From outside the box

The republican party is so hard up for a hero, they had to invent one! When you look back at the presidents they have given us since Eisenhower, it's easy to see their dilemma. So I guess Ronald Reagan was as good a choice as any. The only problem is, spinning the truth alone cannot make a hero out of Ronald Reagan. It has taken outright lies. Lets skip over my opinion and just look at some facts about Ronald Reagan....

Reagan oversaw the largest tax increase in the history of California when he was governor. Governor Jerry Brown actually cut back the tax rate when he became governor after Reagan. As president, Reagan expanded the federal government by about 90%. The national debt tripled under his presidency. Families living below the poverty line increased by 1/3. During his terms 138 administration officials were either convicted, indicted, or had been the subject of official investigations for official misconduct and/or criminal investigations. His deregulation of the savings and loan industry cost the tax payers 500 billion dollars (this is on memory, I may be wrong about that figure) to bail it out. He made major cuts to medicaid, food stamps, aid to families with dependent children, and the school lunch program. He not only did nothing about the aids crisis, in his authorized biography he is quoted as saying, "maybe the Lord bought down this plague because illicit sex is against the ten commandments." After a major tax cut there was a long recession and unemployment hit 10%. Reagan gave us the Iran Contra affair in which his administration secretly sold arms to Iran, which at the time was considered a supporter of terrorism, to secretly raise cash for Nicaraguan Contra rebels, despite a congressional ban on support for the Latin American insurgency. Personally, I'll never forget Oliver North crying about what a great American he (Olly) was when he was questioned about his role in all of this. Reagan even invaded Granada for whatever reason. Probably a wag the dog thing because of all the internal investigating going on. He told us ketchup was a good vegetable substitute for poor kids and he also gave us the "just say no" to drugs....pure genius.

Enough of the facts, now for some opinion....I guess Reagan was at least partially responsible for the Soviet Union spending itself into economic collapse, by introducing "Star Wars" to the world although there is much evidence that The Soviets were already headed into collapse, no matter what Reagan would have did or didn't do. Reagan gave us trickle down economics, the idea being that if we make the rich richer, they will give us more jobs! The middle class shrunk under Reagan as it always does under a republican president. Reagan was a simpleton, a friend to the wealthy as well as corporate America. As with all republicans, he stood for smaller government which is always code word for "deregulate". And as with all republican presidents, government grew and the national debt escalated under Reagan.

I know the conservatives are desperate for a hero (there's even been talk about putting him on MT. Rushmore!), but still it's a little painful to hear all this glorifying about a man who in reality was a very bad president.