Ronald Reagan: The rise of a great man

After four years of Jimmy Carter, the United States was embattled in the worst economic downturn since the 1930s and the Great Depression. This resulted in a landslide defeat of Carter and his liberal agenda by the greatest Conservative President of all time: Ronald Wilson Reagan.

He was born on February 6, 1911, in Tampico, Illinois. He attended Eureka College and studied economics and sociology. He also played football and acted in school plays. After graduation, he became a radio sports announcer, and in 1937 he became a Hollywood actor when he signed a contract with Warner Brothers. He would go on to star in 53 movies from 1937 to 1957.

Some of the movies he starred in were: Love is on the Air (1937), Dark Victory (1939), Murder in the Air (1940), Knute Rockne, All American (1940), Million Dollar Baby (1941), Bedtime for Bozo (1941),  Kings Row (1942), Desperate Journey (1942), Storm Warning (1951), Hellcats of the Navy (1957), and The Killers (1964).

During WWII he took a break from acting too join the Army Air Force. He was assigned to the film production unit. Here he acted and narrated military training films such as Recognition of the Japanese Zero Fighter (1941) and Beyond the Line of Duty (1942), the latter of which earned an academy award for short film.

With the exception of his time working for the U.S. Military, all his movies were made with Warner Brothers. When his movie roles started to dwindle, he turned to TV, where he hosted General Electric Theater (1953-1962) for eight years on CBS. He retired from acting in 1965.

The Screen Actors Guild is a labor union for actors. He joined this in 1937, became a member of the union's board in 1941, and became president in 1947. He would work to get rid of the influence of Communism on Hollywood. He would step down from this role in 1954.

He was a staunch liberal or Hollywood Democrat. He supported FDR, and actually would later claim that FDR was a great hero to him. He would later become a Kennedy Democrat. In 1962, he switched to the republican party, and would later quip:  "I did not leave the democratic party, the democratic party left me."

What he meant by this was that he was basically opposed to the democratic party's shift to progressive politics. John F. Kennedy was the last Conservative Democrat. When he was assassinated, the Progressive Lyndon Baines Johnson became President, and Democrats became the stalwarts for the Progressive Movement.

During the 1964 Presidential Campaign (on October 27), Reagan made a speech on behalf of the Republican nominee, Barry Goldwater, titled, "A Time Of Choosing. He stressed the importance of a smaller government. He said:

"The Founding Fathers knew a government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. So we have come to a time for choosing."

This speech would set him up nicely for a career in politics, and as a leader of the conservative movement.

California republicans loved his political views and his charisma, and they nominated him to become their nominee for the 1966 campaign. He was elected by a margin of over a million votes over two-term democrat Governor Pat Brown. He would be re-elected in 1970. The party wanted him to run again in 1974, although he chose not to become a three-term Governor.

As governor, he inherited a $200 million deficit. He proposed a 10% across the board tax cut, and this was met with protests by students who claimed that he should "tax the rich." He would end up raising taxes and freezing all hiring of new workers.

In 1967, only six months into his first term, he signed the Therapeutic Abortion Act, which was a liberal pro-abortion bill that would make abortion legal in the State of California. The annual abortion rate in California would soar from 518 legal abortions in 1967 to 500,000 in the remaining years of his 8-year term as Governor of California. This would end up being Reagans, "Darkest hour," according to National Review.

Reagan later would claim that abortion was an issue he hadn't given much thought to, so when he was presented with the bill, he didn't think twice about signing it. However, in his defense, abortion at that time wasn't the issue that it is today. In the end, however, Reagan would more than makeup for this, and would ultimately become what many refer as the father of the pro-life movement, according to National Review.

Another thing he was noted for during his campaign for governor was to "clean up the mess at Berkely." He was referring to anti-war and anti-establishment protests at Berkely. During the spring of 1969, he sent the National Guard to Berkeley, where they stayed for 17 days. This established Reagan a peace restoring hero to conservatives, although the left saw him as a trigger-happy cowboy.

In 1970 he won re-election. In 1971, he worked with a democratically controlled California Congress to get a welfare reform program passed. This was generally regarded as a success and established his ability to work with Congress to get his agenda passed.  In 1973, he announced a budget surplus, and gave taxpayers a rebate, showing that his policies were successful at balancing the budget.

In 1975, Reagan decided to run for President of the United States against incumbent Republican Gerald R. Ford. Reagan put up a very good fight and came close to winning. However, in the end, after the establishment fought hard for the establishment candidate, Ford became the republican nominee by a delegate count of 1,187 to Reagan's 1,070. Ford, however, would go on to lose to Democrat Jimmy Carter.

