Americans want Obama to model himself after Reagan

[Kulindahr]

Re: Americans want Obama to model himself after Re

Henry, I don't know if you remember the early 80s, but I do--it was difficult to get credit. Building credit, unless the borrower had a co-signer on a loan, took two or three years of hard work. One had to have no bounced checks for a year, which begat a Check Guarantee Card; no bounced checks for another year resulted in a puny $200 department store card; a year of borrowing and paying off this credit card finally resulted in that hard-earned VISA.

That all sounds familiar.
My first "credit" was with an office supply store where the manager knew I shopped regularly, so he knew that I'd pay for what I got, since I already was. After nearly a year of that, I managed to wheedle a gas card, which I managed because I had an expense account for most of my gas, and also an account at a hardware store, where the manager was a friend of the manager of the office supply store, and on the strength of the letter from the office supply guy followed his example.
The two store accounts showed I could be counted on to pay for ordinary stuff, the gas card showed that I could be counted on to pay on an account where I could spend in numerous locations.
On an internship I got a loan for a car, on the foundation of those three accounts and due to my pastor passing on an invitation to a special sale, with his commendation written on it.
I used my checking account to pay the gas card and the car; the others I paid in person, so I could get personal recommendations. Once I'd gotten ahead on car payments so it was plain I'd pay that off ahead of schedule, I applied for, and after a phone interview got, a Sears card with a whopping $200 limit, then a Penny's card mostly because they didn't want me shopping solely at their competitor Sears. When I did pay off the car two or three months early, I finally got that VISA card.

A few short years later, they were sending unsolicited credit cards in the mail—an action reflecting mindset that gradually fueled the deregulation of the mortgage markets, which we all know caused this whole mess.

Three years after that I got an unsolicited Mastercard invitation, offered to all graduates of the school I was at who had good credit records. I said, "Huh" and turned it down. But shortly after, I got a pre-approved VISA card, with no reference to my record or anything... at which point I called the Better Business folks to find out if the deal was legit.

Apropos deficit spending, I want you to keep in mind that I respect the old-guard Republican thinking that "if we don't have it, we don't spend it". Neocon-ism brought about the "borrow and spend" mentality, even in peacetime and good economic times, which has resulted in the many trillion$$ debt we have today. (I think it imprudent to rack up deficits during times of economic bliss.)

With all of this in mind, I cannot say that I respect Ronald Reagan, a neoconservative.

Reagan at least had a good reason for his deficit spending: he was playing poker with the Soviets, forcing them to try to keep up with our military spending and research, tipping their clanking economy over the edge. Of course, the pokers such as Kennedy and Byrd tacked on everything they could dream up, making it worse, and the sense of frugality out of which Reagan expected the FedGov to return to sensible spending patterns was washed away as neocons got the wrong lesson out of it all.

That situation has off and on reminded me of what happened to poor Aristotle, a man who did his best to observe and investigate, but whose "Aristotelian" followers got the wrong idea and enshrined him as some sort of oracle (which in time led to the Galileo fiasco!). It just shows that people don't always take the lesson you mean, but the one they want.

 

[Kulindahr]

Re: Americans want Obama to model himself after Re

The Reagan "Revolution," led by a Republican WWII draft-dodger, no less!

Do you think that because you repeat your lie, people will believe it?
Reagan joined up voluntarily, he didn't wait for any draft.

 

[Kulindahr]

Re: Americans want Obama to model himself after Re

An aside: you are no Republican! Get thee to a nunnery.

He's no libertarian, either; libertarians don't countenance spending what you don't have.

 

[Kulindahr]

Re: Americans want Obama to model himself after Re

Here is an interesting take on the so-called American Savings Rate:

http://online.barrons.com/public/ar...042-0qEsa_ovTRGHgAr3SGfNydoDQlk_20070602.html

Excerpt:

Uh-huh.

I'd have to say, given experience since then, that Barron's is barking up a tree, because what it was calling savings has shown how quickly it can evaporate -- so the government's definition stands, not their innovative one.
Savings means just that: it's saved. It isn't risked or hazarded, it isn't in something that could drop from $40 a share to $1 in a month, it's kept in a way that means a dollar now will not be less than a dollar a year from now.

