Ted Cruz's father Rafael Cruz in taped speech: Suggests that Barack Obama is a "Muslim", says that Obamacare provides "suicide counseling" and that the "RINO's" should be replaced by "Constitutional Conservatives" - In earlier interview Rafael Cruz says that his son is "destined for greatness", and explains how he politically educated him

Ted Cruz appearing together with his father Rafael Cruz

By Patrick

The rise of Ted Cruz also put a spotlight on his father Rafael Cruz, who is a radical right-wing pastor in North Texas. At closer inspection, it becomes apparent that Rafael Cruz had a significant influence on Ted Cruz's political beliefs, and they both appeared together numerous times.

Just a few days ago, a tape was published with excerpts from a speech by Rafael Cruz at the Adams County GOP Lincoln Dinner in Thornton, Colorado, which took place on September 27, 2013. At this event, Rafael Cruz was not shy to show his true colors: He made it absolutely clear that he agrees with the notion that President Obama is a "Muslim", he used outrageous lies to rant against Obamacare and he wants the "RINO's" to be thrown out of the Republican Party.

(via "Political Carnival" and "Talking Points Memo")

Watch:

Kathleen transcribed these remarks by Rafael Cruz:

Rafael Cruz: Obama's fault (inaudible)….shift on the side of the Muslims.

Woman: He is a Muslim.

Rafael Cruz: Pah! McCain couldn’t say that because it wasn’t politically correct. It is time we stop being politically correct!

Rafael Cruz: Our lives! Well look at what is happening to our lives. From the cradle, 55 million babies have been murdered by abortions since 1973. At the other end, Obamacare with denying care to the elderly with care being rationed, with care being postponed for twelve to eighteen months. With care being controlled by a group of bureaucrats that on the basis of cost benefit will decide whether you get a medical procedure or not they’re destroying our end of life. As a matter of fact one of the things in Obamacare is that for the elderly every five years you must have end of life counselling. Translation: Suicide counselling.

Rafael Cruz: I know that I am in an Republican Party meeting. If you want to throw tomatoes at me, throw tomatoes at me! But unfortunately, you cannot say that the Republican Party is without blame. We have too many RINO’s in the Republican Party! (Applause and whoops). They have their minds made up and basically their ideas is this “You are too stupid! I know what I am doing.” Well, I’ll tell you what, we the people are not stupid. We the people are smart enough to vote them right out of office or primary them and put constitutional conservatives in their place! (More whoops etc.)

But there are more facts about Rafael Cruz which are noteworthy. He himself is very proud that he apparently had a great influence on the political and religious beliefs of his son Ted, which Rafael Cruz explained in great detail in an interview from July 2013. There, he also claimed that his son Ted is "destined for greatness."

Watch:

Transcript via RightWingWatch.org:

David Brody, Christian Broadcasting Network: Talk me about your son and his rise. This must be a thing of God. It's meteoric.

Cruz: Yes, but you know something, it is not something that started a couple of years ago. Let me just go back to when he was maybe four. When he was four I used to read Bible stories to him all the time. And I would declare and proclaim the word of God over him. And I would just say, ‘You know Ted, you have been gifted above any man that I know and God has destined you for greatness’. And I started making declarations about the Word of God to him every day. When he was eight years old I was very active in an organization called the Religious Roundtable.

...

This was a coalition of Christians and Jews who was very instrumental in helping Reagan get elected. I was on the state board of the Religious Roundtable, so when my son Ted was eight years old, all we talked about around the dinner table was politics because I was so involved with the Reagan campaign. So during that time is when I asked him so many times, ‘You know Ted, when I lost my freedom in Cuba I had a place to come to. If we lose our freedoms here where are we going to go? There is no place to go.’

...

Ted enters high school, the Free Enterprise Institute organizes a group of five kids, called them the Constitutional Corroborators, now Ted is reading the The Federalist Papers, The Anti-Federalist Papers, and each of the five kids memorized the entire US Constitution.

...

So before my son left high school he was passionate about the constitution. He was passionate about freedom and free markets and limited governments. Before he left high school he knew without a shadow of a doubt what his purpose in life was and it was to defend and protect freedom and the Constitution, to fight for free markets and limited government, and it became a passion in his life. So this is not a trajectory of three years, this is a trajectory of 30 years.

This is interesting. Knowing how Ted Cruz was indoctrinated by his radical father from a very early age onwards, it is much easier to understand the "crusader" Ted Cruz these days - where he comes from, and why it is virtually impossible for him to agree on a compromise. For true "crusaders", there can be no compromise. It is all or nothing.

When it comes to crusading, Ted's father Rafael Cruz certainly aspires to be on the forefront: In another  "rousing" speech, this time from July 2013 at a Tea Party event in Dallas reported by RightWingWatch.org, Rafael Cruz demanded more political participation by evangelical Christians and said that "we have what we deserve, we have allowed the wicked to rule us", and claimed: "We could take every position in office, from dogcatcher all the way to the highest position in life."

In this speech, Rafael Cruz also says that the US Constitution and the Declaration of Independence are "divine revelations from God." 

Watch the excerpts:

The full speech by Rafael Cruz from this event can be viewed here.

Rafael Cruz surely is on a "big tour" right now, appearing at many events, trying to rally the evangelicals. In yet another speech from August 2013 at the "Family Leadership Summit" in Iowa, he crusaded against gay marriage and declared that a godless "socialist" government is behind "homosexual marriage", trying to destroy "traditional marriage" as well as "loyalty to the family."

