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Jimmy Carter's economy notwithstanding, his term was a warm and fuzzy time for me. The highlight was Camp David. Carter set a tone of decency and caring that I felt was a good antidote to what I saw as a divisive period of Nixonian republicanism. I cried in afterschool daycare when the radio announced Johnson wouldn't run, steamed through a grade school rally for Nixon in China, and gritted through the Ford succession. Carter wasn't my first choice- independent John Anderson was- but I was more than satisfied to watch the exit of those evil republicans and basked (for as long as it lasted) in the triumph of Democrats as they took the White House.
Then came Reagan. His victory was like a dagger through my heart. There were the reports of "glamor returning to Washington"; lavish cocktail parties; garish evening wear; wealth and affluence;, everything to hate for a young man with torn blue jeans who marched for the ERA, organized against nuclear energy, dreamed of a life of communal living, living the 'natural' life.
Carter/Reagan was my first presidential vote. It was the first time I invested so much emotional energy in the presidency. I got caught in the warm fuzzies of the Carter presidency during the Camp David accords in 1978 which helped bring Egypt and Israel closer. He was a champion of peace around the globe. I was fascinated by his championship of human rights as he challenged the Soviet Union and others to account for abuses and linked trade to compliance. And later he would complete negotiation of the SALT II nuclear limitation treaty with the Soviet Union.
Sure, there was the energy shortage, but he established a national energy policy and a new Department of Energy, and 'decontrolled' domestic petroleum prices to stimulate production. He expanded the national park system to include the protection of 103 million acres of Alaskan lands and established the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. President Carter signed 14 wilderness bills into law. The National Wilderness Preservation System went from 14 million acres to 80 million when he was done.
He created the Department of Education, actively enhanced the Social Security system, and appointed record numbers of women, blacks, and Hispanics to Government jobs . . .
The class of voters who worshiped Reagan did so because he gave them free reign to divide and conquer, not in pursuit of something productive or noble, but he gave aid and comfort to those who would spew unvarnished hatred, racism, and patriotic demagoguery in their pursuit of some fascist ideal of a society where all who didn't fall in line with their ideology were to be denied full benefit of basic amenities like jobs, marriage, investment, and representation in our government.
From his advocation of drug testing as a requirement for obtaining menial jobs and activities, to gerrymandered districts that couldn't elect substantial minorities to Congress, from his indifference to the growing AIDS epidemic, to his refusal to meet with the Congressional Black Congress, from his robbery of our hard earned tax dollars and his elimination of any tariff on money taken out of the country and the creation of tax shelters for his rich friends, to his elimination of numerous government programs that low and middle income individuals and families relied on to survive.
Many Americans, abruptly cut off from a welfare system that barely met basic needs, staggered into a newly created, two-tier wage system that provided less pay for new-hires for the same work performed alongside their more fortunate co-workers, with little or no benefits. Many immediately fell further behind because of the absence of basic health care, child care, and rental assistance, which many of the new positions would not provide. Reagan claimed that the increasing number of welfare recipients were an impediment to economic recovery, although welfare represented less than 1.5% of the budget.
"Trickle down", was his legacy. All of the excesses of his wealthy crowd have been trickling down on the rest of us as his rich juniors who make up less than 2% of our population have adopted his arrogant indifference to the plights of ordinary Americans in their desperate attempt to inflate their booty with the product of our hard earned sacrifices, and in their attempt to marginalize the concerns of the rest of us.
Trickle down. All hail the fascist king who taught us how to hate and conquer in the name of America. We will likely never outlive the damage he did to our great society.
Ronald Reagan's administration, at his direction, limited and sought to eliminate numerous government programs that low and middle income individuals and families relied on to survive. Many Americans, abruptly cut off from a welfare system that barely met basic needs, staggered into a newly created, two-tier wage system that provided less pay for new-hires for the same work performed alongside their more fortunate co-workers, with little or no benefits. Many immediately fell further behind because of the absence of basic health care, child care, and rental assistance, which many of the new positions would not provide.
One of the tactics used by Reagan, as he attempted to soften the political blow, was to call on private charities to absorb the burden of the disenfranchised poor without the benefit of federal support. The predictable result was a disintegration of an impoverished community, a disproportionate number black and Hispanic, labeled as greedy and excessive for accepting help which seldom brought them above poverty level. The Reagan administration claimed that the increasing number of welfare recipients were an impediment to economic recovery, although welfare represented less than 1.5% of the budget.
In response to the nation's burgeoning debt crisis, Reagan and his cronies in Congress made countless Americans ineligible for public assistance with an arbitrary adjustment of the levels of eligibility. Reagan's welfare reform movement gave the back of the hand to federal job training programs.