Since Reagan is at issue here, he didn't do anything good for the savings rate, since his "tax reforms" tossed in interest off all accounts, whether savings, interest-checking, CD, money market, or anything else. When your earned interest is already below the inflation rate, what's the point of saving when what you do earn that might help keep up with inflation is taxed?

 

[Kurn]

Re: Americans want Obama to model himself after Re

We shouldn't be too hard on the OP. Like so many pseudo-conservatives, he hasn't learned to understand the Preamble to the Constitution.

 

[Kulindahr]

Re: Americans want Obama to model himself after Re

Kulin, while the first part of your post has some plausibility, the second doesn't ring true to me at all. I lived with post-Depression people throughout my whole childhood, and put quite simply, they just didn't spend what they didn't have. (The few that are still alive still don't spend what they don't have! How we should have listened to the wisdom of our elders.)

It was not until the 80s that a palpable change in mindset was felt in the wind. What was considered a normal, middle-class size house kept getting bigger and bigger, while the ceilings reached taller and taller--and then we got MegaMansions. This change in the way our houses looked could easily serve as an analogy to our attitude towards money....

I base these comments on direct experience, and of course cannot offer you any proof.

Hey, I said it was stretching!

I do think the genesis of it is back there, though, when the dream was changed from liberty to [STRIKE]larceny[/STRIKE] lucre.
It just took a while for that to simmer through to action other than leftist/governmental.

It is bizarre to me, though, that a Republican would take that Democrat redefinition of the dream -- but not so bizarre that, having done so, it would result in greed, greed, greed, especially after the "ME generation".

When at OSU, a professor plotted the value of an "affordable" house in constant dollars. I remember the steady climb in the sixties and seventies as prosperity made itself felt in a desire for more square footage, then the sudden rise in the early 80s... and then in the 90s, when government started deciding what a proper house should be, doubling and doubling again. Around the university, in a space of ten years the price of what the city planing people considered "affordable" housing went from just under $100k, to over $200k, and on toward $300k.

 

[Kulindahr]

Re: Americans want Obama to model himself after Re

We shouldn't be too hard on the OP. Like so many pseudo-conservatives, he hasn't learned to understand the Preamble to the Constitution.

Um... how so? I know the way in which many, many liberals misunderstand it, but how for these pseudo-conservatives?

 

[Kurn]

Re: Americans want Obama to model himself after Re

We have herds of scholars debating the meaning of the Constitution when it's right there for whatever meaning the Democracy decides to give it.
What a terrifying thought, prima facie.
It might not be a meaning I agree with.

But we have a Debating Society at the heart of our Government, the Legislative Branch, entitled Congress by the Constitution. They have been criticized severely over the years but, ...part of the problem that the word "Congress" evokes stems from the Democracy's lack of intellectual unity and progressiveness. And our lack of taking advantage of the simplicity and elegance of the Constitution as a machine for efficient, effective, rational and humane politics and political economy.

The Republicans tell us that laissez faire will grow the economy. Profit-motive and free enterprise equals General Welfare.
But anyone who works on cars or anything else that's complicated knows that relying on simplicity is unwise.
With regard to Political Economy, the wise course is not the Free Enterprise model endorsed by Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics. Emphatically, it is not relying purely upon such ideas.

Neither is it the Commissar System of Regulated Economy that is the wisest course, to be sure. [Why? Because it's b o r i n g.]

The middle course, the American course, is to reserve certain functions for efficient public enterprise.
We the People should insure that everyone is housed, and has access to health care. As a matter of "entitlement"? No, as a matter of providing for those things that the Preamble lays out. Welfare, common defense, all the rest are dependent upon how We the People deal with Reality.

And Reality is YOU, Kuli, and everyone else!

Read the Preamble, excluding ideological presuppositions. It's a marvelous paragraph that invites the Democracy to exclude ideological whispers in favor of attending to the Republic's practical needs.

I could do without a lot of those practical needs as could yourself.
But our historical choices present us with an irrevocable demand for a well-educated professional class.
We don't want dummies minding the nuclear arsenal. Right??? Just for starters.

 

[Kulindahr]

Re: Americans want Obama to model himself after Re

We the People should insure that everyone is housed, and has access to health care. As a matter of "entitlement"? No, as a matter of providing for those things that the Preamble lays out. Welfare, common defense, all the rest are dependent upon how We the People deal with Reality.

Read the Preamble, excluding ideological presuppositions. It's a marvelous paragraph that invites the Democracy to exclude ideological whispers in favor of attending to the Republic's practical needs.

