By Restless

When President Ronald Reagan passed there was a State funeral and a ceremony that lasted for days. And days. It was endless. The talk on talk-TV was that of a savior’s passing. Where would we be if Ronnie had not been our Leader? There was talk about a new dime with his image on its face.

Now comes an accounting of Reagan’s presidency more in line with the reality of it in an article written by Dean Baker, author of The United States Since 1980:

The Social Safety Net

In 1980 it was reasonable to believe that West Europe presented a model that the United States would follow. Medicare and Medicaid were still relatively new programs, having been established just 14 years earlier. Having recently seen a massive expansion of publicly provided health care coverage, many people believed that it would not be long before health care coverage was extended to the entire population.

Reagan’s agenda was rolling back the welfare state, and his budgets included a wide range of cuts for social programs. He was very strategic about the process.

One of his first targets was Legal Aid. This program, which provides legal services for low-income people, was staffed largely by progressive lawyers, many of whom used it as a base to win precedent-setting legal disputes against the government. Reagan drastically cut back the program’s funding. He also explicitly prohibited the agency from taking on class-action suits against the government — law suits that had been used with considerable success to expand the rights of low- and moderate-income families.

The Workforce is Screwed Over

The Reagan administration made weakening the power of unions a top priority. The people he appointed to the National Labor Relations Board were qualitatively more pro-management than appointees by prior Democratic or Republican presidents. This allowed companies to ignore workers’ rights with impunity. Reagan also made the firing of strikers an acceptable business practice when he fired striking air traffic controllers in 1981. Many large corporations quickly embraced the practice.

His high dollar policy in the mid-’80s was a severe blow to manufacturing unions, who suddenly had to compete against low-cost imports that were essentially subsidized by an overvalued dollar.

Unilaterlism is born

Reagan followed through on his campaign promise to reject the arms control agreements that previous administrations had negotiated with the Soviets. His belligerence towards the Soviet Union was a deliberate break with prior administrations.

Throughout his presidency he sustained a guerilla war against the democratically elected government in Nicaragua. When Reagan invaded the tiny island nation of Grenada in 1983, he couldn’t even enlist the support of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, his conservative political soul mate.

His “Legacy”

The United States has continued Reagan’s policy of unilateralism through subsequent administrations. It has consistently refused to be bound by important international agreements regarding issues such as human rights, war crimes, and greenhouse gas emissions. The fact that United Nations would not support an invasion of Iraq did not deter the Bush administration or even prompt the Democratic leadership in Congress to oppose the invasion.

Here we are

We have had a quarter century of top heavy growth in which the vast majority of economic gains have gone to the richest 10 percent of the population. While the economy has generally been boosted, the key stimulus for growth in the last decade has been financial bubbles, first in the stock market and more recently in the housing market. With the latter bubble beginning to unwind, the economy’s prospects do not look bright.

Internationally, the days when the United States was the biggest boy on the block are rapidly coming to an end. The United States is still the world’s largest economy, but China’s economy is almost 80 percent of its size and it will not be long before China’s economy is larger than our[s].

The ability of the United States to impose its will on much of the world has been sharply constrained by the fact that it is now a huge debtor nation that is borrowing $800 billion a year and that it has most of its military bogged down in the Iraq War.

After a quarter century of not caring about the concerns of other countries, the United States is facing a situation where other countries may not care much about our plight.

This is Reagan’s true legacy. We became a debtor nation under his watch, unilateralism began in earnest, unions were weakened, our manufacturing sacked, social programs discontinued, social progress stagnated. In its place we got bubble wealth, Ponzi schemes we all desperately bought into.

This is what I think whenever someone speaks about the beloved President Reagan.

I came across this quote while watching the Internet video, Liberty Bound, done by Christine Rose for Blue Moose films:

“Fascism could rightly be called Corporatism as it is a merger of state and corporate power.”

–Benito Mussolini

Reversing this fatal legacy should be Job One. Along those lines, there is Working America,described by Cliff Schecter on HuffPo as:

[P]rovid[ing] a voice for those of us who have been denied the right to union membership on the job.

Individuals are allowed to join this community, which is comprised of those of us who don’t have stock options in Haliburton or stay up nights excited about the next day’s bank merger.

The My Bad Boss area is a good place to start. Check it out!