The new American right literally terrifies me

[TheBigotBasher]

The right in America has made ideals of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher but neither of those would have actually been successful in the modern right. Margaret Thatcher was one of the first World Leaders to address the issue of climate change and she secured a ban on CFCs. Ronald Reagan introduced the largest increases of taxes in US history.

Built in to the glamorised history of Reganomics was Social Mobility. That has gone. After Bush, the US is now one of the least socially mobile Countries in the World. The ladder was not just greased, it was burned.

The Republican Party are the only main stream political party in the World to deny climate change.

Their use of the most disgraceful anti Islam propaganda in order to win power reminds me of the history of the 1930s in Germany.

Their commitment to do anything to destroy the US in order to make the "President fail" disgusts me. They want to play with the debt limit when they know it will destroy the economy of not just America but the West.

It really does appal me that there are some on the so called American left screaming fascist at the Obama administration and doing everything to undermine it when the right in America have moved to a position that they no longer even believe in elections.

I have never seen politicians as crazy as those elected recently. It is as if America loves ignorance.

Talk me down. Please convince me not to worry about the ignorance of people who are so consumed by the military threat of China that they do not see the economic threat of the BRIC Nations, who are about to overtake the US economy within the next decade.

[RKP5637]

1. All excellent points IMO! n/t

[Hannah Bell]

2. "Ronald Reagan introduced the largest increases of taxes in US history." ???

refresh my memory on that one.

cause i lived through the period, & tax cuts is my memory.

[Odin2005]

4. I was too young, but if I remember my history correctly...

He raised taxes on the lower income brackets.

[TheBigotBasher]

6. Tax cuts are in the memory of many of that period

but they came on the back of the largest increase in history.

Just one source

http://money.cnn.com/2010/09/08/news/economy/reagan_years_taxes/index.htm

[Hannah Bell]

11. no, he lowered income taxes for the wealthy & nickel-&-dimed everyone else

to try to make up the lost income.

http://www.truthandpolitics.org/top-rates.php

it was a shift in the tax burden, not the largest tax increase in history. there wasn't a significant inflation-adjusted increase in revenues.

that was the era when they started charging fees in a lot of state/national parks.

this "largest tax increase in history" is some kind of agenda-driven revisionism.

[Roselma]

7. Yes...Reagan lowered taxes for the wealthy

and attempted to offset them by tax increases on everybody else (including increasing the payroll tax so that he could borrow from the new social security "trust fund"). http://old.nationalreview.com/nrof_bartlett/bartlett200310290853.asp

[Hannah Bell]

8. top income tax rates were lowered under reagan. then he increased other taxes

to make up the difference.

http://www.truthandpolitics.org/top-rates.php

the net effect i suspect was basically neutral.

[Chulanowa]

23. No, it wasn't neutral

People who could afford more taxation were taxed less, while people who couldn't afford it were taxed more.

Net result was that the top soared and the bottom fell out. Of course there are more people on the bottom. Net effect was a loss of economic power for most Americans.

Especially when you figure in that these tax raises were paired with severe cuts to social spending - The needy were robbed to subsidize the well-off.

[Hannah Bell]

27. neutral in terms of total taxes collected. of course it wasn't neutral in terms of who paid them.

but i see that the post you responded to was attached to the wrong poster's comment. i didn't mean to reply to roselma.

[Bucky]

9. Ronald Reagan and taxes.

When he came into office, he wanted a 30% reduction in income tax rates. The Dems brought that number down to 25%, spread out over three fiscal years. Not surprisingly, the deficits exploded. The problem was so bad, that Mondale in 1984 actually ran on a platform of raising taxes. In his debate with Reagan, he said that whoever was elected president in 1984 would have to raise taxes. Reagan laughed at that suggestion. Then he got reelected.

Then he raised taxes.

According to Josh Green of the Washington Monthly, Reagan bailed out social security by "dramatically increas{ing} payroll taxes on employees and employers, brought a whole new class of recipients--new federal workers--into the system, and, for the first time, taxed Social Security benefits, and did so in the most liberal way: only those of upper-income recipients. (As an added affront to conservatives, the tax wasn't indexed to inflation, meaning that more and more people have gradually had to pay it over time.)"

Also...

