Scott Walker loves Freedom and Ronald Reagan so much...

[scott]

...that he was apparently willing to commit voter fraud to vote for him.

http://politicalwire.com/archives/20...or_reagan.html

Walker Claims He Voted for Reagan
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) talked to Right Wing News about voting for Ronald Reagan:

"I remember, I was a teenager, had just become a teenager and voted for Ronald Reagan -- limited government, you know, smaller government, lower taxes, strong national defense. You knew what you were getting. You knew how a Reagan administration, a Reagan presidency was going to be better for you."

One problem: Blogging Blue notes Walker wasn't old enough to vote in either 1980 or 1984 when Reagan ran for president.

[boutons_deux]

7 Things Republicans Would Be Shocked To Learn About Ronald Reagan

“Happy birthday to Ronald Reagan!” Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) tweeted on Thursday, swiftly followed by his Tea Party compatriot Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). While praise from this sort of Republican on what would have been President Reagan’s 103rd birthday isn’t surprising, it is somewhat ironic. Though Reagan was extremely conservative (often terribly so), he bucked the sort of hardline conservative line the Tea Party has become synonymous with repeatedly throughout his career in politics. Here are 7 Reagan moves that may well have led to his excommunication from today’s Republican Party if he were alive today:

1. Paved the way for Obamacare

Reagan’s health policy previewed Obamacare in three major ways. First, Reagan signed Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA), the law barring hospitals from turning away patients on grounds of their insurance or citizenship — a preview of Obamacare’s ban on insurance discrimination against individuals with preexisting conditions. Second, Reagan doubled the size of Medicaid over the course of his presidency to pay for all of those new uninsured patients — a huge Obamacare-style Medicaid expansion. Third, Reagan pushed something called Diagnosis Related Groups (DRGs), which essentially had the government set the prices Medicare was willing to pay for each Medicare admission rather than pay for reimburse doctors per cost. DRGs cut Medicare costs by $49 billion by 1986, proving a promising trial for the sorts of Medicare payment reform policies you can find in Obamacare.

2. Amnesty for undo ented immigrants

In 1986, Reagan signed the Simpson-Mazzoli Act, a bipartisan immigration reform bill that created a pathway to citizenship for 3 million undo ented immigrants. Simpson-Mazzoli is now referred to by some conservatives as the “Reagan amnesty,” and came up during both the 2007 and 2013 immigration reform debates.

3. Successfully pushed for an assault weapons ban

Before the National Rifle Association became what it was today, Reagan worked with them to ban guns. Specifically, automatic weapons: civilians were legally allowed to own fully automatic rifles until 1986, when Reagan signed the Firearm Owners’ Protection Act banning them. After his Presidency, Reagan backed the Brady gun law establishing many of the major restrictions on gun purchases today. His support for the 1994 Assault Weapon Ban pushed the ban to its two vote margin of victory — according to two of the Congressmen who made the difference.

4. Grew the federal government, big time

CREDIT: Ezra Klein

Reagan’s record belies his reputation as a huge foe of government. Reagan built a progressive tax system to fund Social Security, and funded the creation of a new federal department (the Department of Veterans’ Affairs). Much of Reagan’s spending, including his defense buildup, was funded by deficit spending. If Obama spent like Reagan, the deficit would be much, much higher.

5. Dealt with Russia to build a world free of nuclear weapons

Back when there was an actual Soviet Union, Reagan kicked off negotiations aimed at reducing the nuclear threat — negotiations that eventually morphed into the START treaty. In his memoir, Reagan wrote that “[m]y dream…became a world free of nuclear weapons.” After START expired in 2009, its replacement (NEW START) was ratified over the bitter objections of a majority of Senate Republicans.

6. Wanted to make millionaires pay more in taxes

Reagan despised tax loopholes that allowed millionaires to skate around their tax obligations. “Tax loopholes,” according to the Gipper, “sometimes made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying ten percent of his salary, and that’s crazy.” It’s crazy, he said, because the “truly wealthy” were avoiding “paying their fair share.”

7. Passed environmental regulations that are now being used to fight climate change

Make no mistake — Reagan bears significant responsibility for the climate emergency. But he also negotiated the Montreal Protocol, an international agreement got the whole world to clamp down on pollution that was tearing holes in the ozone layer. Today, the Montreal Protocol is being used to clamp down on the technology that replaced the ozone-depleting kind, which turned out to be a fairly significant contributor to climate change.

