. He leads the republicans when you look at the annualized growth in GDP per capita. He grew the economy better than all other republicans since 1929, that's in the last 80 years. Way to go, Ronnie.

Notice I did not say he was the best President in growing the economy in the last 80 years. Notice that I did not say he was the second best, nor the third best. Why, I didn't even say he was the fourth best. Why? Because he wasn't!

Ronald Reagan was number 5. There are four Democrats ahead of him.
FDR
LBJ
JFK
Clinton.

Oh, and who is number 6? Carter. So Reagan is number 5 out of the top six as shown in the figure below.

Note that FDR is shown twice. That's because they separated out the war years. FDR1 goes to 1940. If you look at the last two bars, it is obvious that the Democrats have out-performed the republicans by a significant amount -- by several times the republican average.

There is one other point I would like to make. When faced with this data, republicans often say that GDP is not a good measure because it includes government spending. They say the Democrats are "tax and spend", so big government spending distorts GDP. Well, let's look at the definition of GDP.

GDP = Private Consumption + Private Investment + Gov't Consumption & Investment + Net Exports

OK, there's government spending -- Gov't Consumption & Investment

To quote from the article:

if the government borrows a lot and spends what it borrows, it will boost GDP, and that in turn causes real GDP per capita growth to increase. And that is precisely what happened under Reagan

In fact, here is a figure.

Reagan's right up there with Bush Sr as a leader in growing the debt as a percent of GDP. In fact, Reagan just about tripled the debt going from about 1 Trillion dollars to about 3 Trillion dollars. So, if you remove the governement portion of Reagan's GDP, he will look even worse. A lot of his growth came from government spending.

If you are interested, there are some other interesting facts about Reagan in the article, like

• He's number 4 in annualized growth in real net disposable income -- behind 3 democrats
• He leads everyone in the transfer of local and state spending to the federal government. I call that growing the federal government.

This man is who the republicans hold up as their standard bearer in these tough economic times. Not a second rate president. Not a third rate president. Not a fourth rate president. NO!

A FIFTH RATE PRESIDENT!

Happy Birthday, Ronnie! You are the best the republicans have!”

SOURCE: http://critterscrap.blogspot.com/

Even back then I was saying that ‘TRICKLE DOWN ECONOMICS” doesn’t work, never will.

But if it only was in the field of economics we could possibly manage a recession or two and then try to equalize the redistribution of wealth. But Reagan stabbed deeply into the heart of America by sowing the seeds of division and hatred…he empowered all these fucking Evangelical-Fundamentalist making them believe that America needs a theocracy.

No, he didn’t stop there either…the President was so hell bent on changing the culture to one more of his liking and one of the super-conservative right wing that he unleashed a culture war that went side by side with the class war…it is still going on today, stronger than ever and it is threatening the very existence of this fine and noble experiment we call DEMOCRACY.

Reagan also went after labor unions Reagan's war on labor as US president began when he fired 13,000 striking air traffic controllers and destroyed their union. Unions in America have been on the decline ever since and that suits the big corporations just fine. Reagan did other awful things like stopping the Equal Rights Amendment for Women, the insensitive and ignorant stance against the Aids epidemic that was surging; Reagan also left the country with 3 trillion dollars in debt while he bragged of being fiscally conservative.

Other than that, there is always the Reagan legacy that government can’t do anything right, it is too big, government is the problem yada-yada-yada. And we have seen what that has created…a population that distrusts government and even a fringe element that is hell bent on destroying it.

I am sorry, the final results are such that I and millions of other Americans are not very happy with…as a matter of fact I am not thrilled about living under a theocratic plutocracy…If Republican-Teahadists have their way America is not going to be a place many people would like to live in.

We then had a period of a pendulum swing from center to right…never to the left and it culminated in the election of the most incompetent, inarticulate and arrogant President we have ever had: George W. Bush. President Bush proceeded to cut taxes even more and got our country involved in two stupid wars after 9-11 when he should have been trying to get Osama bin Laden in the first place. His economic policies were the nail on the economic coffin…we all saw what happened and we should never forget nor should we ever allow the Republicans not to take ownership of the mess Bush and his cronies made.

I like to have you read this post that Jerry Critter did Links to this post onTuesday, May 10, 2011

“What 30 Years of Reaganomics Has Done For You

In general, no matter what we do, the economy continues to grow. We have our recessions, but over the long term, the economy, as measured by GDP, continues to increase as shown in the figure below.

From here.

It shows about a 2.1% annual growth over the last 60 years. Republicans and Democrats have both contributed to this growth, one better than the other at times, but in general it just keeps growing with a few bumps along the way.

Since we all contribute to the growth, I think we all should benefit from the growth. From 1950 to 1980, the GDP roughly doubled. The next figure shows how much our income grew during this period.

Not too bad. Income growth is about the same as GDP growth. The people in the 99 to 99.99 income percentile didn't do as well as the others, but their income is pretty high anyway so they probably did not suffer too much.

Then along came Reagan. He essentially said, taxes are too high. It is stifling the economy and stealing money away from those who create jobs and wealth. We need to cut taxes and shrink government. Get it out of peoples' way.

Well, we already know what happened to the economy when he did that. It kept plodding along with about a 2.1% annual growth. At least he didn't hurt it, but he didn't help it much either. Over the next 28 years, 1980 to 2008, the GDP roughly doubled again...but what happened to incomes? Well, let's take a look. The next figure adds the time period 1980 to 2008 to the figure above.

WOW!!!

Talk about INCOME REDISTRIBUTION!!!

The lower 90% of all Americans saw their income increase an average of 1%. ONE FUCKING PERCENT! Even the people in the 90 - 95 percentile and the 95 to 99 percentile did worse from 1980 to 2008 than they did between 1950 and 1980. Let me say that again. 99 PERCENT OF THE PEOPLE SAW THEIR INCOME INCREASE MORE BETWEEN 1950 AND 1980 THAN IT DID BETWEEN 1980 AND 2008.

Who made all the money from the increase in the economy? Remember, the economy continued to grow at an average of 2.1% per year. Why, it was the top 1 percent, the one percent that the Republicans cater to. In fact, the top 0.01 percent saw their income increase 403%.

So, let's recap. 99 percent of the people saw their income increase significantly less between 1980 and 2008 than they did between 1950 and 1980 thanks to republican economic policies started by Reagan. The bottom 90% of people saw their income increase by only ONE PERCENT, while the top ONE HUNDREDTH OF ONE PERCENT saw their income increase 403 percent. That is a 40,300 percent greater increase than the bottom 90% of the people.

40,200 percent greater increase than the bottom 90% of the people

And the republicans want to give them more tax cuts. Are they out of their fucking minds???”