The Preamble is not authoritive; that is, it doesn't authorize anything. It merely states what the body of the Constitution is meant to do -- which means that whatever providing for the common welfare is to be done, is to be done in the ways which the body describes and authorizes, and in none other -- because limiting government to those explicit functions and no others is what provides for the common good.


So what the Preamble invites is applicable to both Democrats and Republicans: stop ramming things the Constitution doesn't explicitly authorize into law, and get back to the purpose of keeping government limited in scope and authority, which is to say, get back to providing for the common good.

What it means is, "What follows is how to provide for the common good; don't go off inventing other stuff".

That's totally apart from ideological presuppositions; it's from what a preamble is: something that explains what the body is for, not something that adds to the body.

To borrow your words, it's saying that the Republics practical needs are to be met by doing no more than the Constitution's body explicitly says the government can do, despite what one's ideology may suggest.

That means no interference with the economy, except to keep the states from fighting, no interference with churches, except to keep them from running the government or the government from running them, no -- well, no to lots of things we've already done.

Under the Constitution, the way to have done those things would have been to amend it -- not to twist its words to mean something else.

 

[Kurn]

Re: Americans want Obama to model himself after Re

When you say that the Preamble isn't authoritative you dis-authorize yourself, both singularly and as part of an electoral plurality.

How do we do anything? The basis of all contracts is the ground of Good Will, without which there is no valid contract. Inasmuch as we think, speak and act with Good Will towards fellow citizens we can improve and improve more wisely with the better will that we commit to.

The Preamble is considerably more authoritative than your rule of the Razor. That rule is good in some contexts. But not in all.

And anyway...among the enumerated Powers of Congress is that of "promoting the General Welfare."

 

[HenryReardon]

Re: Americans want Obama to model himself after Re

While admittedly my forthcoming comments are off the subject, I must say that I have never completely understood how Americans take the credit for the breakup of the Soviet Union.

I am a close confident with a former resident of the Soviet Union, and I'm here to tell you that the breakup had nothing to do with Reagan.
It baffles me that Americans think Reagan had anything to do with it, but we Americans seem to take the credit for everything.

.

Gorbachev, in one of his books, gave Reagan full marks for helping defeat the Soviets.

 

[HenryReardon]

Re: Americans want Obama to model himself after Re

While admittedly my forthcoming comments are off the subject, I must say that I have never completely understood how Americans take the credit for the breakup of the Soviet Union.

I am a close confident with a former resident of the Soviet Union, and I'm here to tell you that the breakup had nothing to do with Reagan. It was more a rebellion against perceived political repression in the Soviet Bloc—and it all started with events that unfolded in Hungary and East Germany. I can delineate the unravelling for you step-by-step, Kulin. (I want to let you know that today there is deep regret over the turn of events in many quarters of the Soviet Bloc; they were politically repressed, but some of the refugees to the US are now facing complete homelessness, an impossibility under Communism.)

It baffles me that Americans think Reagan had anything to do with it, but we Americans seem to take the credit for everything.

I reiterate that there seems little about the Reagan administration to admire, and the entire raison d'etre of the OP's thread seems to baffle those of us who have a lot of knowledge on the matter.

Here is an intersting take for you:

http://wais.stanford.edu/History/history_ussrandreagan.htm

 

[Kulindahr]

Re: Americans want Obama to model himself after Re

When you say that the Preamble isn't authoritative you dis-authorize yourself, both singularly and as part of an electoral plurality.

How do we do anything? The basis of all contracts is the ground of Good Will, without which there is no valid contract. Inasmuch as we think, speak and act with Good Will towards fellow citizens we can improve and improve more wisely with the better will that we commit to.

The Preamble is considerably more authoritative than your rule of the Razor. That rule is good in some contexts. But not in all.

And anyway...among the enumerated Powers of Congress is that of "promoting the General Welfare."

The Preamble is not authoritive at all; it bestows no authority to do anything -- all it does is describe the purpose of what follows.

"Promoting the general welfare" is not an enumerated power -- that's a falsehood invented by the exact sort of people the Founders were trying to keep out of government. Here's the real deal:

For far too long, Congress has been violating the Constitution by passing legislation that gives them powers that were never authorized by the Constitution. In every case, those powers represent rights that were intended to be reserved to the states and to the people.