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2014/02/06/3258121/reasons-tea-party-hated-ronald-reagan/

[boutons_deux]

There’s been talk that George W. Bush was so inept that he should trademark the phrase “Worst President Ever,” though some historians would bestow that le on pre-Civil War President James Buchanan. Still, a case could be made for putting Ronald Reagan in the compe ion.

Granted, the very idea of rating Reagan as one of the worst presidents ever will infuriate his many right-wing acolytes and offend Washington insiders who have made a cottage industry out of buying some protection from Republicans by lauding the 40th President.


But there’s a growing realization that the starting point for many of the catastrophes confronting the United States today can be traced to Reagan’s presidency. There’s also a grudging reassessment that the “failed” presidents of the 1970s – Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter – may deserve more credit for trying to grapple with the problems that now beset the country, despite their other shortcomings as leaders.

Nixon, Ford and Carter won scant praise for addressing the systemic challenges of America’s oil dependence, environmental degradation, the arms race, and nuclear proliferation – all issues that Reagan essentially ignored and that now threaten America’s future.

By 1980, Reagan had become a pied piper luring the American people away from the tough choices that Nixon, Ford and Carter had defined.

Cruelty with a Smile

With his superficially sunny disposition – and a ruthless political strategy of exploiting white-male resentments – Reagan convinced millions of Americans that the threats they faced were: African-American welfare queens, Central American leftists, a rapidly expanding Evil Empire based in Moscow, and the do-good federal government.
In his First Inaugural Address in 1981, Reagan declared that “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”

When it came to cutting back on America’s energy use, Reagan’s message could be boiled down to the old reggae lyric, “Don’t worry, be happy.” Rather than pressing Detroit to build smaller, fuel-efficient cars, Reagan made clear that the auto industry could manufacture gas-guzzlers without much nagging from Washington.

The same with the environment. Reagan intentionally staffed the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department with officials who were hostile toward regulation aimed at protecting the environment. George W. Bush didn’t invent Republican hostility toward scientific warnings of environmental calamities; he was just picking up where Reagan left off.

Reagan pushed for deregulation of industries, including banking; he slashed income taxes for the wealthiest Americans in an experiment known as “supply side” economics, which held falsely that cutting rates for the rich would increase revenues and eliminate the federal deficit.

Over the years, “supply side” would evolve into a secular religion for many on the Right, but Reagan’s budget director David Stockman once blurted out the truth, that it would lead to red ink “as far as the eye could see.”

While conceding that some of Reagan’s economic plans did not work out as intended, his defenders – including many mainstream journalists – still argue that Reagan should be hailed as a great President because he “won the Cold War,” a short-hand phrase that they like to attach to his historical biography.

However, a strong case can be made that the Cold War was won well before Reagan arrived in the White House. Indeed, in the 1970s, it was a common perception in the U.S. intelligence community that the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union was winding down, in large part because the Soviet economic model had failed in the technological race with the West.

That was the view of many Kremlinologists in the CIA’s analytical division. Also, I was told by a senior CIA’s operations official that some of the CIA’s best spies inside the Soviet hierarchy supported the view that the Soviet Union was headed toward collapse, not surging toward world supremacy, as Reagan and his foreign policy team insisted in the early 1980s.

The CIA analysis was the basis for the détente that was launched by Nixon and Ford, essentially seeking a negotiated solution to the most dangerous remaining aspects of the Cold War.

The Afghan Debacle

In that view, Soviet military operations, including sending troops into Afghanistan in 1979, were mostly defensive in nature. In Afghanistan, the Soviets hoped to prop up a pro-communist government that was seeking to modernize the country but was beset by opposition from Islamic fundamentalists who were getting covert support from the U.S. government.

Though the Afghan covert operation originated with Cold Warriors in the Carter administration, especially National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, the war was dramatically ramped up under Reagan, who traded U.S. acquiescence toward Pakistan’s nuclear bomb for its help in shipping sophisticated weapons to the Afghan jihadists (including a young Saudi named Osama bin Laden).

While Reagan’s acolytes cite the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan as decisive in “winning the Cold War,” the counter-argument is that Moscow was already in disarray – and while failure in Afghanistan may have sped the Soviet Union’s final collapse – it also created twin dangers for the future of the world: the rise of al-Qaeda terrorism and the nuclear bomb in the hands of Pakistan’s unstable Islamic Republic.

