Quote of the Day 2: Ronald Reagan Edition

“As long as there is one person in this country who is hungry, that’s one person too many, and something must be done about it.” Ronald Reagan, on hunger in America.

As I blogged earlier today, House Republicans cut $4 billion from the SNAP program.

Flashback: Reagan Administration Ignore AIDS

In October of 1982, White House spokesman Larry Speakes had this exchange with a journalist during a press briefing.

Journalist: Larry, does the President have any response to the announcement [from] the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta that AIDS is now an epidemic and have over 600 cases.

Speakes: What's AIDS?

Journalist: Over a third of them have died. It's known as the "gay plague." [Laughter] No, it is. I mean it's a pretty serious thing that one in every three people that get this have died. And I wonder if the President is aware of it?

Speakes: I don't have it. Do you? [Laughter]

Props to the journalist for being ahead of the curve and asking an important question. It is absolutely shameful that Speakes and the media treat an incurable disease as a joke. The media should have been all over this story in 1982. Instead, they willfully chose ignorance.

Democracy Now has a feature on Reagan's horrible AIDS legacy.

Trickle Down Economics Doesn't Spur Growth

"Sure. But first of all, it’s not clear that that would add trillions to the deficit, because I really believe that if we expand the base of the economy, which we could do by selectively lowering some taxes, you have a broader base on which to apply the tax."

Pat Toomey, Republican Senate candidate.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell also stated, "There's no evidence whatsoever that the Bush tax cuts actually diminished revenue." Toomey and McConnell are pushing the debunked trickle down economic theory. The reality is the Bush tax cuts created less revenue growth than the Reagan or Clinton administrations.



David Stockman was Ronald Reagan's former director of the Office of Management and Budget. In an interview, Stockman told journalist William Greider that trickle down economics was rebranded supply-side economics. It is hard to sell to the middle class and poor people that tax cuts for the rich will "trickle" down to them.

"It's kind of hard to sell 'trickle down,' so the supply-side formula was the only way to get a tax policy that was really 'trickle down.' Supply-side is 'trickle-down' theory."

In another interview, Stockman said Reagan intentionally used trickle down economics and increased spending as part of his plan to cut New Deal and Great Society programs he loathed.

Back in 1981 David Stockman was the wonderkid of the Reagan administration–the director of the Office of Management and Budget who’d craft in actual budgets the trickle-down miracle Reagan had promised on the campaign trail: lower budgets, lower spending, higher tax revenue. But trickle-down economics was a wish, not a reality. It’s never worked. Lower taxes don’t generate more revenue. They generate deficits.

Reagan knew it. So did Stockman. So did their guru, Friederich von Hayek. The deficits were intentional all along. They were edsigned to “starve the beast,” meaning intentionally cut revenue as a way of pressuring Congress to cut the New Deal programs Reagan wanted to demolish. “The plan,” Stockman told Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan at the time, ” was to have a strategic deficit that would give you an argument for cutting back the programs that weren’t desired. It got out of hand.”

Reagan mission was the same as Grover Norquist's drown government in a bathtub quote. Reagan and Norquist didn't really believe tax cuts would magically create surpluses. The new generation of Tea Party Republicans coming up learned economics from talk radio, Republican stump speeches and the National Review. The new breed of Republican candidates are so economically stupid that they actually believe the big lie that is trickle down economics. Toomey has a background in banking. Toomey isn't stupid about economic policy. He is just as cynical as Reagan and Norquist.

McCollum Endorsed by Gary Bauer

Social conservative Gary Bauer has endorsed Bill McCollum.

“Now more than ever, we need men and women who understand the proper, limited role of government,” said Bauer who ran in the 2000 GOP presidential primaries, outlasting a number of prominent Republicans including Elizabeth Dole, Dan Quayle and Lamar Alexander. “Bill McCollum’s leadership in support of pro-family, pro-life, and pro-free enterprise policies is greatly valued by the Campaign for Working Families and all of our members. I’m proud to stand with him in the fight for family, faith and freedom.”

If you support reproductive and gay rights then you should be concerned about Bauer's endorsement. Bauer has pushed the bogus post-abortion syndrome in a LifeNews.com op-ed.

The US Supreme Court cited post-abortion pain in its 2007 decision upholding a ban on certain types of late-term abortions. Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy stated that it was “self-evident” and “unexceptional to conclude” that “some women” who have abortions suffer “regret,” “severe depression,” “loss of esteem,” and “other ills.”

I blogged how Justice Kennedy was duped by the work of Rebecca Porter of the anti-abortion group Operation Outcry. Porter made the bogus claim that a John Kerry campaign staffer attacked her. The web site that ran Porter's claim against the Kerry campaign was the discredited Talon News. Porter ran a letter campaign to the Supreme Court. Operation Outcry made these letters into legal affidavits. The St. Petersburg Times explained the lack of legal reasoning in the affidavits.

Each affidavit was just two or three sentences. They made no legal argument, contained no legal verbiage. Each just vented pain and guilt. "Twenty years later it still hurts, " one Florida woman wrote.

