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Comments

• [1] pamela from nj April 04, 2008 - 03:29AM

  all i know is that africa is going to cost me a buttload more of money because mr."prolife" totally avoided talking about even pediatric aids until he got out of office, not just aids as a sexually transmitted disease between adults, and not always consenting at that.

  there is no-such-thing as a 'fiscally conservative social conservative' - the world is too complex for that sort of linear thinking. and news flash to social conservatives, viruses, bacteria and parasites don't care about your soul. that includes bird flu, come to think of it..

  
  
• [2] Amy from Manhattan April 04, 2008 - 10:54AM

  I gotta cite The Onion's wonderful article from last year, "Reaganomics Finally Trickles Down To Area Man" (http://www.theonion.com/content/news/reaganomics_finally_trickles_down). It follows the "progress" of a multi-million-dollar bonus paid to a military contractor's CEO to a $10 tip left for a car-wash attendant 26 years later, touching on several effects of Reagonomics along the way.

  What Reagan & his administration never understood is that poor & working people need & deserve more than a trickle!

  
  
• [3] keith from hells kitchen April 04, 2008 - 11:48AM

  Yikes.... I can't believe that you are following up a Reagan skeptic's comment with a man who makes his living by prolonging the Myth of Ronald Reagan. I wonder how this is gonna turn out?

  
  
• [4] Lance from Manhattan April 04, 2008 - 11:48AM

  two words on Reagan's economic acumen:

  David Stockman

  Stockman, of course, was Reagan's director of the Office of Management and Budget during 1981-85. He subsequently wrote in The Triumph of Politics that Reagan had only a limited grasp of economics and did not understand how devastating his tax cuts would be for Americans.

  
  
• [5] susan April 04, 2008 - 11:57AM

  Reagan raised taxes on the middle class by taxing 85% of Social Security benefits on individuals with a 1982 AGI of $25,000 (!), (couples, $34,000) an income base that is even lower than a current city resident eligible for SCRIE ($27,000); it is a double tax, as on Medicare, since working people already paid taxes on Social Security as regular income when working. See Time mag., February 3, 2003. No candidate will deal specifically with this. Such a tax isn't going to save the SStrust fund and no one can justify such a tax.

  
  
• [6] Chuck Newman from Essex Fells, NJ April 04, 2008 - 12:02PM

  As a % of GDP, the dept went from 25% in 81 to 40% in 89. That was set in motion primarilly by the tax cuts early in his first term. The increased cost of intrest on that debt was greater than the increased defence spending. He and the republican senate cut domestic spending but not enough to offset defence and interest let alone the tax cut.

  
  
• [7] Bruce M. Foster from NYC April 05, 2008 - 11:21AM

  Recently it was claimed by some of his more vocal adherents that Ronald Reagan should get credit for the end of the Cold War. And as usual this betrays that old notion that failures are fatherless.

  We sit now, reaping the legacy of Reaganomics. Collapsed mortgage markets, unemployment, and a massive deficit. Sounds now like he was one of the biggest fiscal radicals, if it's radical to create numerous problems and render the only likely source of assistance unable to assist. Well, unless you're really, really rich. That's when the rule about how if you owe a billion, it's your bankers' problem.

  Let us give one cheer for Mr. Reagan. A big woop. He made lobbyists rich.