Reagan and Taxes

[Mr Natural]

Frank can only think in bianry absolutes. Either this or that, good or evil, etc.
Lots simpler for simpler minds.

There's no such thing as the grey area for those folks.

 

[Carol]

Reagan's part of the Cold War created global military obligations that have bankrupted America. As everyone knows, military costs are hidden (it took years for Stigliz to get even close to discovering the real costs of Iraq) -- so America's financial problems are much worse than anyone realizes.

By the time Reagan came to Washington, the Soviets were in serious decline. He inflated the threat in order to bring poor resource-rich countries under Washington's "protective" wing. Ronnie had to make it about "security" and "protection". Seriously, he couldn't say he was in Central America in order to prevent economies (and their precious resources) from being nationalized -- no, to the contrary, he had to say he was making the world safe for Democracy, as he got in bed with one dictator after another. (nobody outside the GOP base was fooled)

Read the label on your toaster. Like your oil, it comes from an unstable 3rd world country. The Cold War, under Reagan, became a context for militarizing global supply chains so as to ensure the flow of capital-&-resources. The greatest threat to Reagan's militarization of the globe was the Clinton peace dividend. The Neocons require a big enemy so that they have an alibi to go wherever a supply chain or resource needs tending to.

This is why the War on Terrorism was ABSOLUTELY necessary. It became the new context for using national security as an alibi to militarize vital regions. In 2012 the War will be back on steroids, and America will increase it's self-destruction under the Reagan model.

Self-destruction? How?

Eventually, the globe is too hard to control -- and your nation literally runs out of money. And when it does, the big corporations who fund your elections and staff your government will move to another set of tools.

Well this post is a little closer to "Reagan and Texas". Shall we remember before Reagan was Carter, and Carter told us we need to conserve. Carter was dealing with a recession, because OPEC had embargoed oil to the US. The recession was caused by a shortage in fuel.

This is a big jump, but a 1920's newspaper said, "Given our know oil supply and rate of consumption, we are headed for economic disaster and possibly war." As everyone knows the economies of all industrial nations were dependent on oil, and when the demand surpassed supply, everyone of these industrial nations experienced economic collapse, and the world went to war. Now I am jumping over a lot of stuff to get back to Reagan.

He clearly lied to us when he said we do not need to conserve. Not only had we become dependent on foreign oil, but we had to protect our trade partners supply of oil. The only way to avoid conversation and get our economy back on track was to secure foreign oil. Reagan slashed domestic budgets and poured all the money he could get, including withdrawing money from Social Security, into military spending, and granting arms to mid east countries. You know, as in oil deals for arms. Our best deal is with Saudi Arabia, a country that must definitely is not a democracy, but is run by a royal family.

Reagan followed a German strategy for this shift in federal spending. When he took office, research on poverty disappears from the abstracts, and in its place is research on welfare fraud. It is such a complete change in research direction, anyone who understands such research would know the research was biased by an objective, and therefore not credible research. That objective was scapegoating the poor for the bad economy, just as the Germans had scapegoated the Jews for Germany's economic troubles. The media screamed with the outcome of the research on welfare fraud, and this made everyone agreeable to slashing domestic budgets. At the same time the industrial loop holes, were partly tax deductions for charity. So here we are dealing with economic collapse, high unemployment, and a decrease in both assistance programs and charity. Our people were seriously hurt, as money was poured into military spending.

But this doesn't begin with Reagan. Texas money was behind the Eisenhower, Reagan and Bush elections. Eisenhower set things up and Reagan and Bush are only following through. Eisenhower created a new relationship between research and government, which made it possible for Reagan to get the research results he wanted to justify slashing budgets and pouring money into military spending. Eisenhower also established a new relationship with media, which assures the public gets the information the presidents wants the public to have. And Eisenhower asked congress for the National Defense Education Act, which replaced liberal education with education for technology for military and industrial purpose, and we can now engage in war within 4 hours notice, and we can maintain wars for years, without disturbing anyone's morning cup of coffee. That means, the citizens have virtually no control over their military force, compared to our reality before the second world war, when world wars involved every man, woman and child, because war so disrupted our lives and required hard sacrifices.

I want to add, our trouble with Iran begins with Eisenhower, who is responsible for the over throw of a democratically elected leader, and put in power a brutal leader, leading to Iran's revolting, and all the trouble with Iran that has followed. We have seriously misused our CIA around the world, putting dictators in power. Reagan, I believe, began our war on drugs, which justified our troops in south American, like Bush's war on terrorism has justified troop movements.

Anyway, there is a connection between Eisenhower, Reagan, Bush and Texas. I don't think we have seen the end of the our troubles. The economies of all industrial nations depends on oil, and oil is finite. Oil rich countries are sinking their wealth into military weapons, and they will not recede back into poverty peacefully. Not only do we need another energy resource, but those oil countries will need another source of revenue. Any ideas what that will be?

You need to cite the source you're cutting and pasting from. And don't tell me you aren't cutting and pasting, because you forgot to delete one of the footnote notations.

I sincerely apology if I used a quote, and did not properly cite the source. I wish you had quoted the post where I made this mistake, so I could immediately correct it.

As for the information in the post you quoted, during the 1970-80 recession, I did research at our local university in the Knight Library. I researched the Abstracts and documents in the documents department. I was blown away by the change in research in the Abstracts, and I doubt if anyone else is aware of this. It isn't exactly something a newspapers would deem newsworthy, so it would not get media coverage. Without knowing what the Eisenhower administration had done with relationships with research and media, and the history of Germany, who would put two and two together?

You see this is one of the problems with today's specialization. A generalist, will know a lot about many different things, and therefore see many pieces to a puzzle that a specialist will not see. Since 1958 we have specialized everyone, and effectively this is a kind of dumbing down or the population. Our mega intelligence is us all working together, but when we are specialized, we don't work as well. Specialized individuals will be smarter about what they know, but when the specialist can not work together, because of being specialized, the effect dims the mega intelligence. The thinking ability of the masses becomes like a person with Alzheimer's disease, and government becomes as the care taker. Any way, I wish I could copy and paste.

Perhaps, if people are sincerely interested, I could go through the research process again, and this time make copies of the documents, and then use my local print shop to get them on the computer so I can present the documents, instead of just talk about them. But that is a lot of work!

While I was at the library, looking for information on the 1958 National Defense Education Act, my curiosity was aroused. I thumbed through the rest of the records for 1958, and was blown away by what I read. What I said in the post you quoted, is my own words. I wish I could just copy and paste from the Internet. That would be a lot less work, and might result in people better dealing with reality, instead of arguing with me, or moving my threads to the conspiracy theory thread, as though I am a conspiracy nut case, instead presenting factual information.