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Obama: wrong on Reagan
Posted By katie allison granju
In Reagan’s time, taxpayers had to spend hundreds of billions bailing out the deregulated savings and loan industry, thereby socializing the risks of doing business while privatizing the rewards. Since then scores of corporations have plundered the national treasury thanks to corporate tax rebates, privatization of government operations and more. Look at details of the new prescription drug benefit or the many corrupt practices of Halliburton. Look at Enron’s price-fixing and the on-going parade of criminals produced by deregulated financial institutions.
Reagan also promised to shrink government. Instead it grew dramatically, mostly in the military realm, creating huge deficits that again are building as our current president follows his lead.
We’re paying for sins of omission as well. Reagan mostly turned a blind eye to the AIDS epidemic now wreaking havoc in a dozen nations around the globe, just as he mostly ignored global warming and our dependence on fossil fuels.
It was more than a symbolic gesture when Reagan removed solar panels that Jimmie Carter had installed atop the White House. Reagan proudly announced that private enterprise alone would determine the future of energy policy in America. We’ve seen how that’s worked out. As the world’s oil reserves shrink and become less secure, Americans drive bigger and bigger cars, as if bluster and sunny optimism will save us.
As I stated in a column at the time, “To many, though, morning in America never felt so much like high noon.”
Jan 24th, 2008