How has Congress committed these grievous violations and gotten away with it? By claiming that “to provide for the common defense and general welfare” is an enumerated power granted to Congress under Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution. It is not. It is a general statement describing the section content and justifying the need to levy taxes.

“The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;”

If “[to] provide for the general welfare” were intended to be an enumerated power, just that one statement alone would render the rest of the article unnecessary. It would allow Congress to do whatever it wanted, so long as it could be explained as being for the general welfare of the country. The framers’ intent in writing the Constitution was to limit the power of government, not to grant it unlimited power.

The belief by some - that providing for the general welfare is an enumerated power - goes against everything the framers of the Constitution intended. It would completely undermine the foundation of limited government and the intent of the framers to retain as much power as possible to the states and to the people.

Don't believe that? Then try the words of the man called "the father of the Constitution":

“Some, who have not denied the necessity of the power of taxation, have grounded a very fierce attack against the Constitution, on the language in which it is defined. It has been urged and echoed, that the power ‘to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States,’ amounts to an unlimited commission to exercise every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the common defense or general welfare. No stronger proof could be given of the distress under which these writers labor for objections, than their stooping to such a misconstruction. Had no other enumeration or definition of the powers of the Congress been found in the Constitution, than the general expressions just cited, the authors of the objection might have had some color for it; though it would have been difficult to find a reason for so awkward a form of describing an authority to legislate in all possible cases. A power to destroy the freedom of the press, the trial by jury, or even to regulate the course of descents, or the forms of conveyances, must be very singularly expressed by the terms ‘to raise money for the general welfare.’”

(from the Federalist Papers, #41)

Take note especially that Madison directly negates, in his words at the end, one entire current department of the federal government.

 

[Kulindahr]

Re: Americans want Obama to model himself after Re

Gorbachev, in one of his books, gave Reagan full marks for helping defeat the Soviets.

And he wasn't alone.
He didn't have to tell lies in order to make his point, unlike a certain person here.

 

[Kulindahr]

Re: Americans want Obama to model himself after Re

Reagan was a swish. Her lamentations of "tear down this wall!" had all the authenticity as his "military service." Big Lady.

Alfie, the day you post a copy of your enlistment papers, to match Reagan's enlistment, will be the day you gain even a shred of credibility on this.

Reagan voluntarily enlisted -- that can be found in every biography except maybe one you wrote. He obeyed orders and performed the duties to which he was assigned.
He wasn't at all like today's Democrats, whose response to defending the country is to do absolutely nothing until there might be a draft, and then use the old chant....

You love to attack and smear and insult, Alfie, but you have no guts to go with it. Reagan was a far, far better man than you, because he volunteered to serve his country, while all you volunteer to serve is filth to any who disagree with your totalitarian vision of America.

Sign up, or shut up.

 

[Kulindahr]

Re: Americans want Obama to model himself after Re

Yawn yawn yawn. You're the one who likes guns, Mary. Where are YOUR ENLISTMENT PAPERS, Mr. Pink Pistol?

Ah, the tactic of the guilty: change the subject.

You're the one slandering a former president by the use of lies. By your own standards, you should either sign up or shut up.

 

[chillyboi]

Re: Americans want Obama to model himself after Re

while Reagan remains to be my favorite president, No on can walk in his shoes!!!!!

 

[chillyboi]

Re: Americans want Obama to model himself after Re

Henry, with that cite you gave us, you inadvertently opened a can of worms.

I will focus only on two things. First, the quote: ""I cannot agree with Mr. Jones that Reagan had nothing to do with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Yes, it collapsed mostly from its own weight, but his unrelenting pressure certainly had an effect, as many former Soviet officials have said. I was no fan of Reagan, but you can't just write him off, either. Mr. Jones somehow seems to overlook the obvious. Ronald Reagan was at the helm when the USSR collapsed. I have not heard people say “He won the Cold War,” nor that “he defeated the Soviet Union.”

Here's how it goes, Henry: if Reagan is able to take credit for being at the helm when the USSR collapsed, he must also take the blame for being at the helm when we racked up $4 trillion of debt—and he must take the blame for arming the radicals in Afghanistan, fueling a chain events leading up to 9/11.

Hmm. I never knew until now that the events on 9/11 was seeded in the Reagan Administration. Still another reason to disrespect his presidency...