Quote (via "Burnt Orange Report"):

RAFAEL CRUZ: When you hear this attack on religion, it's not really an attack on religion. The fundamental basis is this: socialism requires that government becomes your God. That's why they have to destroy the concept of God. They have to destroy all loyalties except loyalty to government. That's what's behind homosexual marriage. It's really more about the destruction of the traditional family than about exalting homosexuality, because you need to destroy also loyalty to the family.

Watch:

Therefore Rafael Cruz is living the American dream like he sees it, preaching bigotry, hate and division as a pastor, tax-free and surely with substantial financial backing.

The "origins" of Rafael Cruz himself are murky, and just how he established himself in the USA as an immigrant from Cuba is clouded in a lot of secrecy. Ted Cruz himself claims that his father never was an illegal immigrant, and at this moment, we have to take his word for it, because evidence to the contrary is hard to come by  - although serious doubts about this bold claim certainly remain. The most extensive account of the "official" Cruz-family story can be found in an article by the Dallas Morning News from October 2011:

Cruz, though, has remained silent as others incorrectly placed his father among the many Cubans who left the island nation after Castro took power, rather than as someone who fought on the same side as Castro to topple a rightist dictator, though he departed for Texas before the revolution succeeded.

"He was a guerilla, throwing Molotov cocktails and blowing up buildings," Ted Cruz told the Austin American-Statesman for a profile published in January 2006.

Earlier this month, Liberty Institute president Kelly Shackelford introduced Cruz to 3,000 Christian conservatives at the Values Voters Summit in Washington, D.C., as "the next great conservative hope."

"He's the combination of the intellectual skill and principle of [Utah GOP Sen.] Mike Lee and the story, the personal story of a Marco Rubio -- his dad having escaped Fidel Castro, came into the United States, working as a dishwasher," Shackelford said.

Last month, a Houston Chronicle political blog described Cruz as "a Cuban American whose family escaped from Castro tyranny."

In an interview Monday, Cruz professed not to be aware of confusion about when his father, Rafael Cruz, left Cuba.

"If Kelly [Shackelford] said that, I did not notice that statement," he said. "That's certainly not something I say because it's not the case."

Cruz said he hasn't misled.

"I have many, many times described the full context of his fighting with [Fidel] Castro -- in the broader sense, ... not side by side, but on the same side as Castro," he said.

Shackelford, reached on Monday, said his point was the elder Cruz "came here for freedom" after being a "political prisoner."

"As to whether it was Batista or Castro [in power,] I'm like, it doesn't really matter," Shackelford said. "There was one dictator replaced by a future dictator."

Cruz, a former state solicitor general enjoying tea party and social conservative support, is one of four major Republican candidates in the March primary to succeed retiring Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison.

He said his father began fighting against Batista's regime when he was 14, in 1953. When the elder Cruz was 17, he was imprisoned and tortured by Batista's government, his son said. The next year, 1957, Rafael Cruz legally went to Texas on a student visa issued by the Batista regime, Ted Cruz said.

Ted Cruz, who opposes amnesty for illegal immigrants, said at no time was his father an illegal immigrant. He said his father, who graduated from the University of Texas in 1961, eventually became a permanent legal resident. The elder Cruz is now a U.S. citizen, living in Carrollton, his son said.

Ted Cruz said his father described himself as among young teenage boys who fought Batista and allied with Castro's forces because "they didn't know Castro was a Communist, what they knew was that Batista was a cruel and oppressive dictator."

Cruz said his father became a staunch critic of Castro, along with several family members who remained in Cuba, when the rebel leader took control and began seizing private property and suppressing dissent. Rafael Cruz' younger sister and their parents eventually made it to the U.S. during the 1960s, Ted Cruz said.

It is much easier to understand the current actions of Ted Cruz if one is aware of the details of the extremist political views of his very outspoken father, and of the role his father played in the political and religious education of Ted Cruz. 

The last thing the USA need right now are hard-right political and religious crusaders for who there can only be "victory or death", because anything else would be a betrayal of the just and righteous cause.

Ted Cruz surely is a dangerous extremist, but I am confident that the American people won't be fooled in the end and will reject him and his ilk.

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Read the follow-up at Politicalgates:

NEW VIDEO: Rafael Cruz, father of Senator Ted Cruz, caught lying on tape about President Obama, trying to discredit Obama's Christian beliefs - Watch the video evidence!

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"The radical religious friends of Senator Ted Cruz: Anointed by Dominionists who want to "wage war to restore America to our Judeo-Christian heritage" - The overlooked religious extremism of the new rising star of the GOP"

President Obama and Vice President Biden Are Doing Their Part Regarding Gun Control And Now Your Voices Need To Be Heard - UPDATE

By Kathleen

Yesterday, one month after the shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school, President Obama in a highly charged press conference revealed his "specific set of proposals" for gun control measures which it is hoped will reduce and deter escalating gun violence in the USA. The President's plan includes calls on Congress to renew the ban on assault weapons, which expired under the Bush government in 2004. Other measures include criminal background checks on gun purchases and a ten bullet limit for gun magazines.

President Obama and Vice President Biden have taken a comprehensive look at gun violence and gun policy in the USA and their efforts and leadership will hopefully be supported by you, the American people, who realise that present gun laws must be extended. Your voices need to be heard by organisations such as the NRA. Such organisations do not represent the American people but gun companies whose biggest sales happen to be assault weapons. Gun manufacturers are not interested in lives but the profits that they can gain for themselves. Enough already.

There are organisations out there that exist for you to express your voice in respect for the need for new gun policies that will reduce the impact of gun violence in the USA. Many of those organisations are working with the White House in order to bring about the change that is needed. I will leave a list of suggested organisations to contact at the end of this post.

Remember, it is no longer a question of IF gun control can become a reality but WHEN. America has passed the tipping point. It may take several years but gun control will be achieved.

