The Worst Ever President

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

REAGAN was among, perhaps the worst U.S. President in U.S HISTORY.

Reagan blew a chance for nuclear disarmament when Gorby put it on the table. Reagan blinked, wimped out, feared he would lose his prototypical 'neocon' support.

At the Reykjavik summit meeting Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev met to discuss an issue for which a solution remains essential to the future of mankind. Their 'meeting' spanned the dates --October 11-12, 1986 --about which it is said that the two leaders very nearly reached agreement on the total elimination of nuclear weapons and production of additional weapons. Nearly! In this case, 'nearly' is not partial success; it is utter failure.

As a symbol and 'example', Reykjavik proved that nuclear disarmament is attainable only when political leaders have both the courage and the 'freedom' to decide and act positively. It is clear in retrospect that Ronald Reagan was not his own man. He was indebted to handlers, financiers, a 'ruling elite' and the alliance forged with the Military-Industrial complex.

U.S. Secretary of State George Schultz recalled a situation --a situation in which a peace might have been achieved. Alas, it was not! Why? We must understand the failure of Rekjavik if any success is to be achieved in time to avert a nuclear accident, a nuclear war, a global holocaust.

What happened? What went wrong? Why was not the total elimination of nuclear weapons achieved? It was Reagan who blinked. Gorbachev is quoted as having said that he really didn't know what else he could have done. Everything had been put on the table.

The GOPs utterly failed trickle down economics resulted in a two year long depression --the longest, biggest, deepest since Herbert Hoover'

Reagan's infamous tax cut of 1982 must be credited with having turned America into a banana republic, a nation of 'haves' and 'have-nots'. This single act robbed millions of financial and class status, triggering a trend that threatens U.S. economic stability today. Now --as a result of GOP tax cuts benefiting only the very rich --just one percent of the total U.S. population owns more than about 95 percent of the rest of us combined. This incredibly steep curve graphed over time from the date of the tax cuts to the present are incredibly and increasingly steep as wealth flows upward. The plight of the very poor has only gotten worse since. The 'lower middle' may no longer exist, having slipped off into poverty.

Reagan is second to DEAD LAST in job creation

The result is a form of corporate serfdom if not slavery.

The wealthy have always used many methods to accumulate wealth, but it was not until the mid-1970s that these methods coalesced into a superbly organized, cohesive and efficient machine. After 1975, it became greater than the sum of its parts, a smooth flowing organization of advocacy groups, lobbyists, think tanks, conservative foundations, and PR firms that hurtled the richest 1 percent into the stratosphere.

--Steve Kangas, The Origins of the Overclass

The Bush administration will be forever associated with a "ruling overclass" --oligarchs who were the sole beneficiaries of Ronald Reagan's infamous tax cut of 1982 and, later, several equally inequitable tax cuts during the Bush regime. The oligarchs, heavily invested in the Military-Industrial Complex, likewise benefited from Bush's military adventures in the Middle East. GOP tax cuts are typically called "trickle down" theory. Reagan's Budget Director David Stockman called the theory "a Trojan horse" advocated by a 'noisy faction of Republicans'.

Since Ronald Reagan's infamous tax cut of 1982, "conservatives" myopically cite a mythical "Reagan Recovery" as proof of "Reaganomics", otherwise called supply-side economics. The right wing argument is simplistic and fallacious. It must be pointed out that following the tax cut, the nation plunged into recession, the worst since Herbert Hoover's Great Depression of 1929. Nevertheless, conservatives will persist in citing a three percent growth rate following two years of severe recession as proof that "wealth trickles down". This assertion fails to address key questions.

Who benefited from the recovery?

At some 3 percent how long did it take for the nation to regain lost ground?

Did Reagan's tax cuts bring about more growth than would have normally occurred? The Carvellian quick response: NO!

The record shows that between 1979 and 1989 the growth rate was 3% --the same as the growth rate between 1973 and 1979! There was, then, no improvement with "voodoo economics" than without it. There was no "Reagan recovery"! Wealth did not trickle down; it flowed upward at alarming rates. It is, in fact, an increasingly steep curve that can be, has been plotted. The 'slope' of this curve at any given point, gives you the rate at which the rich get richer, the poor even poorer at that very moment.

The dubious honor of being dead last in almost every economic category belongs to Bush Sr, the wannabe who was photographed hanging around the front entrance to the Texas School Book Depository just prior to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. What interest had a Texas 'oil man' in the TSBD? At the time Bush was, in fact, the 'owner' of an upstart company called Zapata whom few had ever heard of and about which very little is known even now.

Job Growth Per Year Under Most Recent Presidents8

Johnson 3.8%
Carter 3.1
Clinton 2.4
Kennedy 2.3
Nixon 2.3
Reagan 2.1
Bush 0.6

Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Employment Statistics Survey

The economic story is this: every Democratic President has presided over greater GDP growth and job growth than any GOP 'president' since World War II. His depression of some two years began with the infamous tax cut of 1982. Curves plotted in the wake of this cynical move literally graphs the transfer of wealth from from a relative egalitarian state to one in which only the upper quintile benefited. The trend reverse briefly during Clinton's second term only to resume with the stolen election, the rise of Bush Jr. At present, just one percent of the nation owns more than the rest of us combined.

Reagan should have been tried for TREASON!

Read the Final Report of IRAN-CONTRA prosecutor, L. Walsh.

The underlying facts of Iran/contra are that, regardless of criminality, President Reagan, the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, and the director of central intelligence and their necessary assistants committed themselves, however reluctantly, to two programs contrary to congressional policy and contrary to national policy. They skirted the law, some of them broke the law, and almost all of them tried to cover up the President's willful activities.

...

The Iran/contra investigation will not end the kind of abuse of power that it addressed any more than the Watergate investigation did. The criminality in both affairs did not arise primarily out of ordinary venality or greed, although some of those charged were driven by both. Instead, the crimes committed in Iran/contra were motivated by the desire of persons in high office to pursue controversial policies and goals even when the pursuit of those policies and goals was inhibited or restricted by executive orders, statutes or the constitutional system of checks and balances.

The tone in Iran/contra was set by President Reagan. He directed that the contras be supported, despite a ban on contra aid imposed on him by Congress. And he was willing to trade arms to Iran for the release of Americans held hostage in the Middle East, even if doing so was contrary to the nation's stated policy and possibly in violation of the law.

--Part XI, Concluding Observations, FINAL REPORT OF THE INDEPENDENT COUNSEL FOR IRAN/CONTRA MATTERS Volume I: Investigations and Prosecutions, Lawrence E. Walsh Independent Counsel, UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Dion: Abraham, Martin and John

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