Says who?
Why do people keep saying this? He racked up a record debt - how is that an improvement?. And really, you’d have to try pretty hard for the economy not to cycle after 8 years.
It was a big deal, and it was precipitated by ‘Glastnost’. Are you giving Reagan credit for Glasnost?
Oops, sorry about my poor Russian spelling.
I fully understand what I quoted. Guin wrote that if Reagan had something to do with the wall falling, he wasn’t the only one or the main one and mentioned others who played a role, including Gorbachev. Sally apparently refutes the notion that others played a role by noting that Gorbachev sent Reagan a piece of the wall. He did that, but it doesn’t mean the Pope or Gorby himself didn’t play a part.
By the way, just so you don’t have a problem later, you’re not supposed to use the Wally in here.
Gorbachev does.
“I deem Ronald Reagan a great president, with whom the Soviet leadership was able to launch a very difficult but important dialogue. He displayed foresight and determination to meet our proposals halfway and change our relations for the better, stop the nuclear race, start scrapping nuclear weapons and arrange normal relations between our countries.”
I think Reagan’s greatest legacy was the transfer of wealth from the middle class to the very rich, after all “the rich are the people that make the country work.” (R. Limbaugh) As some have said RR was the greatest president of the 20th century (Bob Novak) and the greatest military genius of all time. (Phyllis Schlafly.) Instead of putting Reagan on Mount Rushmore maybe we should rework the entire mountain into his likeness, who needs Jefferson and Lincoln (who Novak said Reagan could give Abe a run for his money) when you can have RR. Seriously this idolatry is getting ridiculous how can the great depression and WW2, the most destructive conflict in human history and the pivotal events of the 20th century compare with the 1980s. I will never forgive Reagan and the great American hero Oliver North for selling weapons to terrorists (Iran).
I’m not gonna touch that, but the ‘idolatry’ comment reminded me: in recent years, various Republicans have proposed that just about anything that isn’t nailed down be named after Reagan. (I’m waiting for one to propose that we rename the moon The Ronald Reagan Earth Satellite. ;))
The latest one I remember was about putting his picture on the dime in place of FDR, which Nancy herself shot down. It’ll be interesting to see what happens on that front now.
Ah yes. That clearly mentions glasnost.
They’re more organized than that. I give you The Ronald Reagan Legacy Project. I imagine they’re meeting this very morning to reinvigorate their efforts.
(I find your Moon proposal intriguing, and would like to subscribe to your newsletter. 
)
Yes, but such a claim fails to explain:
(1) Why the increases in personal and corporate income tax revenues between 1986 and 1987 were so much steeper than the increase in social security revenues.
(2) Why these increases were so much more dramatic than the increases in the previous and following years.
I admit that I would like to find some more definitive info on exactly what tax laws changed between 1986 and 1987. And perhaps there are other explanations here. (Was the stock market increase, and thus capital gains increases, particularly dramatic for just that one year period?) However, just saying “tax revenue primarily increased due to increased prosperity” does not adequately explain the features that I have noted.
Just as a correction of fact: There is in fact zero evidence that today’s technology can even handle a couple of warheads (or even one). What they have succeeded in doing is hitting a warhead with the kill vehicle about half the time in simplistic tests…and impressive engineering feat no doubt…but they are still far from showing that they can do the task under true operational conditions where a variety of more difficult factors come into play.
Not the moon, but perhaps the ISS, which was the expensive boondoggle by which Reagan gutted America’s space program. Naming the realized vison after the man who inspired it would be quite fitting.
Well, no. See, what’s gonna happen is that you’ll be just one of the legions of people buying me drinks. And I kinda assumed that doubles were a given.
And I’m really sorry, but Reagan’s advance team got National goddamned airport named after him. And while I seriously doubt that I’ll be taking in Mt Rushmore anytime soon, if I hafta look at that schmuck every time I pull change from my pocket, well. . .I’ll just stamp my feet and toss my pretty hair, I will.