Organisations such as the NRA know that a sea of change is heading towards them and that is why it is in full fail propaganda swing. The NRA recently released a TV advertisement campaign which has hindered rather than served its intention because they just had to get that dig in against the President by referencing his children. Gladly, shovelling shit against the tide has proved to be a pointless endeavour by the NRA. They merely succeeded in turning off many thinking people.

Furthermore, the NRA recently boasted that in the wake of proposed legislation from President Obama 100,000 people have joined their organisation in protest against what they think is an attack of their second amendment rights. However, millions of people across the USA support new initiatives for gun control and NOW is the time to join them and show your support for that change and the President's plan.

As I have suggested in a previous post YOU need to contact your elected officials and tell them that you want them to support President Obama's proposals. Now. Silence is no longer an option. You can be part of that sea of change.You can also donate to and join organisations working for gun control in the USA.Money is necessary to defeat the gun lobby and its propagandists. There is power in numbers and that is what really frightens the gun lobby which has had control of the message for far too long. As Ghandi once said "Be the change you want to see in the world".

Organisations working for Gun Control in the USA:

Brady Campaign an organisation which is devoted to creating an America free from gun violence, where all Americans are safe at home, at school, at work, and in their communities.

Americans for Responsible Solutions an organisation set up be Gabby Giffords, herself a victim of gun violence, and her husband in response to the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Will lobby Congress legislators for gun control measures which she feels are long overdue. 

Coalition to Stop Gun Violence comprises of forty eight national organisations working to reduce gun violence. 

Mayors Against Illegal Guns Most specifically concerned with the criminal use of illegally obtained guns. Illegal guns are not just a question of law and order but life and death. 

National Gun Victims Action Council  is a non-profit network of gun victims, survivors, the faith community and ordinary people leveraging their economic power to change America’s gun laws.

Violence Policy Center states that firearms are the only consumer product not regulated by a federal agency for health and safety. This unique exemption has been exploited by the gun industry as it has moved to embrace increased lethality as the foundation of its design, manufacturing, and marketing efforts in the wake of the long-term decline in household gun ownership. It believes that the answer to reducing gun violence lies in applying the decades-long lessons of consumer product safety regulation and injury prevention to the gun industry and its products.

Sandy Hook Promise a non-profit corporation created by members of the community of Newtown, Connecticut in response to the shooting on December 14, 2012, at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, which killed 20 children, four teachers and two administrators. Its mission is to work to identify and implement holistic, common sense solutions that will make our community and our country safer from similar acts of violence through education, outreach and grass-roots discussion. SHP believes the time has come to enter into these discussions with equal parts of Love, Compassion, and Common Sense.

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UPDATE (by Patrick):

When I today looked at the front-page of Huffington Post, it seemed to me that the "new civil war" finally is about to start. But what could be called "new civil war" does not mean that it will necessarily be a bloody one. Actually, such a thought would be horrendous and seems out of place. But it could be a war, nevertheless. The last stand of the Republicans. The black man is going to take their guns away (they want to make you believe). I guess America has to decide now in which general direction the country will be heading. It is "Game On", as far as I can see.

I would like to add a few bits and pieces to Kathleen's post.

I saw a tweet today by our wonderful reader ProChoiceGrandma in which she mentioned a shocking graphic which was published by the Canadian "National Post" in December 2012. The graphic shows in shocking detail what Aurora shooter James Holmes was wearing during his massacre in Colorado - and that virtually all pieces of his equipment were purchased online. The graphic speaks for itself - no more comment needed. But I still will say this: A country in which a mentally ill person can legally obtain this type of equipment is in deep, deep trouble. Not that we did not know that already.

Click on graphic to see it full-size (also HERE):

I saw another shocking graphic today. How many people in the USA have been killed by gun-shot wounds in the first 31 days after the Newtown massacre? Again, the Canadian National Post investigated and turned the result into a shocking graphic:

919 people have been killed by firearms in the USA during the first 31 days since the Newtown massacre. This number does not include unreported deaths, for example unreported suicides.

Click on graphic for large-size (also HERE):

So, what now? Will the USA change course and start to regulate gun ownership in a much stricter way?

Well, the USA has seen some examples of real gun control in the past, that's for sure! See to the famous words by Ronald Reagan, spoken in 1967:

“There’s no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons ... you don't settle anything by the citizens' taking the law into their own hands."

According to the "NRA standard of 2013", GOP-legend Ronald Reagan would have been an unconstitutional traitor. But Ronald Reagan got really, really scared after being confronted with the tactics by the "Black Panthers":

Having watched the "black man" carrying his guns openly, Ronald Reagan and friends had no hesitation to prohibit the public carrying of loaded firearms with the Californian Mulford Act from 1967. Somehow this was OK with the Second Amendment! Such traitors, these Californians, aren't they!

So this is what happens if angry black people carry their weapons openly in political demonstrations.

But what happens if angry white people do the same, like the supporters of (epically) failed Alaskan GOP Senate candidate Joe Miller, who back in 2010 proudly displayed their assault rifles during a rally for Joe Miller?

Video:

The answer: Nothing happens (of course).

I get the impression effective gun control in the USA will only be achieved if black people form their own militias. Call them something like "Angry Black Army Against Wingnuts" or "Obama's Armed Helpers", and you will see strict gun control enacted quicker then you can say "NRA"...!

But in order to get serious again:

You might not have seen this video with pro-gun nut Larry Ward, who was beautifully caught out in this great interview by film maker Annabel Park from December 2012:

Larry Ward is the same guy who seriously claimed just a few days ago on TV that slavery in the USA could have been prevented if the slaves would have been able to own guns:

Slaves....with guns? But, but...(trying to find words, not being able to).