Trade-offs elsewhere in the world also damaged long-term U.S. interests. In Latin America, for instance, Reagan’s brutal strategy of arming right-wing militaries to crush peasant, student and labor uprisings left the region with a legacy of anti-Americanism that is now resurfacing in the emergence of populist leftist governments.

In Nicaragua, for instance, Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega (whom Reagan once denounced as a “dictator in designer glasses”) is now back in power. In El Salvador, the leftist FMLN won the last national election (and led the first round of balloting in the 2014 election). Indeed, across the region, hostility to Washington is now the rule, creating openings for China, Iran, Cuba and other American rivals.

In the early 1980s, Reagan also credentialed a young generation of neocon intellectuals, who pioneered a concept called “perception management,” the shaping of how Americans saw, understood and were frightened by threats from abroad.

Many honest reporters saw their careers damaged when they resisted the lies and distortions of the Reagan administration. Likewise, U.S. intelligence analysts were purged when they refused to bend to the propaganda demands from above.

To marginalize dissent, Reagan and his subordinates stoked anger toward anyone who challenged the era’s feel-good optimism. Skeptics were not just honorable critics, they were un-American defeatists or – in Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick’s memorable attack line – they would “blame America first.”

Under Reagan, a right-wing infrastructure also took shape, linking media outlets (magazines, newspapers, books, etc.) with well-financed think tanks that churned out endless op-eds and research papers. Plus, there were attack groups that went after mainstream journalists who dared disclose information that poked holes in Reagan’s propaganda themes.

In effect, Reagan’s team created a faux reality for the American public. Civil wars in Central America between impoverished peasants and wealthy oligarchs became East-West showdowns. U.S.-backed insurgents in Nicaragua, Angola and Afghanistan were transformed from corrupt, brutal (often drug-tainted) thugs into noble “freedom-fighters.”

With the Iran-Contra scandal, Reagan also revived Richard Nixon’s theory of an imperial presidency that could ignore the nation’s laws and evade accountability through criminal cover-ups. That behavior also would rear its head again in the war crimes of George W. Bush. [For details on Reagan’s abuses, see Robert Parry’s Lost History and Secrecy & Privilege.]

Wall Street Greed

The American Dream also dimmed during Reagan’s tenure. While he played the role of the nation’s kindly grandfather, his operatives divided the American people, using “wedge issues” to deepen grievances especially of white men who were encouraged to see themselves as victims of “reverse discrimination” and “political correctness.”

Yet even as working-class white men were rallying to the Republican banner (as so-called “Reagan Democrats”), their economic interests were being savaged. Unions were broken and marginalized; “free trade” policies shipped manufacturing jobs abroad; old neighborhoods were decaying; drug use among the young was soaring.

Meanwhile, unprecedented greed was unleashed on Wall Street, fraying old-fashioned bonds between company owners and employees. Before Reagan, corporate CEOs earned less than 50 times the salary of an average worker. By the end of the Reagan-Bush-I administrations in 1993, the average CEO salary was more than 100 times that of a typical worker. (At the end of the Bush-II administration, that CEO-salary figure was more than 250 times that of an average worker.)

Many other trends set during the Reagan era continued to corrode the U.S. political process in the years after Reagan left office. After 9/11, for instance, the neocons reemerged as a dominant force, reprising their “perception management” tactics, depicting the “war on terror” – like the last days of the Cold War – as a terrifying conflict between good and evil.

The hyping of the Islamic threat mirrored the neocons’ exaggerated depiction of the Soviet menace in the 1980s – and again the propaganda strategy worked. Many Americans let their emotions run wild, from the hunger for revenge after 9/11 to the war fever over invading Iraq.

Arguably, the descent into this dark fantasyland – that Ronald Reagan began in the early 1980s – reached its nadir in the flag-waving early days of the Iraq War. Only gradually did reality begin to reassert itself as the death toll mounted in Iraq and the Katrina disaster in 2005 reminded Americans why they needed an effective government.

Still, the disasters – set in motion by Ronald Reagan – continued to roll in. Bush’s Reagan-esque tax cuts for the rich blew another huge hole in the federal budget and the Reagan-esque anti-regulatory fervor led to a massive financial meltdown that threw the nation into economic chaos.

