Ronald Reagan is the New Jesus Part 1: Name Recognition

Ronald Reagan is the new Jesus Christ.

Don’t believe me?  Check out the Reagan Legacy Project.  An initiative of none other than Grover Norquist, founded in 1997; while Reagan STILL ALIVE.  The original motivation was intended to put his name on Ronald Reagan National Airport, previously just National Airport in Washington.

From what they’re doing now, it seems that they’re almost as much about inspiring a conservative generation as they are about Ronald Reagan.  From reading the description on their website, they seem about mind control:

The Ronald Reagan Legacy Project is committed to preserving the legacy of one of America’s greatest presidents throughout the nation and abroad.

One of the ways we work to further the legacy of Reagan is by asking the governor of every state in the nation to make a proclamation declaring February 6th, “Ronald Reagan Day.”  An average of 30 governors a year over the last few years have made such a proclamation, choosing to honor character over partisanship.

Okay..  So sure Reagan caused lots of problems, but if I passed a JFK commemoration petition to GOP governors, they might sign it.  This country likes to honor our presidents; even the ones we regret.

This is the real issue:

In addition to ensuring that every February 6^th is known as “Ronald Reagan Day,” we work to encourage the naming of landmarks, buildings, roads, etc. after Ronald Wilson Reagan.  We continue compiling a list of Reagan dedications that remind American society of the life and legacy of President Reagan.  Each one of these dedications serve as a teaching moment for those who were not yet alive during his presidency or to grant those who remember him with the opportunity to reflect on his accomplishments.  Whether it be the Ronald Reagan Parkway in Indianapolis, IN or Ronald Reagan National Airport in Arlington, VA; each and every dedication will serve as a teaching moment for generations to come.  Our goal is to eventually see a statue, park, or road named after Reagan in all 3,140 counties in the United States.  The first project that RRLP worked to name after Ronald Reagan was National Airport, in 1998 renamed Ronald Reagan National Airport.

I embolded that part.  I’d like you think about that.   “Teaching moments for those who were not alive during his presidency.”    It also makes perfect sense.  If someone’s name is on a bridge or a school,  kids think he/she must have done great things.

Just look at this amazing list of the amazing accomplishments of Ronald Reagan:

• Providing Al Qaeda and Iran with weapons
• Cutting taxes for the rich
• Expanding the national debt
• Deregulating agriculture
• Reducing the power of the EPA
• Causing massive inequality
• Attacking women’s health
• Antonin Scalia is on the Supreme Court
• As Rosalynn Carter said “He made us comfortable with our prejudices.”
• Undoing nearly every common-sense policy Jimmy Carter put in place

That’s a long list.

After googling Lincoln legacy project,  Jefferson Legacy Project, JFK LP, Washington LP, FDR LP, MLK LP, and similar queries I am unaware of any similar projects.  This is both surprising, after all, Lincoln is commonly considered to be one of the greatest presidents of all time; and not, he doesn’t need half a zillion bridges so people will know he was so good.

I’ll be writing more about the effects this has on people: stay tuned.

Hunger Games, USA

NYT op-ed by Paul Krugman.  So good, I had to blog it:

Something terrible has happened to the soul of the Republican Party. We’ve gone beyond bad economic doctrine. We’ve even gone beyond selfishness and special interests. At this point we’re talking about a state of mind that takes positive glee in inflicting further suffering on the already miserable.

The occasion for these observations is, as you may have guessed, the monstrous farm bill the House passed last week.

For decades, farm bills have had two major pieces. One piece offers subsidies to farmers; the other offers nutritional aid to Americans in distress, mainly in the form of food stamps (these days officially known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP).

Long ago, when subsidies helped many poor farmers, you could defend the whole package as a form of support for those in need. Over the years, however, the two pieces diverged. Farm subsidies became a fraud-ridden program that mainly benefits corporations and wealthy individuals. Meanwhile food stamps became a crucial part of the social safety net.

So House Republicans voted to maintain farm subsidies — at a higher level than either the Senate or the White House proposed — while completely eliminating food stamps from the bill.

To fully appreciate what just went down, listen to the rhetoric conservatives often use to justify eliminating safety-net programs. It goes something like this: “You’re personally free to help the poor. But the government has no right to take people’s money” — frequently, at this point, they add the words “at the point of a gun” — “and force them to give it to the poor.”

It is, however, apparently perfectly O.K. to take people’s money at the point of a gun and force them to give it to agribusinesses and the wealthy.

Now, some enemies of food stamps don’t quote libertarian philosophy; they quote the Bible instead. Representative Stephen Fincher of Tennessee, for example, cited the New Testament: “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.” Sure enough, it turns out that Mr. Fincher has personally received millions in farm subsidies.

Given this awesome double standard — I don’t think the word “hypocrisy” does it justice — it seems almost anti-climactic to talk about facts and figures. But I guess we must.

So: Food stamp usage has indeed soared in recent years, with the percentage of the population receiving stamps rising from 8.7 in 2007 to 15.2 in the most recent data. There is, however, no mystery here. SNAP is supposed to help families in distress, and lately a lot of families have been in distress.

In fact, SNAP usage tends to track broad measures of unemployment, like U6, which includes the underemployed and workers who have temporarily given up active job search. And U6 more than doubled in the crisis, from about 8 percent before the Great Recession to 17 percent in early 2010. It’s true that broad unemployment has since declined slightly, while food stamp numbers have continued to rise — but there’s normally some lag in the relationship, and it’s probably also true that some families have been forced to take food stamps by sharp cuts in unemployment benefits.

What about the theory, common on the right, that it’s the other way around — that we have so much unemployment thanks to government programs that, in effect, pay people not to work? (Soup kitchens caused the Great Depression!) The basic answer is, you have to be kidding. Do you really believe that Americans are living lives of leisure on $134 a month, the average SNAP benefit?

Still, let’s pretend to take this seriously. If employment is down because government aid is inducing people to stay home, reducing the labor force, then the law of supply and demand should apply: withdrawing all those workers should be causing labor shortages and rising wages, especially among the low-paid workers most likely to receive aid. In reality, of course, wages are stagnant or declining — and that’s especially true for the groups that benefit most from food stamps.

So what’s going on here? Is it just racism? No doubt the old racist canards — like Ronald Reagan’s image of the “strapping young buck” using food stamps to buy a T-bone steak — still have some traction. But these days almost half of food stamp recipients are non-Hispanic whites; in Tennessee, home of the Bible-quoting Mr. Fincher, the number is 63 percent. So it’s not all about race.

What is it about, then? Somehow, one of our nation’s two great parties has become infected by an almost pathological meanspiritedness, a contempt for what CNBC’s Rick Santelli, in the famous rant that launched the Tea Party, called “losers.” If you’re an American, and you’re down on your luck, these people don’t want to help; they want to give you an extra kick. I don’t fully understand it, but it’s a terrible thing to behold.