(Isn't this like the Black Panthers having guns, actually...?)

So who is Larry Ward, the man with such great ideas? He is of course not just a "concerned citizen", but he is the CEO and President of "Political Media", a self-described "Republican new media consulting firm." He is an old veteran, as can be seen for example from his LinkedIn page:

Larry Ward brings over a decade and a half of marketing and advertising experience to Political Media, Inc. as its President and CEO.

In 2006, Larry used cutting edge political animations to help pass nine eminent domain initiatives across the country. They were also successful in a number of local, congressional and statewide primary elections.

During the 2004 campaign cycle, Larry harnessed advanced technologies to create a database of over 130 million opt in email addresses.

He also worked on President Bush’s 2004 campaign with several influential PAC’s, the US Chamber of Commerce and the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation to help turn out the African American Vote. Additionally, he consulted on five victorious Senate campaigns and fourteen top tier congressional races.

Larry burst onto the political scene in 2002 under the tutelage of world-renowned political consultant, and Fox News commentator Dick Morris. Using Dick’s political savvy and Larry’s online marketing expertise; the two were able to influence several key congressional and gubernatorial races across the country.

Currently, he sits on the Board of Directors of five major internet and direct marketing companies, a social security foundation and is a member of the Alliance for Retirement Prosperity founded by Jack Kemp and Dorcas Hardy.

These days, Larry Ward is apparently working for the NRA.

A very comical thing happened on the website of his company "Political Media" after the protest where he was interviewed by Annabel Park. They published an excerpt from a Breitbart article, which reads:

Man confronts anti-gun protesters, shouting, 'Arm the teachers!'

Tuesday, December 18, 2012 | Tony Lee | Breitbart

A man interrupted and confronted anti-gun demonstrators gathered near the NRA building in Washington, D.C. on Monday by yelling "Arm the teachers! Arm the principals!"

Larry Ward told MyFoxDC that he is a father of two young children; he confronted the protesters on the street and argued kids may be safer if school officials were armed.

"This principal in the school tried to defend the children and was killed for it," Ward said. "But if the principal tried to defend the children with a gun, perhaps (she) could have saved many lives."

Anti-gun activists began campaigns and demonstrations to pressure Washington to adopt stricter gun control laws after the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre.

Unfortunately, "Political Media" forgot to tell their readers that this "man", the "father of two children", was actually their own CEO!

Also, in the quoted Breitbart article, there is no mention of the fact that Larry Ward is just a Republican PR-guy - and not a random concerned citizen, despite this impression which is being deliberately created by Breitbart.

Finally, a little piece of humour again - the talented people at "Funny Or Die" already made a parody of the latest insufferable NRA-propaganda clip:

NRA - Stand and Fight Parody - watch more funny videos

It is difficult to keep the humour when confronted with the fanatics of the NRA, but I think the people at "Funny Or Die" handled it pretty well.

Good night, everyone!

The Fallacy of Reaganomics 3/3

by Nomad

Facts are stubborn things.  -Ronald Reagan

Marketing the Pitch

Between Words and Deeds

If Ronald Reagan hadn’t existed, then the neo-conservatives would have had to invent him. In some respects, that’s exactly what they did. It seems sadly ironic that Reagan is more valuable as a myth to the Republican party than when he was a living president. He has allowed them to hold on to a very useful fantasy. Moreover, he has been used time and time again to justify inexcusably outrageous tax cuts for the minority of the population that clearly needs them the least. Besides, it would highly embarrassing to have the real Reagan contradicting his own myth-makers and exposing them as hypocrites and frauds.

Still, for anybody who actually lived during the Reagan years and paid any attention whatsoever, the repeated make-overs, the erasures and exaggerations can be irritating, astounding and, at times, just plain amusing.

Brokaw: Hiding the lies

Here’s a case in point. As far as back as 1983, people were beginning to whisper about the fashion sense of Emperor Ronald. In an interesting interview by Frank Browning of Mother Jones Magazine, NBC reporter Tom Brokaw said with admirable bluntness,

I thought from the outset that his "supply side" theory was just a disaster. I knew of no one who felt that it was going to work, outside of a small collection of zealots in Washington and at USC (The University of Southern California) Arthur Laffer, Jack Kemp. What I thought was quite outrageous was that the business community which for years had carped and complained that it could never get a president sympathetic to its needs, finally got its champion, Ronald Reagan. Then, to its horror, it discovered that he was actually going to press ahead with supply side- a theory who disastrous consequences businesspeople began to prepare for, but did not publicly warn the rest of the country about. They knew it simply could not work. But they did was look to their own little life raft and not to anyone else's.

Browning asked Brokaw what made Reagan special in terms of his relationship with Big Business. Haven't all presidents in the last 30 years, he asked, been sympathetic to big business? Brokaw responded:

Big Business has more access to him. There's less to offset big business' influence on Ronald Reagan from a political point of view, than there has been on any other president in the past. Even Richard Nixon has a stronger sense of what was politically possible and what was not.

The interviewer then turns the tables on Brokaw.

Browning: As we sit here talking, your comments on Reagan, the Corporate President, are sharp and incisive. Yet when you covered the same territory on television, in the midterm special, it all seem like so much mishmash. The points were diffuse and it felt superficial.

Why didn't he speak so courageously on the air, when it counted? the writer asks. Brokaw tried to dodge the question by discussing the same point made in a cartoon. (That all-of-us-are-to-blame defense.) Finally, he lamely admitted, "I suppose your point is well-taken."

Browning: You just criticized members of the business community for keeping their mouth shut even though they knew Reagan's ideas were idiotic.
Brokaw: Right.

