OT. Quote of the Day

Yes, but who wrote it for him? Also dod you know that many of the quotes of Reagan where never actually said by him? Michael Deever used to make up good lines and them claim that Reagan had said them.

When Reagan was governor of California, he raised taxes. When he was president (taking the total of the 8 years) he also raised taxes.

The right needs its heroes and the mythical Reagan fits the bill the real Reagan need not apply.

Spout platitudes and believe what you want, but (just one example)...

...Jim Thompson

Go get the book "Reagan A life in Letters" and read all 800+ pages then re-evaluate your statement.

Having done the "duck and cover" drills and watched missiles test fired at White Sands, IMO he did the right things.

You can't argue with a leftists wuss. They're so ignorant they think they know it all.

...Jim Thompson

I read into that far enough to see quite a bit of comparison between the Reagan-era and Clinton-era economic expansions - as of before the budget surplus years of later in the Clinton-era economic expansion.

This does show the Reagan era one getting a bigger early bounce. I see that being mainly from the fact that the preceeding recession was a very deep one, the worst since the Great Depression. The depth of the

As for tax cuts being good - I would say so myself, provided they are accompnied by spending cuts. Defecit spending means spend now, taxpayers pay later instead of now - but with interest added.

My favorite time of effective Federal fiscal policy in my lifetime was the last 6 years of the Clinton administration. Spending boosts and tax cuts were blocked by gridlock between Republican Congress and a Democrat in the White House.

Meanwhile, I consider the most recent true fiscal conservative to have his office being the oval one at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave to be Eisenhower.

- Don Klipstein ( snipped-for-privacy@misty.com)

"Denial" is a Democrat river ;-)

...Jim Thompson

The high interest rates under Jimmy Carter had stopped the inflation and the Vietnam war was finally getting payed off. Reagan was running up a huge debt that would have to be paid off later. All of these are the real reason for the increases under Reagan. Reagan did after all, in total, increase taxes not cut them.

Are you claiming that Deever didn't write those statements after the fact. It was well documented in several cases.

So you agree that raising taxes is the right thing to do?

You missed on big burden. The Vietnam war was a big load on the economy. Nixon's wage and price controls had left a very big mess.

Ronald Reagan was elected on conservative principles about which he had been making speeches for years, funded by big defense contractors like GE. While in office, he and his administration increased taxes, grew the size of the government, increased the national debt, broke laws, and lied about it.

The Reagan tradition continues today.

You said "many of the quotes". While I have not done an exhaustive research, most of what I find are a couple of quotes by Larry Speakes. I would appreciate your providing some information on the documented cases so I can better educate myself on this issue. However, I do feel that the tone of your initial statement was one of the often said "Reagan the buffoon actor who stared with a monkey". He was an educated and well read person.

No. Your statement of "... The right needs its heroes and the mythical Reagan fits the bill....". There was no myth about it, he was a hero and the world is a better place. The fall of the Soviet empire has bettered the world in many ways. Reagan did not have to have SDI work, he just needed the Soviets to believe it might work and that we had the will to make it work. The reasoning worked, we have a global economy that would not be possible if we were still in the cold war days. MADD is no longer in most people's vocabulary. The world is still a very dangerous place but a hell of a lot better than in the 60's, 70's and early 80's. As a kid, more than once we had "weather balloons" come down, quickly followed by enough troops to invade a small nation. I'm pretty sure they were early test of spy satellites. Some nights we would all rush out side, some Moms and Dads in a slight panic, wondering what the weird missile contrails were on the horizon. Ever seen a B-52 cruise the NM desert at about 400ft. Impressive when you're a kid, not so much now that I'm older. In April and October they open up Trinity site at White Sands. Go there sometime. A few notes about the tax cuts and increases:

The 1981 Economic Recovery Act cut all income tax rates by 25%, reduced the top income tax rate from 70% to 50%, indexed tax rates for inflation, and increased the tax exemption on estates and gifts. A problem Reagan had was federal spending for welfare almost doubled from $106.1 billion in 1980 to $173 billion in 1988. Reagan wanted to make sure social security of FDR would remain sound, but reduce LBJ's (sorry sob) Great Society largess.