Even giving Reagan the benefit of a doubt concerning the events of 9/11, there's no way we can ignore that he was directly responsible for the rise of the Taliban in that area.

clinton/albright caused 9/11 then bush/rice finished it off

 

[Kulindahr]

Re: Americans want Obama to model himself after Re

Of all the posters that come to mind when you say that, Alfie isn't one of them, if he was the intended target of your attack.

Yes, he was intended -- and I waited to post this until he refused once again to retract his lie about Reagan. That's just one of the ones he repeats over and over in spite of having been called on them. But truth doesn't matter to Alfie, only spinning the world the way is totalitarian views call for.

Reagan enlisted, as a private -- that's a fact. (U.S. Army Reserve History)
He was ordered to active duty and reported -- that's a fact.
His superior officers said he had a sight deficiency that precluded serving overseas -- that's a fact.
And despite Alfie's whining to the contrary, Reagan appealed but was assigned to duty as a liaison officer of the Port and Transportation Office (National Museum of the United States Air Force). At that point he was still officially part of the 323rd Cavalry, and applied for a transfer to the Army Air Force, where he was assigned to public relations.

Doubt the vision problem all you want, but Reagan voluntarily joined the military in a time of war -- something not very many Democrats can claim -- and he did so at the bottom.

 

[Kulindahr]

Re: Americans want Obama to model himself after Re

Henry, with that cite you gave us, you inadvertently opened a can of worms.

I will focus only on two things. First, the quote: ""I cannot agree with Mr. Jones that Reagan had nothing to do with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Yes, it collapsed mostly from its own weight, but his unrelenting pressure certainly had an effect, as many former Soviet officials have said. I was no fan of Reagan, but you can't just write him off, either. Mr. Jones somehow seems to overlook the obvious. Ronald Reagan was at the helm when the USSR collapsed. I have not heard people say “He won the Cold War,” nor that “he defeated the Soviet Union.”

Here's how it goes, Henry: if Reagan is able to take credit for being at the helm when the USSR collapsed, he must also take the blame for being at the helm when we racked up $4 trillion of debt—and he must take the blame for arming the radicals in Afghanistan, fueling a chain events leading up to 9/11.

Hmm. I never knew until now that the events on 9/11 was seeded in the Reagan Administration. Still another reason to disrespect his presidency...

Even giving Reagan the benefit of a doubt concerning the events of 9/11, there's no way we can ignore that he was directly responsible for the rise of the Taliban in that area.

If you want to get to details, Reagan wasn't terribly aware of the whole Afghanistan business until Charlie Wilson got things going and the Soviets got to suffering. Wilson managed to get it going as a stretch of Reagan's policy of confronting the Soviet Union everywhere possible in proxy wars -- in Afghanistan, it was the Soviets themselves we aided against, which made people nervous. But even before that, the U.S. was giving quiet aid to anti-Soviet factions, at the directive of President Jimmy Carter, who was warned that this could lead to direct Soviet intervention -- which it did. So if you want to look at seeds....

Lay it at the feet of Zbigniew Brezinski, who deliberately chose to direct the support Carter order to the most extreme mujahedin groups, with the deliberate goal of stirring up extremist Islam (or Islamic extremists) in hopes of fomenting a holy-war sort of rebellion within the Soviet Union itself. So when Reagan's people gave the go-ahead to radically increase this aid, guess where it went?

So it was a matter of Carter letting Bzrezinski pick the extremists, Reagan not bothering to ask, the CIA recruiting but not caring where the recruits went... and not only that, but to increase its stream of recruits, the CIA encouraged its "allies" to bring in recruits from anywhere they could get them -- which meant that soon Islamic extremists were pouring in from all over the Muslim world, expenses paid by the U.S. of A. With Pakistan's encouragement, they founded hundreds of "schools" to inculcate a passion for this holy war into young Muslims.

And yes, under Reagan U.S. arms were shipped directly to Osama bin Laden's force of 4,000 recruits from around the world, and more on the ground in Afghanistan -- but that's almost a footnote, because the real problem began with Carter's national security advisor deliberately choosing to foment Islamic extremism.

And when the Soviets were gone, champagne flowed -- and the U.S. insulted this whole mass of extremists that had been generated by just walking out without even a "Thank you!"



BTW, under Reagan, the national debt rose $2 trillion, and didn't quite reach $4 trillion total (National Debt Clock).