One year after his massive tax cut, Reagan agreed to a tax increase to reduce the deficit that restored fully one-third of the previous year's reduction. (In a bizarre bit of self-deception, Reagan, who never came to terms with this episode of ideological apostasy, persuaded himself that the three-year, $100 billion tax hike--the largest since World War II--was actually "tax reform" that closed loopholes in his earlier cut and therefore didn't count as raising taxes.)

Faced with looming deficits, Reagan raised taxes again in 1983 with a gasoline tax and once more in 1984, this time by $50 billion over three years, mainly through closing tax loopholes for business. Despite the fact that such increases were anathema to conservatives--and probably cost Reagan's successor, George H.W. Bush, reelection--Reagan raised taxes a grand total of four times just between 1982-84.

Read the full article for more info . Reagan was a big ol' tax raiser, even if he did still manage to run up (then) record deficits.

[Hannah Bell]

12. they didn't go up again for the rich. they went up again for everyone else.

http://www.truthandpolitics.org/top-rates.php

[villager]

10. Well, he *did* make unemployement benefits taxable!

Not sure how that plays into the "social mobility" meme, however...

[Hannah Bell]

13. yep. & social security benefits.

[TheBigotBasher]

14. Indeed

the one from his decade is Bill Gates who started from a millionaire family anyway and then forced the introduction of software patents that would have never have allowed Microsoft to succeed (as Gates admits).

[Odin2005]

3. Thatcher being a scientist by training was her sole redeeming feature.

It is why she was concerned about climate change. She was a jerk, but she wasn't ignorant or stupid.

[defendandprotect]

20. "Climate Change" is a euphemism for Global Warming ... suggested by GOP propagandist

Frank Luntz to Bush to 2002 --

And a move intended to disappear Global Warming and its history and to make

less obvious what's come at us -- HEAT -- the heating up of the atmosphere which

creates chaotic weather -- and which has the power to change weather systems --

to create weather extremes -- floods/droughts -- to increase the number of and

intensity of hurricanes, cyclones, tornadoes and even earthquakes.

Climate Change is intended to sound as though something almost normal is happening.

[gateley]

33. He was really good at his job. I hate how he neutralized valid

areas of concern, but he sure did it well. And the Republicans' constant repeating moved many of his works into the mainstream.

[redirish28]

5. K&R

[burnsei sensei]

15. I won't tell you that there's nothing to fear.

That would be a lie.
But you really can't afford to be terrified, nor can you afford to show it.
To write honestly about it here, among people who agree with you is good. To acknowledge it is right and honest.
But don't be influenced by it.

[jefferson_dem]

16. Yeah... What. Ever. Who cares about them?! We have jack-booted thuggish TSA agents who...

are actually doing their job!11!11!!!! Thems the real enemmy!1(one)

[defendandprotect]

17. Good post ... we have to understand that like Nixon, Ronnie and Thatcher were steps along the way...

moving the right wing forward with violence -- that's the only way they can rise.

These T-baggers are supposed to frighten America -- they're supposed to make the public

more frightened of Democrats!! People are supposed to ignore their aggressiveness and

look past it to what they're pointing to -- i.e., Democratic "socialism" .... Yikes!! :)

We should be so lucky!!

What concerns me about the T-baggers is their new heights of disruptiveness and their

near-violence -- that's the direction that the right wing has to move in and the next step.

[krabigirl]

18. The religious right scares me the most, and they've been here since the 70s/80s.

[defendandprotect]

22. And the GOP gave start up funding for the Christian Coalition ..... because

patriarchal authority had come under severe challenge during the Youth Revolution ....

which was about sex ... but one hell of a lot of other things --

What the GOP right wing does is create/buy what they need in order to move their party

and the nation further and further to the right --

GOP/Christian Coalition -- and Richard Scaife financed Dobson's group -- and other wealthy

right wingers financed Bauer's group.

GOP/NRA

GOP/"pro-life murderers" and demonstrators

GOP/T-baggers

on and on --


Here's another view of the Youth Revolution --

Indeed, in 1972, when the details began to come out about a break-in at Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate Hotel, Mae immediately recognized personnel and modus operandi from nine years of assassination research, while the mainstream press continued to refer to Watergate as a "caper" and "a third-rate burglary." And so it came to pass that while Rabbi Magnin was entertaining Richard Nixon at his home in Los Angeles, his daughter Mae was revealing the President's role in an incredible conspiracy. Meanwhile, she also perceived an assassination plot, not merely against specific individuals, but against the entire counterculture that was burgeoning at the time.