These affidavits helped sway the 5-4 Supreme Court ruling on April 18 that for the first time set limits on how abortions are performed. The testimonials were cited by Justice Anthony Kennedy in his majority opinion upholding a federal ban on a procedure that opponents call "partial birth" abortions. "The emotional and psychological pain does not go away, " Kennedy wrote.

Bauer and Porter fail to prove their claims of post-abortion syndrome. President Ronald Reagan asked U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop to find proof of postabortion syndrome. Koop told Reagan he could find no scientific evidence. Bauer has no problems promoting bogus science.

Bauer has made hysterically over-the-top statements on gay marriage.

While the administration does virtually nothing about Iran’s pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, it remains intent on the mass destruction of marriage in America. Friday White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs stated that President Obama was prepared to work with congressional liberals to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act.

I have never heard anyone link Iran's weapons program to gay marriage before. Bauer's argument may not be rationale, but it is original.

Bauer's endorsement means McCollum is going to govern in a manner that brings confort to the most extreme elements of the social conservative movement. That means McCollum will have no moral problem taking rights away from women and gays.

Reagan's Medicare Scare

Listen to Ronald Reagan describe efforts to pass Medicare ans Social Security as Socialism. The times change. The Republican talking points stay the same. Republicans that wish to stay in office don't dare attack Medicare or Social Security.

'We All Love Ronald Reagan'

Fox News aired the South Carolina primary. The Republican candidates fought each other over whom has the greatest hetrosexual crush on Ronald Reagan.

Republicans Brush Off Hispanics

Further proof that the GOP plays up to xenophobia. Only John McCain accepted the invitation to debate on the Spanish language Univisión. The other Republican presidential candidates turned down the offer. The September debate has been cancelled.

Jose Cancela does not understand the political party he is affiliated with.

That would be significant enough for most historians. But the debate is also offering overwhelming evidence that the Republicans -- with the notable exception of John McCain -- are willing to squander a quarter-century of concerted GOP efforts to attract Hispanics. Ronald Reagan must be spinning in his grave.

Reagan was against the civil rights movement and supported apartheid in South Africa. The Gipper's first 1980 campaign stop was Philadelphia, Mississippi. Reagan openly declared his support for "states' rights." The symbolism was impossible to miss. Civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were murdered in the town in 1964. The Gipper also enjoyed sharing racist jokes with Trent Lott.

The Republican Party is not a big tent. They get the table scraps of intolerant idiots the Democrats don't want. Their bread and butter is condeming people that are already marginized by society. It can hardly be considered courageous to go after gay people and Hispanic migrant workers. Wiilliam F. Buckley used to wax poetic about the (imaginary) evils of segregation.

Reagan is sleeping like a baby.

Rubio Drops the Hammer Again.

"Eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican."

Ronald Reagan

Someone forgot to tell Florida House Speacker Marco Rubio. He is using a GOP website to attack Senate Republicans for not supporting his sales tax plan.

The conflict started flaring just after 10 p.m. Thursday, when Senate Majority Leader Dan Webster called state Republican Party headquarters. He got the party to change a GOP-run website so that it no longer promoted a Capitol rally organized for Tuesday by a group that opposes the Senate's more moderate tax-cutting proposal.

''Republican Party money shouldn't be spent to trash Republicans,'' said Webster, one of the most respected conservatives in the Legislature. ``We have a big tent here. Everyone lives under it. We have a Republican House and Republican Senate. It would kind of be counterproductive if they were coming to trash our plan.''

The website is run by the PAC Floridians for Property Tax Reform. The group is run by run former George W. Bush campaign operative Brett Doster. His claim to fame was taking part in a bogus voter fraud list with (drum roll) Tim Griffin.

The BBC obtained several dozen confidential emails sent by the Republican’s national Research Director and Deputy Communications chief, Tim Griffin to GOP Florida campaign chairman Brett Doster and other party leaders. Attached were spreadsheets marked, “Caging.xls.” Each of these contained several hundred to a few thousand voters and their addresses.

A check of the demographics of the addresses on the “caging lists,” as the GOP leaders called them indicated that most were in African-American majority zip codes.

Ion Sanco, the non-partisan elections supervisor of Leon County (Tallahassee) when shown the lists by this reporter said: “The only thing I can think of - African American voters listed like this - these might be individuals that will be challenged if they attempted to vote on Election Day.”

Rubio is not a consensus builder. He is a bully. Rubio selected Arza for a leadership post. His reputation for having a bad temper was legendary. Rubio delayed in taking action after Arza made his racist tirade towards Gus Barreiro.

You're nothing but a bitch.
You're a bitch.
You're nothing but a bitch.
God bless you, bitch.
Hey, bitch:
You ain't nothing but a bitch.
You ain't nothing but a bitch.
Brother,
My nigger.

Rubio punished Don Brown and Dennis Ross by making step down from laedership posts on the House Jobs & Entrepreneurship Council and Safety & Security Council. Rubio contiued to deny he forced them to step down after Ross went public.

Ross said Rubio called him into his office in the afternoon and asked for his resignation. Ross said Rubio told him that "he needs leaders that are with him on major votes."

Rubio rules by fear and intimidation. The company he keeps is prove of that.