Browning: Now I suppose you can't say the president is an idiot on national television. But aren't you guilty of the same thing?

Brokaw: You would have been happier if I had just said. "Maybe the business community will finally have the courage to tell this guy to his face that his program is not working."

Browning: That would have been a lot straighter.

Brokaw: But part of what governs our thinking is the whole business of "Is it balanced? Is this a fair and balanced program? The Washington Post said our program was quite tough on the president. I thought it was a fair report on what people are saying."

Basically he is rationalizing that unbiased reporting was more important than simply telling the truth. Brokaw unconvincingly attempts to hide behind phony insecurities of fairness (using that now-dreadful phrase “fair and balanced”). This has become the excuse de jour for all mainstream media, as if being balanced permits a journalist to hide the truth.
Yet, there’s more than meets the eye in the interview. The thing that Brokaw fell just short of saying, but the point that the interviewer successfully exposed is that when it came to revealing to American public the truth about Reagan and his economic plan, Tom Brokaw had become just as much of a deceiver as big business. Perhaps his guilt was even greater since it was specifically his job to inform the public- not big business.  Still, what even the Mother Jones interviewer naively failed to note was that Brokaw, as a top reporter for NBC, was little more than a hired spokesperson for the very same corporations he had just hypocritically derided. 

Brokaw: Promoting the legend

One may or may not forgive Brokaw’s past shortcomings but how can one excuse the same hypocrisy to a new naive generation? In February of 2011, now “legendary” Tom Brokaw found himself at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, moderating a two-day discussion panel on the legacy of Ronald Reagan before a crowd of more than 500 students, scholars and Reagan admirers.

"A pure product of Main Street, Heartland America. He even looked the part,” he told the audience,”"People were comfortable with him from the very beginning."

Terms like "product" and "looking the part" are hidden messages lost on the adoring crowd. The underlying message is public relations- the bastard son of leadership. Meanwhile, other speakers took up the usual Reagan refrains, slipping into the well-trodden land of Reagan fantasyland. As another speaker said..

"Ronald Reagan was a great president, and he will be remembered in history for one thing, winning the Cold War," exclaimed Reagan biographer Lou Cannon to a standing room only crowd.

The ironies do not stop there. The event was organized by various partnering foundations at the USC- that’s correct, at the University of Southern California- the very spot Brokaw sneered at in 1983 as being a hangout of Reagan zealots. 

Proving that truth sometimes spills out even in the most unlikely and unpromising situations, another speaker, Richard Reeves, author of "The Last Campaign: Legacy," an academic paper prepared for the symposium, astutely noted:

"Reagan was not a great president but was great at being president.... He understood that words were often more important than deeds for the leader of a sprawling and diverse nation..”

So much could be read into a statement like that and yet, so few people seem to have the courage (or perhaps the integrity) to come right out and say what the historical evidence clearly proves. Even now, among certain quarters, the truth must be left to cryptic blurbs and subtle remarks. 

Columnist Matt Lewis notes, General Electric,  the 6th largest firm in the U.S, as well as the 14th most profitable, ran ads honoring the 40th president's legacy --and donated $10 million to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Library, along with additional $5 million in scholarships. Even though they could never admit it, historical research reveals that General Electric owes Ronald Reagan a lot more than that "chicken feed."

Reagan and the General Electric Theater

It should surprise nobody that NBC Nightly News anchor Brokaw would have been a tad reluctant to expose Reagan. After all, General Electric, the 10th largest corporation in the United States owned NBC Nightly News.  It was also a major defense contractor and an international player on the world market. Brokaw knew what most people who work for large corporations understand without being told: There are things you should and should not do. 

Reagan had worked for GE before his political career. It was a lucrative relationship. He had worked eight years as host (and part owner) of GE Theater, a popular TV show  starting September 26, 1954 and ending May 27, 1962.  Wikipedia tells us:

...Reagan estimated he had visited 135 GE research and manufacturing facilities, and met over a quarter-million people. During that time he would also speak at other forums such as Rotary clubs and Mooselodges, presenting views on economic progress that in form and content were often similar to what he said in introductions, segues and closing comments on the show as a spokesman for GE.

Over time, Reagan was becoming increasingly political. According to Reagan biographer Michael Schaller, 

Year in and year out, in speeches he wrote himself, Reagan warned audiences about the perils of big government, creeping regulation and communism. Corporate leaders, he argued, defended American freedom, depsite the burden of high taxes, impediments to the free market and other anti-business measure imposed by Democrats.

The love affair between GE and Reagan ended suddenly, according to biography notes. Reagan was dismissed in response to his reference to the TVA as one of the problems of "big government." That's the official story. (Ratings for the show had also been declining.) During this time, Reagan seems to have undergone a kind of political grooming -with the kind assistance of GE. According to GE website:

At the time, GE published four publications and all were required reading for the president. These newsletters and magazines covered topics ranging from government and the economy, to company bowling results. Reagan used the material to communicate more effectively when giving speeches and talking informally to thousands of GE factory workers.

Train travel and chauffeured car trips to company plants, allowed him to read the economic texts of writers Henry Hazlitt and Louis Haney and immerse himself in Sun Tzu’s “Art of War” and Friedrich Hayek’s economic and political writing. Both Hazlitt and Haney were especially influential in shaping Reagan’s views on deficit spending. From an article in “The Forum” (A GE defense quarterly) came the seeds for the Strategic Defense Initiative.

Eventually, Democrat GE spokesperson Reagan would transform, like a political butterfly, into Republican candidate Ronald Reagan. So this sudden break, GE's decision to fire Reagan because of his outspoken political views, was it all just a bit of theater on General Electric's part?

