Ronald Reagan
About
Ronald Reagan was the 40th president of the United States.
|
This page is a seed article. You can help Issuepedia water it – contact me to offer suggestions or additional sources! (Anything tossed in the tip jar also helps
^.^) |
Many people see his administration as being the beginning of the latter-day neoconservative takeover of the US government which segued smoothly into George H.W. Bush's presidency, was interrupted only slightly (with much empty scandal stirred up by unhappy neocons hoping to knock the reins of power back into the right hands) by the presidency of Bill Clinton, and subsequently rekindled during the evangelistic, opaque administration of George W. Bush.
Acts
- signed the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982, resulting in the largest peacetime tax increase in American history – while also providing deep tax cuts for the wealthy
- 1982: cut $41.1b from the federal budget for food stamps, welfare, housing aid, and unemployment insurance
- coined the highly misleading term "welfare queen"
- increased military spending by $7.2b
- 1980: spent $44.6m renovating the White House
- promoted investment in giant for-profit HMOs, undercutting nonprofit healthcare
- slashed the HUD budget by 57% over 8 years
- invaded the sovereign nation of Grenada to install a US-friendly government
- deregulated major industries including banking and transportation, encouraging corporate mergers which eventually led to the 2008 financial meltdown, among other problems
- granted amnesty to nearly 3 million undocumented immigrants
- tried to undo the denial of federal tax exemptions for private colleges that discriminate against African Americans (i.e. tried to allow them to have racist policies while also receiving federal money)
- falsely stated that "trees cause more pollution than automobiles do"
- was an anti-communist FBI snitch when he belonged to the Screen Actors Guild
- cut funding to the National Endowment for the Arts by 50% (allowing for inflation)
- signed the Therapeutic Abortion Bill in California in 1967, 6 years before Roe v Wade
- tripled the national debt
- approved the Iran-Contra scandal (an arms-for-hostages deal -- "negotiating with terrorists" -- in which the US illegally sold weapons to Iran in return for freeing American hostages, and then used the proceeds to fund the right-wing Contras in Nicaragua)
- cut and run from Lebanon
- headed an administration of which 138 members were convicted, indicted, or investigated for criminal activity during his tenure
Quotes About
The kindest thing you can say about Reagan is he may not have known what the policies of his administration were, but I'll pretend he did. The Reagan years was a period of devastation and disaster in El Salvador. Maybe seventy-thousand people were slaughtered. The decade began with the assassination of the archbishop. It ended, rather symbolically, with the brutal murder of six leading Latin American intellectuals, Jesuit priests, by an elite battalion, trained, armed, run by the U.S., which had a huge, bloody trail of murders and massacres behind it. The priests are also shown in the picture along with their housekeeper and her daughter, who were also murdered by the same elite battalion, and in between tens of thousands of the usual victims. That was El Salvador. And, as I say, people south of the border know what it is; people north of the border haven't a clue.
Links
Reference
Commentary & Sources
- Cowboys and Idiots - The Reagan Years
- The Mis-Communicator
- 2015-10-17 List of Reagan administration convictions.
News
Notes
Many of the items in "Acts" were first found in a meme posted on Google+ (no longer available).