Reagan went along with the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of

The 1986 Tax Reform Act was a bipartisan deal of Reagan agreeing to close tax loopholes if the Democrats would agree to lower marginal rates for families and individuals. The act lowered the top rate from 50% to

You must be very sensitive about the buffoon stuff because rereading what I wrote, I sure don't see any of that tone in there. The stories about his death are making it harder to find the quotes but I think you may even remember one case if I remind you of it.

Do you remember the Reagan-Gorbachev meeting where it was reported that Reagan made a statement starting "While our differences are great..." that was followed by a very strange comment from the Russians about the translations? The exact Russian comment, I can't remember but was along the lines of there being some expressions that are not easily translated from english to russian. It was later admitted by Deever that he had made that statement up after the fact.

Deever was not just Reagan's adviser, he was also a very good friend of his.

Micheal Deever has just died. I was not aware of this when I posted that comment

Oh yes there most certainly is a mythical Reagan who is the conservative that the right loves to talk about. The right would condemn the real Reagan as a "liberal" who raised taxes and the debt.

The USSR was (A) doomed because their system did not work and (B) destroyed entirely by Reagan. The right seems to believe both of these without seeing that they are in conflict. The USSR failed in part because they couldn't make stuff that worked.

You need to post proof that SDI was just a way to scam the Russians and that this was Reagans purpose. A lot of people put this reasoning onto the situation after the fact but I don't think that there is any evidence that it is what ws really happening.

That may only be your impression. If "the russians love their children too", they were fairly unlikely to launch. The destruction would have been complete but the odds of that destruction was very very low. It was a classic standoff. Todya, the growing threats are from places like China where they feel that they have too many people. This makes the risk somewhat grreater than most peole would like to think.

Those really were balloons. They were launched into the natural air currents so that they would drift over the area of interest. They had a fairly good camera on them. The project was given up when controlled methods were available.

This does seem to be a major digression BTW.

So you do know the real Reagan. Look carefully at the real Reagan and compare it to the mythical conservative hero. You will see exactly what I was refering to when I said that the real Reagan need not apply. He was much more of a liberal than the right likes to admit.

It seems to be something world wide. The "conservatives" always seem to be the ones who increase the spending the most. Reagan was not the first. Check out Nixons record. He added a whole bunch of social programs.

A few years ago there was talk about putting up a light rail line along tracks where the Reading Railroad used to run trains from Philly to Reading. It was going to cost something like a gigabuck, mostly to electrify the line. Much of that money was to come from the Feds.

I think the rail line was a good idea, but the price appeared to me to not be right. What were they going to do - build it with labor costing what union construction labor costs in Philadelphia?

Maybe they should have thought of rail cars with both an electric motor and a diesel engine so they can work in the tunnels without making air pollution and also work when they get farther out of town than the wires go.

- Don Klipstein ( snipped-for-privacy@misty.com)

it

Nixon never played up being a conservative, just an anti-communist.

He was elected when the Republicans were seen as the anti-war party.

You can buy them from Germany. It's called "Schienenbus" or "bus on rails" and I rode those back in the 70's. Then there are submarines that show the technology. Heck, my grandpa served on one in the first world war. He would have laughed out loud if someone told him the hybrid concept was something new. It's roughly a hundred years old.

Problem is that business type calculations such as amortization tables seem to sometimes be absent from such projects. It's not their money but "only" tax Dollars, people seem not to feel accountable. In industry a blunder like that would get you instantly fired.

In marketing, it will get you promoted! Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Yeah, sad but true. I know an excellent engineer who really made things happen. Then he moved into marketing, got an MBA and, well, you can imagine. At times even the business sense seemed to have flown out the window.

Aren't most locomotives actually diesel-electric? As in those made by GM, Electromotive Division?

...Jim Thompson