Reagan saw no need for the federal government to finance low income youngster's college education and sought to reduce the federal role in education altogether in his attempt to eliminate the Dept. of Education.
Funding for low and middle income housing assistance and community redevelopment was all but eliminated, creating a stagnation in the nation's poorest neighborhoods. The nation's poor were systematically locked out from opportunity and legislated into a state of perpetual depression, farmers and migrant workers, union laborers, industrial workers, and everyone else who was scraping by at or below poverty level.
Reagan compounded the alienation of the nation's poor by granting a massive tax break to those individuals and corporations that were already prospering. Although these well-off folk's traditional indifference to the needs of the nation's poor had led to the need for legislation that protected and enhanced equal opportunity, Reagan claimed that they would share their tax-break enhanced wealth. However, newly created tax shelters successfully trapped the wealth that was supposed to "trickle down" to the poor in the form of jobs and opportunity.
Investment schemes were encouraged and developed, such as IRAs and Money Market accounts. Government bonds were offered at low rates with anticipated high returns. This effort by Reagan and his congressional cronies was presented as an effort to encourage savings, which would, in part, justify the huge tax cuts to the upper end of the income scale. Naturally, the ones who benefited the most were those who already had enough money or income to invest the amounts needed.
The median income at the time for Blacks barely rose above $18,000 annually. The majority of lower income Americans put their money into passbook savings, if they had any money to save at all. To invest the amount of money needed to facilitate and maintain high-yield investment accounts, an investor would have to earn more than $22,000 annually. This largely excluded most black wage earners from these investment opportunities. Whites with median incomes over $24,000, not surprisingly, outnumbered black and Hispanic investors by as much as 6 to 1. The gap widened when considering longer term, higher yielding investments that required more capital, such as CDs, interest checking, U.S. government securities, and municipal and corporate bonds. The lack of substantial monetary investment is one reflection of the growing disparity between upper and lower income Americans.
The Reagan administration attacked every federal program that helped those at poverty level gain a foothold in a fast rising economy. Many who were denied access to public assistance slipped further into depression, invisible because of distorted and misleading figures on poverty and unemployment provided by the Reagan Labor dept. The overall projections did not illustrate the proportional plights of individual minority groups.
Despite the fact that many former welfare recipients eventually returned to work, 31% of adult blacks remained at poverty level compared to only 11% of adult whites. In the aftermath of the Reagan administration, black children made up 43% of the nation's poor. Reagan's insensitivity to the nation's poor was pointed up by his refusal to meet and work with members and leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus.
Instead of supporting badly needed legislation that would increase the minimum wage, he lobbied instead for a sub-minimum wage that he claimed would create new jobs for the nation's youth. Reagan ignored the fact that millions of Americans were working to support families with a wage that had become sub-minimum with no increase since '81.
Reagan sought to abolish the Small Business Administration which mostly assisted minority owned businesses, while at the same time, calling small business the "backbone of the American economy." Reagan appointed a pro-business Labor Relations Board to deflect the grievances of the nation's displaced workforce.
Reagan strongly supported legislation that would have outlawed federal-funding for abortions, a move that would mostly affect those who couldn't afford an abortion, leaving the affluent as the only group of females with the ultimate choice in their own pregnancy, and doom most low income women into poverty by forcing them to have a child they could not afford.
Reagan sought to limit the federal role in education by reducing the amount of money in the federal education budget. He appointed a controversial education secretary whose outspokenness on non-educational issues prevented a focus on school problems. Secretary Bennett then suggested, and it was subsequently disproved, that federal student aid was responsible for high tuition costs.
Reagan described congressional initiatives to lift the nation's poor out of poverty as misguided compassion. He admonished Americans to "Stand tall", but he repeatedly pulled the rug from under those who found themselves at the lower end of the economic spectrum. Many Americans never made their way across the abyss that Reagan created between the nation's rich and poor.
In many ways, Bush is the ultimate pretender. He is buoyed by a new class of neophytes who are encouraged by a revival of class warfare which, by no accident, hearkens back to the Reagan age of economic pyramids, money worship, and indifference to the poor except as footholds for a step up the ladder of affluence.
But we shouldn't forget that his father was replaced by perhaps one of the greatest presidents since Kennedy, Bill Clinton. For eight years we were blessed with all of the compassion of the Carter days, at home and abroad, with an economy that lifted all boats, rich and poor. Protecting the environment was back in the forefront and human rights around the world were influenced by a presidency that lead by the example of our military restraint and our emphasis on diplomacy.
