Taxes, Reagan, the deficit, green energy and the facts...

I’ve never quite understood the R’s view on RR (a.k.a. Ray Gun Ronnie).  They hold him so high in their esteem and with such god like reverence.  I was motivated by this editorial LinkHere in the LA Times to make this rant.

  

Reagan has left us with many other unpleasant legacies that I will try and post on later:

* A substantial portion of our national debt.

* Lower taxes for the rich and relatively higher for the middle and poor brackets.

* The Iran contra debacle.

* Horrible injustices in Central America.

I believe that every administration since Carter has proposed some semblance of a policy to promote a degree of energy independence.  But no one since RR has done so much damage to this ideal.
 

Reagan - 

* Had the solar panels removed from the White House.  Merely symbolic, but yet not without meaning. 

* Tried to eliminate the Department of Energy, created under the Carter Administration.

* Removed energy credits for solar panels from tax code.

* Removed/reduced “energy-efficiency standards for appliances and buildings.”

* Discredited the US in environmental efforts and standards.  Minimized our leverage in discussions with major polluters, a.k.a. China.

* Resulted in lower fuel economy standards for our cars.  I would also argue that this was also a factor in necessitating the bailout of the domestic automobile industry.

 

Some of the results of these decisions are:

Allowing other countries to leap ahead of us in the technology and production of green energy.  Shamefully helped us retain our status as the worlds biggest consumer of greenhouse emitting gases & the use of fossil fuels.

 

Interestingly the U.S. Military has seen the folly of our reliance on fossil fuels and is investing substantially in green technologies.(LinkHere)  I hope that they are successful in funneling new technologies to civilian uses.  And maybe even spurring new jobs in the U.S.

 

One of the quotes I like most in this article is Americans need “to be willing to spend a little now to make a lot more later.”  This is a reoccurring problem within this country in many regards.  Mass transit.  Decaying infrastructure.  National debt.  Blah, blah, blah.  American's have no foresight and demand immediate gratification.

 

We did win the Cold War, possibly because of Reagan’s military buildup.  But was it really worth it?  And it seems probably to me that he only expedited the inevitable.

 

This link was helpful in creating this post LinkHere.

More thoughts:

"Tea Partiers rage against taxes and say they’re too high. Wrong, says billionaire Warren Buffett: on the rich, they’re too low."
"The top 1 percent of US households owns nearly 40 percent of all privately held stock, from which the dividends flow."
"Taxing income from wealth at little more than half the rate of income from work"
LinkHere 
Lower taxes for the rich doesn't make sense and isn't sustainable if we wish to keep the middle class in this country.  Reagan tax polices don't work.  Neither do Bush tax policies.  They're unfair, regressive and not sustainable.
Contrary to what the right seems to think, taxes under the Reagan administration went up, not down.  LinkHere
"as a share of the nation's economy, Uncle Sam's take this year will be the lowest since 1950, when the Korean War was just getting under way." LinkHere