Carter inherited a recession that was highlighted by high inflation and high unemployment. Carter decided it was more important to fight inflation than unemployment, so he hired Paul Volcker as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Volcker decided to put the economy into an intentional recession by decreasing the money supply and raising interest rates to 15%.

This, coupled with Carter's refusal to cut taxes and regulations, resulted in the worse economic recession since the Great Depression. This, coupled with Carter's incompetent foreign policy that resulted in the Iran Hostage Crisis, set the state up nicely for a Ronald Reagan shot at the White House during the 1980 Presidential election cycle.

References:

1. http://www.shmoop.com/reagan-era/economy.html
2. http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-carterreagan.htm
3. https://www.whitehouse.gov/1600/presidents/ronaldreagan
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Electric_Theater
5. http://www.nationalreview.com/article/223437/reagans-darkest-hour-paul-kengor-patricia-clark-doerner

Jimmy Carter: A Great Man, terrible president

James Earl Carter Jr., known today as Jimmy Carter, was a stellar human being, but a terrible president. In fact, some marked him as being one of the worse presidents of all time until Barack Obama became President.

Even today, as liberals riot in the streets, and cry on Facebook about the victory of Donald Trump, Carter said that Trump needs our "support and prayers" as he prepares to take the office of President of the United States.

Carter is right: Trump does need our prayers. So this is another testament to how great of a human being Carter really is. What plagued Carter throughout his career in politics was his liberal view on issues.

He ran for President in 1976, the year of the American Bicentennial. Gerald R. Ford was the then sitting President, a man who was the only person to become President who was neither elected president nor vice president. After Watergate, and after failure in Vietnam, Ford managed to restore faith in American government.

During the election of 1976, Carter managed to barely defeat Ford. He would then go on to wound the spirit of the nation restored by Ford. This would work to the advantage of the Conservative movement, which was waiting, salivating almost, at a chance to take over the Presidency. Carter was such a failure that Ronald Reagan would defeat him during the election of 1980 in what would become one of the biggest landslide victories in American's glorious history.

He was born October 1, 1924, in Plains, Georgia, to a peanut farmer. He left Plains to serve as a naval officer for seven years. He then entered state politics in Georgia. In 1966, he ran for Georgia governor and failed. In 1970, he again ran for Georgia governor and this time he succeeded.

In 1980, he was nominated for President by the democrat party. With Water F. Mondale as his running mate, he defeated Gerald Ford by an electoral vote of 297 to 241 and a popular vote of 50.1% to 48%.

It's possible that the only reason he was chosen by the people to be the 39th President of the United States was because of Ford's failures more so than his abilities. That said, he was elected as an outsider to clean up Washington. Here is what happened during the Jimmy Carter Presidency.

1. He had dinner with the Shah of Iran. The Shah was a dictator thug, but he also ran a secular government, supported the United States, supported equality for women, and recognized the Nation of Israel. Carter's visit created animosity between Iranian rebel students and the Shah. Carter then sent a letter to the Shah reminding him of the importance of political rights and freedom. In return, the Shah released 350 fundamentalist prisoners. They were then involved in an Islamic Revolution and the Iran Hostage Crisis. Recognizing the buildup of Islamic Rebel forces, the Shah asked Carter for help, and Carter refused. The U.N. suggested that Carter help the Shah to stop the revolution. Carter's State Department should help the Revolutionaries transition to a new government. Carter took neither advice, and the result was the takeover of Iran by radical Islamist thug dictators that hate the United States, have no respect for women, and refuse to accept Israel as a viable nation. This single foreign policy failure is often cited as spearheading much of the turmoil that has occurred in the Middle East since then.

2.  The Grand Ayatollah took power in February of 1979 and murdered over 20,000 pro-Western Iranians who were held by the Sha as political prisoners. The Sha came to America to seek medical treatment for Cancer, and no sooner had this happened, the revolutionaries stormed the American Embassy and took about 20 American diplomats hostage. This lead to the Iranian Hostage Crisis. In a failed rescue attempt that failed miserably, resulting in 30 soldiers getting killed when their helicopter crashed. The hostages were not released until the day Ronald Reagan was inaugurated. This may have been one of the main reasons Carter lost in a landslide to Reagan.

