Now that 10-10-10 has come and gone and we have to wait another year, one month and one day for 11-11-11 we can all look forward to 12-12-12 when, as we understand it, the end of the world should be just around the corner!!
But, hey, what did the Mayans know that we don’t already know? Hey, they ate themselves out of house and home.
Hum…does kinda sound familiar, though. Oh well, I’m sure the advent of President Palin in 2012 would not be any kind of harbinger or anything like that to be worried about. After all, wouldn’t she be the Second Coming – of President Reagan?
Why, yes, or at least that’s what all the right-wing radicals would have us believe. In Reagan we Trust!
As the noted philosopher, Carl the Groundskeeper, explained (paraphrased): “So, we got that goin’ for us.”
Reagan, as our libertarian-conservative hero/god, remains the ideal for many radicals today. They all want us to go back to the days of the Reagan Presidency when no one paid any taxes at all and the federal government shrank to include only one agency: the Defense Department.
What’s that you say? None of that is true? Really? It’s only a myth that Ronald Reagan cut taxes and eliminated the entire federal government when he simultaneously wiped the Soviet Union off the face of the map?
Former Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson knew Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan was a friend of Alan Simpson’s and as co-chair of President Barack Obama’s non-partisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility & Reform he felt compelled back in the summer to set the record straight on his pal, Ronald Reagan, and taxes. Pensito Review highlighted Sen. Simpson’s remarks:
“Let’s just disengage ourselves from the myth that Ronald Reagan never raised taxes,” Simpson told the commission last summer. “He did. And here are four big ones. So I hope this will clear the air for some of the groups today.
“In 1982, the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act, that rolled back about a third of his ‘81 tax cuts, raised corporate tax rates, and to a lesser extent income tax rates. Raised taxes by almost 1 percent of GDP, which at that time was the largest percentage in peacetime increase ever.
“[The] 1982 gas tax increase. [The] 1983 Greenspan commission — we know so well; [fellow commission member Alice Rivlin] remembers — we all … raised payroll taxes for lower and middle income households to higher than they were before Reagan’s ‘81 tax cuts. Then there was the 1984 deficit reduction tax.
“Those are the big four. Then there was the Railroad Retirement Revenue Act, Consolidated Omnibus Budget of ‘85… ‘85…’87 Continuing Resolution, Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of ‘87, that was $8.6 billion
“So there were a lot of them. Just thought I’d throw that in.”
I get it. When the radical right-wing says, “Take America Back,” it is to the days of Reagan tax increases.