President Dwight Eisenhower on January 17 1961 delivered his famous farewell address to the nation. In it, he warned the American people of the dangers of the unregulated growth of the military industrial complex
.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Just over a year later, Ronald Reagan's political career began. Once president, Reagan  oversaw the largest peace-time military build-up in history, leaving GE millions of dollars richer. That was just the beginning.

According to a report by Boston-based INFACT, GE's nuclear weapons prime contract awards increased threefold during the Reagan years-- from $2.2 billion in 1980 to $6.8 billion in 1986. GE's 1988 annual report cites aerospace as one of the big growth areas in its operations. Much of its income in this field derives from government contracts. The report notes that GE revenues for aerospace operations were 22 percent higher in 1987 over 1986, increasing from $4.3 billion to $5.2 billion. There was also the  B-1 bomber program in 1981 represented one of GE's most lucrative contracts, in spite of the fact that the bomber has long been discredited as a viable or necessary weapon.

Hold on.. there's one more piece to the puzzle. The hardest part to swallow perhaps. The biggest shame of the Trickle Down lie.

As Reagan second and final term wound down to a depressing end- plagued with scandal and questions about Reagan's fitness for office, GE Chief Executive Officer, Jack Welch was launching a new direction for the company, earning his the nickname "Neutron Jack" because, like the Neutron Bomb, he left factories standing but decimated the workers.  In Jack: Straight From The Gut, Welch states that GE had 411,000 employees at the end of 1980, and 299,000 at the end of 1985. 

Writer John Summa gives this excellent account:

As GE's operating profits swelled..., its total workforce in the U.S. was cut by over 100,000, with more layoffs and plant shutdowns to come. GE has a "decidedly consistent policy to drive down labor costs worldwide," according to Peter Gilmore, director of public relations for the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE), a union representing many of GE's U.S. workers.

In addition to transferring jobs to Third World plants owned by the parent company, Gilmore says GE has been cited by Singapore union officials for shifting production from Singapore to Malaysia. There is evidence of "state, regional and international-level whipsawing" by GE, he says. Whipsawing refers to the attempt to play one workforce off against another, or others, in order to force greater concessions. Not only is GE shifting production from the U.S. to the Third World, it is also exploiting wage differentials in the Third World itself.

"There has been a tremendous reduction in the U.S. workforce in the last couple of years," says Gilmore, "especially since Welch took over in 1982." The work currently being done at GE's Juarez maquilladora plant in Mexico, he says, used to be done at the Decatur, Indiana plant. Gilmore adds that the Decatur workforce has a reputation for high productivity, flexibility and capability to implement prototypes.

And when Welch retired in 2001 with a net worth estimated at $720 million, one editorial gave this critique of his career at GE:

Welch has left behind communities across the United States suffering from mass layoffs and disinvestment. While it is hard to get a fix on the number of GE layoffs over the last two decades because of the constant churning of its businesses, GE has dismissed well over 100,000 well-paid workers in the United States. It has undermined union power in the United States by shifting operations to non-union subcontractors. It has practically abandoned its once-strong research-and-development infrastructure. It has compiled a shoddy record of repeat violations of workplace safety rules, defense contractor safeguards, and other public interest regulations, with workers’ lives put at risk and taxpayers bilked as result.

This is the true legacy of the Reagan revolution. Perhaps this is what it has always been about.

David Stockman's supply side economics-with its necessary reduction in military spending- was destined to be wrecked because, whether he knew it or not, Reagan was merely a carefully manufactured defense contractor spokesman. The real power holders, meanwhile, were already embarking on a plan to disengage from expensive American labor, effectively forcing the American worker to compete against the non-unionized Third World labor. 

Orthodoxy and Heresy

Even a casual mention of it brings inspired tears to the eyes of Reagan lovers and unleashes lavish praise on his memory. To steal a line from Shelley,

His name is Reagan, king of kings,

Look on his works, ye Mighty and despair!”

The economy did get better, they’ll tell you, you can’t deny that. Kevin Drum, writing for Mother Jones wearily attempts to rebut the orthodoxy that has become the rallying cry of every conservative Republican.

It's probably hopeless to take on the Reagan economic myth at this late date, but honestly, it's long past time to put it to rest. The truth about the '80s is far more prosaic: In 1979, Jimmy Carter appointed Paul Volcker chairman of the Federal Reserve. Inflation was running at about 12 percent when he took office, and Volcker immediately slammed on the monetary brakes in order to bring it down. Whether he was targeting interest rates or monetary aggregates remains a bit murky, but it hardly matters. In the end, he engineered one minor recession in 1980, and when that didn't do the trick, he tightened Fed policy even more and threw the economy into a second recession—this one extraordinarily deep and painful—which he maintained until 1982. When he let up, the economy recovered. Reagan had very little to do with it.

That’s the kind of heresy that makes a freedom-loving Reagan myth believers’ blood boil. Carter? The worst president ever? Not him, they’ll tell you. Drum, however, persists:

But that's not all. If you're looking for other reasons that the 1980s were boom years, No. 2 would be oil prices. The American economy is highly sensitive to oil prices, and after peaking at around $100 per barrel during the Iranian revolution (in inflation adjusted terms), oil prices steadily dropped, falling below $30 in 1986 (again, in inflation adjusted terms). This was largely due to

(a) reduced demand thanks to the recession;

(b) reduced demand thanks to CAFE (The Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards and other conservation/efficiency improvements that followed the oil shocks of the '70s;

(c) increased oil supply from Prudhoe Bay, which peaked in the early '80s; and

(d) increased oil supply thanks to a Jimmy Carter executive order ending price controls on oil.