3.  Carter's foreign policy failures gave confidence to the Russian leader. Carter signed a treaty with the Russian leader, Leonid Brezhnev, and trusted he would abide by it. Brezhnev then turned around and invaded Afghanistan in an attempt to spread Communism to the area. So, so much for the treaty. Rusian then planned for a communist takeover of Iran and Pakistan. Carter's only response was to boycott the 1980 Olympic games in Russia. Afghanistan soldiers (which included Osama Bin Laden) held their own against the Russians, and this gave them great confidence. So, Carter may also have given rise to the man who would be responsible for the greatest terrorist attack in U.S. history on 9-11-01.

4.  The new government in Iran lead to the Iran-Iraq war. Half a million people died during this war, including thousands of deaths caused by the Chemical weapons of the Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein. Saddam would continue to build his military, and this gave him the ability and confidence to attempt a takeover of Kuwait in 1990, leading to U.S. operation to liberate Kuwait from the Iranians, called Desert Storm.

5.  The nation faced an economic crisis that ended up turning into a recession that Ronald Reagan inherited when he defeated Carter in 1980. The crisis involved both a high unemployment rate and a high inflation rate, something that began during the Nixon years, and that Ford had also attempted to remedy and failed.

6.  Carter was a liberal who believed that much of the animosity toward the United States was because we were far too arrogant, and one of the ways to remedy this situation was to slash military spending. This resulted in the Carter administration gutting and weakening the military. Despite the down economy, enlistments in the military were low. People already enlisted in the military were leaving at a rapid rate once their time was up. This and the invasion of Afghanistan caused Carter to reinstated young men between the ages of 18-20 to register for a potential draft (this was known as Selective Service.) When I turned 18 in 1988, I had to go to the Post Office to sign up. It was the law.

7.  So, apparently, he was too trusting. He was also too indecisive. He was also a poor public speaker. He was, however, a very nice guy.

8.  In 1979, he signed the Department of Education Organization Act, which creates the Department of Education. This was done in an attempt to improve education, although what happened is it put eight people who sit on a board the ability to control what kids learn. This 8 member board has been traditionally liberal and made it so public schools became liberal indoctrination centers, more so than places where kids were educated. This resulted in our Education System tanking from the #1 public school system in 1992 to 18th in the world among the 36 industrialized nations. This is despite the Federal Government greatly increasing funds so the U.S. is the 4th leading spender in education by 2016. So, Carter is almost singlehandedly responsible for the decline of our public school system. In 1979, parents and teachers were responsible for what kids learned, and we were #1 in the world.

9.  He was poor at negotiating with Congress, even though both houses has strong democrat majorities. He wisely vetoed bills he believed would cause wasteful spending. Many of these bills would have resulted in pork barrel spending, of which would have resulted in wasteful spending. However, his vetoes angered many establishment democrats, and many were overridden by Congress. Perhaps also souring relations with Congress was his failure to compromise on his ideas. So even though he was a democrat with a democratically controlled Congress, he failed to get many of his campaign promises and ideas through Congress.

10.  He failed to effectively deal with the energy crisis. Oil prices were $10 a barrel during the early 1970s and skyrocketed to $100 a barrel by the late 1970s (adjusted for inflation). This was due in part to the crisis in the middle east that he caused, and also due to Nixon's getting rid of the gold standard.During a 1979 speech, he seemed to scold the American people rather than suggest any policies remedy the energy crisis. He told people that the needed to drive slow, purchase smaller cars, set thermostats lower, and do without Christmas lights. These are things that you never tell Americans because in America we can make anything possible. With oil prices so high, this caused oil companies to raise prices, resulting in gas prices paid at the pump. This worsened inflation.

11. To control oil prices and end stagflation, he hired Paul Volcker as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board on July 27, 1979. Volcker raised interest rates to 15%, the highest in U.S. history. He also tightened the money supply, and this forced businesses to lower prices. Higher interest rates resulted in a consumer panic, especially in those who invested in housing, and this resulted in an intentional recession. To offset this, businesses were forced to lower prices. It seemingly worked, although to the disadvantage of the Carter Presidency. Volcker ultimately lowered interest rates in 1982 and flooded the economy with money, but too late for Carter, as he lost the 1980 election to Ronald Reagan. Some also credit this tactic for the Reagan economic boom that would follow, although I wouldn't go that far.

12. Carter cannot be blamed for stagflation (rising inflation and unemployment at the same time), which began in 1965. He also seemingly inherited a recession, seemingly the same one he handed off to Reagan rather than dealing with himself. He tried to deal with it. He actually had a campaign promise to give $50 to every taxpayer with the hopes they would spend it and stimulate the economy that way. This promise never materialized, and probably wouldn't have done anything anyway. He also wanted to both raise taxes and honed in spending, and those were rejected by the democratically controlled Congress.