Although, considering how many people were left with only a single dime, maybe it’s fitting.
I hasten to remind you that:[ul][li]That 70% income tax bracket only applied to those at the very top end of the taxable-income spectrum, and[/li]
During President Eisenhower’s administration – during which the U.S. economy was stupendous – the top income tax rate was over 80%.[/ul]
During Reagan’s administration, the proposed space station was going to be called “Space Station Freedom” and was going to be an exclusively American venture.
It was only during the Clinton administration that the space station became an international venture and got renamed the ISS.
Furthermore, a space station had always been on the drawing board at NASA. The Space Shuttle was named that because it was supposed to shuttle astronauts and cargo from the Earth’s surface to the hypothetical space station we were eventually going to have in low Earth orbit. If anything deserves the credit for gutting America’s space program, it’s the Shuttle.
However, I think it was Reagan’s grandiose vision that pushed the station over the top into the resource devouring boondoggle that it became. We got a mansion in the sky when another orbiting trashcan would have served us just as well.
Sorry if I went a bit over the top in implying that gutting NASA was a Reagan plan in my earlier post. I see the ISS as more of a vision that didn’t work out so well. Can’t fault Reagan’s intentions with it, but the realization sucks, regardless of his intentions. And you’re right that the shuttle deserves some derision. There’s plenty of blame to spread around here.
I’m not sure I understand. Are you saying that taxes were increased for one year and then decreased the next? That seems an unusually odd circumstance. Especially for the dramatic revenue change you noticed.
tee hee. 
jshore: I confess I’m a bit surprised by your being flumoxed. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 was, to me, the single best piece of legislation ever passed. THAT is what is responsible for the figures you see.
The entire structure of the tax code changed, in a grand compromise between the left and the right. Deductions were sharply curtailed, and capital gains taxed at the same rate as ordinary income, in return for a sharp reduction in the marginal rate all the way back to 28%. Precisely as anyone would predict, once the tax code became more rational, collections went up and instead of having a recession, which would have been normal by then, as the average expansion lasts 5 or 6 years, the economy kept chugging along until Saddam invaded Kuwait.
Reagan gets credit for that in my eyes as he was behind the push for it and signed it even though many pieces of the legislation went against his ideology. But number one with him was lowering the marginal rate, so he was willing to compromise in a number of other areas in order to get that.
Re the corporate income tax: I’ve read that it was increased by that tax act, but I really don’t know. But given what you’re seeing, that’s probably what happened.
Google is your pal.
Team B was the special group created when Reagan’s people felt the CIA wasn’t being alarmist enough about the Soviets. Since it’s job was to play up the Soviet threat instead of deliver intelligence, it did just that, and Reagan used its crummy info to convince the American public that the threat was much bigger and more dangerous than it actually was, keeping quiet intelligence reports that said otherwise. History has proven the estimates of Team B to be laughably wrong, and the CIA’s to be far more accurate. Team B allumns include a cast of characters that will be familiar to anyone familiar with the current administration, back when they were younger bucks.
Now, that’s not necessarily so bad: Reagan didn’t do this to create a war, in his mind he did it to prevent it. And his strategy essentially worked.
Of course, conservatives would like to erase both that from history as well as what happened later in Reagan’s presidency, when he drastically eased up on the Soviets and declared his hope that we would both abolish nuclear weapons. Just like the liberal media erases from existence any talk of Martin Luther King’s activities and positions post the Civil Rights era, the conservative worship bios leave out things like the way they criticized him for going soft on the Soviets or the way he quietly oversaw the largest tax INCREASE so far in the century (something, to be fair, even Reagan wouldn’t quite admit to himself he had allowed to happen). Bush Sr. instead is handed all the blame and said to have squandered Reagan’s promise, even though telling that story requires a fairly gross distortion of the facts.
Sorry, that should largest corporate tax increase.