Again, Ronald Reagan had very little to do with it.

And guess who agrees with that assessment? None other than the original whiz kid, David Stockman, Reagan’s unhappy budget director.

But when, in the following years, the Federal Reserve chairman, Paul Volcker, finally crushed inflation, enabling a solid economic rebound, the new tax-cutters not only claimed victory for their supply-side strategy but hooked Republicans for good on the delusion that the economy will outgrow the deficit if plied with enough tax cuts.

And the problem with tax cuts is that, while decidedly popular with the electorate, (who doesn't want free money? And, as they say, it's OUR money anyway!) without spending cuts, these tax cuts inevitably lead to enormous debt . Add a blank check for an unnecessary two-front war,  throw in astronomical oil prices, ladle in a few dollops of overcharging by no-bid contractors.. and the results were as predictable as they were disastrous.

Economist Paul Krugman, Professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, Centenary Professor at the London School of Economics, also takes on the dogma:

…(T)he claim, quite common on the right, that the US economy was stagnant until Reagan did away with those nasty New Deal policies — a claim that is simply, flatly, false. The era of strong unions, high minimum wages, high top marginal tax rates, etc. was also a period of rapid growth and rising living standards. That doesn’t prove causation; it does disprove the widespread dogma that these things are always economically devastating. And it’s telling that so many on the right have airbrushed the whole postwar generation out of history,

Airbrushing Ronald Reagan has become a full time job and for authors who place writing a bestseller over writing an honest history, it has become a career in itself. The legacy of Ronald Reagan is permenantly under construction, with new additions to the myth being added by plutocrats, hack journalists, but especially by Republican candidates looking to add a little false glory to their pathetic lack of leadership.

The Current Mess

Journalist Will Bunch, a senior writer for the Philadelphia Daily News and author of Tear Down This Myth: The Right-Wing Distortion of the Reagan Legacy, Bunch argues that the Reagan legacy was created largely by Washington conservatives in the 1990s, who wanted a hero who they could associate with the conservative agenda.

It's been very hard for the modern generation of Republicans to develop a leader... who has the kind of charisma that Ronald Reagan has had.” In the absence of that charisma, the next generation decided to "borrow it" from the past.

Borrow is a mighty charitable word when “dream it up” and "hijack" are so much more accurate.

Sometimes it’s hard to know precisely whether the sycophantic Reagan devotees actually believe the myth or whether it merely suits their purposes. Despite all evidence to the contrary, the GOP candidates seemed determine to continue regurgitating the same Reagan nonsense. However, like a lot of the fallacies about Reagan, there is a major difference between what occurred on his watch and what he was actually responsible for. It’s something that so many die-hard Republicans fail to grasp, no matter how much you try to explain. No, Reagan did NOT bring down the Soviet Union. He was only president when it occurred. No, Reagan did not create the economic miracle, he just happened to witness it and took the credit for it.

It works to the advantage of the 1% to promote such nonsense and it has been proven- at least, up to the moment- that repeatedly uttering Reagan's name does tend to hypnotize conservative, especially Tea Party, voters. (Clinically it's not really hypnotism. More akin to tonic immobility- a natural state of paralysis that animals enter, in most cases when presented with a threat.) 

If this re-writing of the Reagan history seems like childish nonsense, then just listen to presidential candidates. 

Mitt Romney, ever the flip-flopper, really can not decide how he stands on Reagan. He isn't a Reagan fan but then he is. Then again, who knows? It's hard to name any issue that Romney is 100% firm about.

When Rick Perry was confronted with facts, on the usually fact-deprived stage of Fox News, he once again pulled out the trickle-down hand puppet.

(Perry) told Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace this morning that his 20 percent optional flat tax plan would help “job creators” create 2.5 million new jobs in America. When Wallace noted that high-income Americans would benefit the most from Perry’s plan, the governor responded that “they’ll invest in companies and create jobs.”

He also dismissed Wallace’s assertion that “even conservative think tanks” believe that Perry’s economic proposal would massively increase federal deficits. But he took his plan’s projected loss of $4.7 trillion in federal revenue over six years (that’s his campaign’s projection) as a badge of honor.

“There’s nothing wrong with lower revenue,” he said.

This is a man that wishes to be president? Is this what the bottom of the barrel looks like? No, THIS is what the bottom looks like.

Presidential candidate Michele Bachmann likes to promote that same illegitimate imaginary myth about the Reagan revolution, presumably basing her enthusiasm on solely faith or fantasy. It's very doubtful she actually understands what she is says.

“We had an economic miracle in the 1980s under Ronald Reagan and I want to bring those positive solutions into the tax code and get rid of the current mess that we have and put in a living laboratory of what worked in the 1980s.”

Here's Sarah Palin- the woman who is not running- putting Reagan name-dropping to its supreme test in just another effort to get herself some undeserved attention. Like a lot of things she does, she carries it too far, to the very edge of parody. Palin invokes Reagan's name so often and so unnecessarily that she threatens to reduce the whole technique to burlesque. No wonder the GOP finally had to warn her.

It is highly doubtful whether a resuscitated Reagan would ever approve of the way his name has been used to absolve the profligacy of the neo-conservatives of this day and age. Sadly we have no way of knowing what Reagan himself might think of the contorted path the Neo-conservatives have taken the country down. We do, however, have the supply side economists to turn to. 