I won't assert here that things won't get much worse while this band of corporatists reign. They almost assuredly will, possibly with much catastrophe. But there is a hope for a better tomorrow which will only come from our continued adherence to vigilance. We have to come to grips with our individual responsibility to that vigilance. We have to show up every day to make certain the government is representing all of the people; not just the corporate few who show up every day to collect our money. They will always fill the halls of Congress with their favors, bribes, and obstruction.
Through our virtue and our vigilance we must continue to advocate and petition our government to work for peace - here in the United States and around the world - with our voices, with our written appeals and protests, and with our actions.
Through our virtue and our vigilance we must keep ourselves informed about those issues and concerns which we entrust to the bidding of those in Congress; and we must thoroughly involve ourselves in the process of resolving those issues and concerns in tandem with our legislators by challenging ourselves to read, watch and listen; with a respect and a desire for understanding of differing views and opinions in our deliberation and debate.
Through our virtue and our vigilance we must, in our respect for democracy, value and protect the right to vote. With our full participation in the voting process we promote respect for our nation and each other, and help ensure an equal chance for representation for all of our citizens in the deliberations of our government. Our vote is the instrument of our collective conscience and our warrant to the realization of our freedom, our liberty, and our well-being.
Through our virtue and our vigilance we must challenge our government, ourselves, and one another, to act with more mercy and compassion as we marshal our resources to aid communities; to alleviate poverty, hunger, and want, here at home and around the world.
We must challenge ourselves to provide for the health needs of all of those who fall ill or injured in this country; to reach out to other countries to assist in the halting of the effects of deadly, infectious diseases and other illnesses; to provide full support and access for those with disabilities and handicaps.
We must challenge our government to make certain that there is adequate, safe, affordable housing for all; to provide emergency aid and assistance for our country; and when needed around the world, distributing these resources and this assistance in an equitable manner.
Through our virtue and our vigilance we must demand that our government promote and practice respect for the environment in our own lands and with respect for the sovereignty of those lands which don't belong to us. We must maintain these values as we protect the ground, water, and the air against pollution and abuse, by government, from industry, or from individuals.
We must challenge our government and ourselves to advocate and enforce these values; through the regulation of industry and of individuals; through enactment and enforcement of environmental laws; by our stewardship and expansion of those lands we recognize and designate as vital to the preservation of our ecosystem, to wildlife, and to the safety of the citizens of our communities.
We must foster in our government a respect for the preservation of the balance of all of nature and its right to coexist with humanity without risk of devastation, destruction, or disruption, or neglect.
Through our virtue and our vigilance we must foster and nurture our respect for each other; in the sharing of our burdens; in our willingness to make reasonable compromises; in our awareness and responsiveness to the needs and concerns of the least fortunate among us.
We must foster and nurture our respect for each other in the acceptance and appreciation of our differences- not merely to tolerate them- but to explore, celebrate and learn from our different backgrounds, our different abilities, our diverse heritages and nationalities, and our many different religions and beliefs.
Through our virtue and our vigilance we must challenge our government, and ourselves, to be humble; in our words and in our actions; in our acceptance of our mistakes; to admit when we act wrongfully as nations and individuals; to bend ourselves to judgment and lend our support to justice; We must accept our limitations and learn to accept help when offered.
Through our virtue and our vigilance we must instill in our lives and encourage in the acts of our government, a faithfulness to the values of honesty, integrity, and justice.
We must challenge and demand from our government, a respect for the privacy of individuals; the rights of individuals to due process of law; protection from unlawful or unreasonable surveillance and searches; protection from any actions by governments, groups, or individuals to suppress protest, dissent or disagreement.
We must challenge and demand from our government, protection from unlawful or unreasonable arrest, detention, separation or deportation; and the rights of individuals to be informed and to inform others of actions by the government or its agents to restrict, degrade, or eviscerate our life, liberty, safety, or freedom.
Through our virtue and our vigilance we expect and demand protection by our government from injury, abuse, exploitation, corruption, or enslavement.
We should demand protection of our natural resources from theft, abuse, or neglect, as well as, insurance against the unforeseen, sometimes destructive force of nature.
We should demand protection and defense against workplace abuse, accident, or neglect; defense against those who would do us harm, either as individuals or as a nation; and protection from the unreasonable and unlawful excesses and tyrannies of the majorities, in our government and wherever they threaten.
And hopefully, I believe, with faith and determination, we will put this terrible era of pain and neglect behind us. We did in the past. We can do it again.
While the people retain their virtue and vigilance, no administration, by any extreme of wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the government in the short space of four years. ~Abraham Lincoln
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