Love Reagan; Hate Bush

Ironically, George W. Bush has come in for savage criticism (much of it deserved), but the Republican leader who inspired Bush’s presidency – Ronald Reagan – remained an honored figure, his name attached to scores of national landmarks including Washington’s National Airport.

Even leading Democrats genuflect to Reagan. Early in Campaign 2008, when Barack Obama was positioning himself as a bipartisan political figure who could appeal to Republicans, he bowed to the Reagan mystique, hailing the GOP icon as a leader who “changed the trajectory of America.”

Though Obama’s chief point was that Reagan in 1980 “put us on a fundamentally different path” – a point which may be historically undeniable – Obama went further, justifying Reagan’s course correction because of “all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s, and government had grown and grown, but there wasn’t much sense of accountability.”

While Obama later clarified his point to say he didn’t mean to endorse Reagan’s conservative policies, Obama seemed to suggest that Reagan’s 1980 election administered a needed dose of accountability to the United States when Reagan actually did the opposite. Reagan’s presidency represented a dangerous escape from accountability – and reality.

Still, Obama and congressional Democrats continue to pander to the Reagan myth. In 2009, as the nation approached the fifth anniversary of Reagan’s death, Obama welcomed Nancy Reagan to the White House and signed a law creating a panel to plan and carry out events to honor Reagan’s 100th birthday in 2011.

Obama hailed the right-wing icon. “President Reagan helped as much as any President to restore a sense of optimism in our country, a spirit that transcended politics — that transcended even the most heated arguments of the day,” Obama said. [For more on Obama’s earlier pandering about Reagan, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Obama’s Dubious Praise for Reagan.”]

Despite the grievous harm that Reagan’s presidency inflicted on the American Republic and the American people, it may take many more years before a historian has the guts to put this deformed era into a truthful perspective and rate Reagan where he belongs — near the bottom of the presidential list.

http://consortiumnews.com/2014/02/06...sident-ever-2/

[Wild Cobra]

...that he was apparently willing to commit voter fraud to vote for him.

http://politicalwire.com/archives/20...or_reagan.html

LOL..

Didn't you ever have mock elections in school?

[spursncowboys]

Seems like a trivial comment that only extreme wing people would find informative and/or entertaining. I guess if that's all libs have on walker, he's doing pretty good.

[boutons_deux]

"he's doing pretty good."

evidence?

[RandomGuy]

...that he was apparently willing to commit voter fraud to vote for him.

http://politicalwire.com/archives/20...or_reagan.html

The amount of irrational hero worship around Saint Reagan is amusing. Republicans fall all over themselves to lionize him, and appeared to have added this to the accepted GOP canon, and woe to the heretic that deviates from this accepted schtick.

[Th'Pusher]

Seems like a trivial comment that only extreme wing people would find informative and/or entertaining. I guess if that's all libs have on walker, he's doing pretty good.

A trival comment or a lie? The guy is either a liar or a felon.

[Wild Cobra]

A trival comment or a lie? The guy is either a liar or a felon.

Or...

It was a mock school election. I remember voting for Nixon when I was in school.

[Th'Pusher]

Or...

It was a mock school election. I remember voting for Nixon when I was in school.

I'll wait for Walker to clarify his lie/felony instead of relying on what wild speculator - the internet sensation who fills the need to jump to the aid of any republican and/or corporation when he feels they are being besmirched. Thanks tho..

[Wild Cobra]

I'll wait for Walker to clarify his lie/felony instead of relying on what wild speculator - the internet sensation who fills the need to jump to the aid of any republican and/or corporation when he feels they are being besmirched. Thanks tho..

Seems to me you are relying on wild speculation already.

As for aiding a republican? I don't have a position on him at all. I simply think it is stupid to jump to conclusion like that, and have pointed out the probable truth.

It is people like you, who show their highly prejudicial colors regular, by championing such ideas as the OP with no evidence of fact.

[Nbadan]

Walker will be indicted soon enough..

Who's Buying Gov. Scott Walker?

Since becoming governor, Gov. Scott Walker has raked in millions of dollars in political campaign donations from millionaires and billionaires across the nation.

http://www.pinterest.com/onewisconsi...-scott-walker/

[Th'Pusher]

Seems to me you are relying on wild speculation already.