Hindsights of the Economists

Interestingly, the early advocates of “supply side economics” are the ones who are now most vociferous in their criticisms of the present day GOP. Surprisingly perhaps, Dave Stockman turns out to be the most strenuous critic of what he sees as a misrepresentation of the Reagan policy, misrepresentations by the Republicans leaders. He doesn’t mince his words in his condemnations. In an op-ed piece for the New York Times in 2010, Stockman states:

If there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing. The nation’s public debt — if honestly reckoned to include municipal bonds and the $7 trillion of new deficits baked into the cake through 2015 — will soon reach $18 trillion. That’s a Greece-scale 120 percent of gross domestic product, and fairly screams out for austerity and sacrifice. It is therefore unseemly for the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, to insist that the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers be spared even a three-percentage-point rate increase.

Ouch! But.. but Mitch sounds so believable! Stockman, who was once so naive, now holds back none of his venom:

Republicans used to believe that prosperity depended upon the regular balancing of accounts — in government, in international trade, on the ledgers of central banks and in the financial affairs of private households and businesses, too. But the new catechism, as practiced by Republican policymakers for decades now, has amounted to little more than money printing and deficit finance — vulgar Keynesianism robed in the ideological vestments of the prosperous classes.

According to Stockman, the neo-conservatives in the Republican party are little more than traitors to the party.  

This approach has not simply made a mockery of traditional party ideals. It has also led to the serial financial bubbles and Wall Street depredations that have crippled our economy. More specifically, the new policy doctrines have caused four great deformations of the national economy, and modern Republicans have turned a blind eye to each one.

Perhaps Stockman needs to read up on Bryan. Being extraordinarily kind and accommodating to the wealthy class has always been a traditional Republican party ideal. Between the two parties, Stockman does find most fault with the Republicans.

This debt explosion has resulted not from big spending by the Democrats, but instead the Republican Party’s embrace, about three decades ago, of the insidious doctrine that deficits don’t matter if they result from tax cuts.

In 1981, traditional Republicans supported tax cuts, matched by spending cuts, to offset the way inflation was pushing many taxpayers into higher brackets and to spur investment. The Reagan administration’s hastily prepared fiscal blueprint, however, was no match for the primordial forces — the welfare state and the warfare state — that drive the federal spending machine.

This was pretty much- sorry, exactly- what Stockman had revealed in The Atlantic article back in 1981. 

There’s was never really any Reaganomics. No real world application of supply-side. The real world never allowed it. Between the two favorite millstones of both the Democratic and Republican party, the possibility of ever having a balanced budget was quite impossible.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, considered by many to be the father of Reaganomics, appears to think that the present species of neo-conservatives, though they regularly use Reagan’s image, a have very little real ideological connection to the man. In his opinion, the neo-cons, particularly the ones that emerged in the George W. Bush’s administration, have effectively hijacked the Reagan revolution for their own purposes. Prepare yourself to gasp. Roberts claims:

Reagan was certainly no neoconservative. He went along with some of their schemes, but when neoconservatives went too far, he fired them. George W. Bush promotes them.

Reagan wasn't a neo-conservative? Hmmmm, try telling that to Fox News.

We have reached a point where the Bush administration is determined to totally eclipse the people. Bewitched by neoconservatives and lustful for power, the Bush administration and the Republican Party are aligning themselves firmly against the American people. Their first victims, of course, were the true conservatives.

Roberts still defends “supply-side” theory and the benefits it delivered. Failing to understand precisely how his ideas were used to serve a larger purpose, he still seems awfully naive when he defiantly states:

Supply-side economics made good on its promise, and Ronald Reagan delivered both the longest peacetime U.S. expansion and disinflation. This achievement has been buried under a pack of lies told by people whose reputations exceed what their integrity warrants. They succeeded in their goal of pushing the Bush Administration away from successful policies and toward self-destruction.

Not everyone was so impressed with the Reagan recovery. As Dinesh D'Souza, a former policy analyst in the Reagan White House, writing for Forbes Magazine back in 1997 points out,

During the recession of 1982 the poverty rate rose from 12% to 15%. Unemployment climbed sharply, from 7% to nearly 11%, which meant that 10 million Americans were out of work. High unemployment rates were due not just to the economic slowdown but also to larger changes in the economy. Foreign competition was forcing American companies to downsize and become more competitive.

Strikingly, despite the debate between the father and the whiz-kid, they are in agreement that the Republican neo-conservative movement of today has misused the economic and political philosophies espoused Reagan (if not actually applied) in order to create something Reagan himself would probably not recognize nor approve. 

Our present time, with the Republican party defying the will of the majority, the top tax bracket, the super wealthy are attempting to use every possible means to retain their wealth, even as the national economy sinks 

As William Jennings Bryan once said only a hundred years ago:

Against us are arrayed a comparatively small but politically and financially powerful number who really profit by Republican policies; but with them are associated a large number who, because of their attachment to their party name, are giving their support to doctrines antagonistic to the former teachings of their own party.

Amazing how some things never change. Except, now, of course, we have the nightly brainwashing by the Fox News propagandists telling how unfair it is to even think about asking the top 1 % to forgo their generous Bush tax cuts.  The script writers at Fox have double-downed efforts to paint Obama as some kind of socialist, communist, anarchist- anything but a realist. Why? Simply because Obama is demanding from those who have profited so much by this elaborate con game to pay some back before the whole country is reduced to poverty. So Hannity can be found nightly whining, "Where is our prosperity supposed to trickle down from?" O'Reilly pretends to be outraged and blusters:  "How dare Obama ask them to pay their fair share. Why it's class warfare!" 
To that, Bryan delivers this bit of advice.

No one has a right to expect from society more than a fair compensation for the services which he renders to society, if he secures more it is at the expense of some one else. It is no injustice to him to prevent his doing injustice to another.

Hear, hear, Mr. Bryan. Now let's tell that to the 1%. 

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Parts 1 The Fallacy of Reaganomics 
Part 2 -The Fallacy of Reaganomics