"I realized that in this country we had a revolution--of housing, food, hair style, clothing, cosmetics, transportation, value systems, religion--it was an economic revolution, affecting the cosmetics industry, canned foods, the use of land; people were delivering their own babies, recycling old clothes, withdrawing from spectator sports. They were breaking the barriers where white and black could rap in 1967. This was the year of the Beatles, the summer of Sergeant Pepper, the Monterey Pop Festival, Haight-Ashbury, make your own candle and turn off the electricity, turn on with your friends and laugh--that's what life was all about."


http://maebrussell.com/Mae%20Brussell%20Articles/Ballad%20of%20Mae%20Brussell.html

[47of74]

19. As Stephanie Miller says...

...Ronald Reagan would not make it today as a Republican. The party would not have him.

[Number23]

21. I hear ya, BB. And I completely agree.

With the idiot left screaming "fascist" and the idiot right screaming "socialist" at the same damn people, alot of us are terrified.

And I have no problems with BRIC or their economies. Let's see what someone outside of the Western world does as a superpower.

[Common Sense Party]

24. We're still socially mobile. Look at all the paper-rich people of a few years

ago...their stock portfolios are down, their real estate investments have been foreclosed, and they're out of work. They slid down the ladder pretty quickly.

And, of course, some people still move up. It's foolish to think otherwise.

[OHdem10]

25. This is why every Democrat we can find must vote. If you are

thoroughly disgusted with our batch at the present, get people
lined up for the next election. Vote Democratic to push back
on the dangerous Rightward Move this country is taking. Get
people on the left just as noisy as those on the right.

[avaistheone1]

26. The new left scare me too.

Bush would not have dared to radiate the flying public with porno scanners and or conduct genital gropings, but this is what our brand new changalicious Democratic leadership has given us. I am appalled and enraged.

[emulatorloo]

28. Patdowns have been around since bush. "Porno Scans" photos are FAKE - see link

Pictures of a nude model manipulated to "look like" a "porno scan

http://trueslant.com/KashmirHill/2010/01/27/tsa-scanner-porn-hoax-fools-gizmodo-drudge-report

These TSA porn photos would be alarming — if they were real

Earlier this month, Gizmodo and the Drudge Report posted the images below. The first is supposed to be from the TSA’s whole body imaging machines, and the second is supposed to be the image after it’s been “inverted” and “tinted” using Photoshop. Redacted version below, and original pornoriffic version here:


<SNIP>

The first clue to this being a hoax is that people don’t usually assume the Jesus pose while being checked out by TSA personnel. In fact, the woman is not a frequent flyer. She’s a nude model; this photo comes from this shoot

http://www.f1online.de/f1online/index.cfm?location=search&colNo=2274&language=1
Body in 360° (Dominique Douieb)
Body in 360∞
Agentur: PhotoAlto
Preis: 699.00 EURO

===

More at link.

Sure there are things to be concerned about, but best to have the facts first.

[felinetta]

29. I completely agree. Also corporate media ignores or downplays any good news or

success of this administration.  Isn't it patriotic to uplift
people and help them have hope? Uplifting people can actually
change their psyche as well as the nation's.  It can actually
change a country for the better. Instead we have all this
gloom and doom crap. People have bought this nonsense and
became hopeless. How sad.  

[felinetta]

30. Why isn't Biden on all the Sunday shows supporting Obama and his accomplishments. Like it or not,

we did get more good news this week.  People are shopping, GM
is looking bright (jobs were saved) and airline travel was up.
So this should be stated over and over.  

[BlackHoleSon]

31. That's why Obama can't be Neville Chamberlain

There is no middle ground with these crazies. That is most people's problem with Obama - he needs to be STRONGLY progressive in the face of these admitted enemies of democracy. You don't work with these people. You defeat them and take away their power.

[gateley]

32. K&R nt

[pipoman]

34. There is really no great change in the right

IMO. I believe that the discontent is that there really isn't a difference any longer on the basics, our politicians in general, and presidents specifically are corporatists. I believe a great populist is needed badly. I don't believe it really matters the party. The great Presidents in years and decades gone by have had sharp populist edges and have carried wide margins in both parties on their 2nd terms. It is the corporatists who are ultimately disliked by their own party and hated by the opposition. It has been decades since we have elected a selfless, non-corporatist president...it is high time.