As for aiding a republican? I don't have a position on him at all. I simply think it is stupid to jump to conclusion like that, and have pointed out the probable truth.

It is people like you, who show their highly prejudicial colors regular, by championing such ideas as the OP with no evidence of fact.

How am I relying on speculation? He said he voted for Reagan. If it was a mock election, he should have specified that since his vote for Reagan didn't mean jack .

And don't be silly, you are the definition of a corporate/republican shill. Just accept that reality and move on man.

[Nbadan]

From the outset, the probe focused on possible “illegal campaign coordination between (name redacted), a campaign committee, and certain special interest groups,” according to a filing signed by the five district attorneys in the case.
The campaign committee under the microscope?

Almost certainly it’s the Friends of Scott Walker, the governor’s campaign committee.
“Good guess,” said one source familiar with the probe. “That’s it.”

Several others, however, were reluctant to identify the governor’s campaign, noting the secrecy order remains in place. A John Doe probe is similar to a grand jury in that it allows prosecutors to collect evidence and gather testimony in secret.

http://www.jsonline.com/watchdog/noq...243271991.html

In an earlier Journal Sentinel article by Patrick Marley, Jason Stein and Daniel Bice, it was pointed out that Walker’s campaign also paid $86,000 to defense lawyers at a legal firm one would hire if they were being probed. Of the five suspects, we have tax exempt 501©4 “social welfare” nonprofit the Wisconsin Club for Growth, which outed itself as one of the groups under investigation. Source Watch details, “Wisconsin Club for Growth (WCFG) is a state arm of the national Club for Growth, and one of the top political spenders in Wisconsin. WCFG spent $9.1 million during the Wisconsin recall elections, and has reportedly received a subpoena in a John Doe probe into possible campaign finance violations during those races.” Naturally the Kochs are involved because wherever you see Governor Walker, a Koch brother is not far behind:

[Wild Cobra]

LOL...

You lefties are so easily manipulated.

link: Correction: Scott Walker Didn’t Say He Voted For Reagan

Audio included.

[Nbadan]

...what is going on here is an example of why the Republicans made a big deal out of a fake IRS scandal. They ginned up that scandal to tire the public of the subject, because the truth is that they are abusing the Citizens United ruling. Scott Walker’s campaign’s intimate ties with Club for Growth are the perfect example of how they are doing this...."

[Th'Pusher]

LOL...

You lefties are so easily manipulated.

link: Correction: Scott Walker Didn’t Say He Voted For Reagan

Audio included.

Nice work doing a little digging in an effort to defend the republican you have no position on one way or another.

[Wild Cobra]

I didn't do it for Walker. I did it to show how ing stupid you always are.

[Th'Pusher]

I didn't do it for Walker. I did it to show how ing stupid you always are.

This doesn't show how stupid I am. It simply shows I took the op at face value and didn't care enough to ferret out the truth. You did though...because a republican was being besmirched and that bothers you. A lot.

[Wild Cobra]

This doesn't show how stupid I am. It simply shows I took the op at face value and didn't care enough to ferret out the truth. You did though...because a republican was being besmirched and that bothers you. A lot.

Yep...

Stupidity at it's finest. Go along with you biased beliefs, and support them without fact.

[ElNono]

...that he was apparently willing to commit voter fraud to vote for him.

http://politicalwire.com/archives/20...or_reagan.html

Not really worried, he voted Republican, tbh

[TeyshaBlue]

This doesn't show how stupid I am. It simply shows I took the op at face value and didn't care enough to ferret out the truth. You did though...because a republican was being besmirched and that bothers you. A lot.

Why bother with something as trivial as the truth when the ox being gored has an R by his name, right?

[TeyshaBlue]

The amount of irrational hero worship around Saint Reagan is amusing. Republicans fall all over themselves to lionize him, and appeared to have added this to the accepted GOP canon, and woe to the heretic that deviates from this accepted schtick.

Almost as amusing as the enlightened progressives tripping all over themselves when a bogus factoid ripples the pond.

[FuzzyLumpkins]

Almost as amusing as the enlightened progressives tripping all over themselves when a bogus factoid ripples the pond.

sup tb. havent seen you around much. hope things are well for you and yours.

[TeyshaBlue]

Thx Fuzzy. Job keeps me pretty busy. Been in Connecticut for the last week. Nashville today but home tomorrow. Been dodging snow storms all week.