13.  Some give him credit for trucking, railroads and airline deregulation, which was signed by Carter in 1978. However, this actually started under Nixon and gained steam under Ford. However, Carter did support the bill. This was supported by consumers and resulted in an improved market. Government regulations on trucking and airlines limited prices and limited what the market could do, particularly on routes. Deregulation gave airline and trucking industry more opportunities to expand, create their own routes, and this resulted in more competition and lower prices. Air Transport Association. Robert Crandall and Jerry Ellig (1997) estimated that airline prices have fallen 44.9%, saving Americans $19.4 billion per year. Due to lower prices, the air travel industry has "exploded" since then, and the number of people traveling has doubled since then. So, airline and trucking deregulation was a definite good that came out of the Carter administration, although some believe that he alone shouldn't get credit. For the sake of this article, I will give him credit.

14.  When most people think of universal healthcare, they think of Obamacare or Romneycare, although these were not the firs efforts to create a government run healthcare system. We have Hillarycare of the early 1990s, and we also have Jimmy Carter's attempt to create a universal healthcare system in 1977. His system even had support from some republicans, although it was ditched by democrat insiders, such as Ted Kennedy. However, some blame this failure on Carter's poor leadership abilities. Thankfully it didn't get anywhere, because Lord knows how badly Obamacare failed. He also had ideas for reforming welfare and lowering hospital costs, although those ideas also failed to gain steam. Of course, in all due fairness, these ideas were forced to take a backseat to his attempts to lower inflation and unemployment.

That Jimmy Carter was a failure as a president cannot go without saying. He is personally responsible for much of the turmoil that occurred in the world since his Presidency. It's amazing vowhat a failure he was, especially given that he had a democratically controlled Congress to work with.

By 1980, many people saw him as a weak leader, and they saw that foreign countries had little respect for the U.S. They were ready for a new leader. He lost in a landslide to Conservative Ronald Reagan.

And, while it's tempting to put Obama as the worse President ever, I have a hard time pulling Carter out of that spot.

References:

• Jimmy Carter, whitehouse.gov, https://www.whitehouse.gov/1600/presidents/jimmycarter, accessed 11/13/16
• Jimmy Carter, conservatopia, http://www.conservapedia.com/Jimmy_Carter, accessed 11/13/16
• Miller, Paul, "Jimmy Carter Can Only Blame Himself," The American Thinker, http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2007/05/jimmy_carter_can_only_blame_hi.html, accessed 11/13/16
• Randolph, Larry, "Was the USA ever No. 1 in Education?" Historynet, http://www.historynet.com/was-the-usa-ever-no-1-in-education.htm, accessed 11/15/16
• Smith, Fred L, "Airline Deregulation," Library of Economics and Liberty, http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/AirlineDeregulation.html, accessed 11/16/16
• Jimmy Carter on Healthcare, ontheissues.org, http://www.ontheissues.org/Celeb/Jimmy_Carter_Health_Care.htm, accessed 11/16/16
• Myth: Carter ruined economy, Reagan saved it, http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-carterreagan.htm, accessed 11/16/16

Our kids are indoctrinated with propaganda

When we were kids the emphasis was to teach us about the Constitution, the founding fathers, and about American Exceptionalism. We were taught how to think for ourselves. The fear was that if this wasn't taught our children would begin to take their freedoms for granted and join movements like the liberal movement of today.

Now it is not taught, Millennials support wackos like Bernie Sanders, and these wackos think we are the ones who are whacko, brainwashed, and refuse to conform. The reason this happened is by crazy things our kids are taught at indoctrination centers (a.k.a., public schools).

From the founding all the way to 1980, parents and teachers were in charge of what was taught at school. Liberals, in an effort to advance their agenda, wanted to change this. For this reason, Jimmy Carter established the Department of Education (DOE) in 1979.

From 1980 onward, kids were taught what a panel at the DOE decided. Rather than letting parents control what kids were taught, a panel of eight experts, mainly liberal experts, now decide. This would include mainly Millennials.This has many parents and teachers frustrated because they want a say in what kids learn; they want kids to learn English and American history.

They are experts in science, so they think. They believe they are experts in global warming, and they believe that mankind is the cause of it. All told, they have been poorly educated about science. While we were told that theories were theories to be respected, but that's that: they aren't science.

Kids today are told that, since 99% of scientists believe in man-made global warming, then it is a fact. When we were kids were taught that a consensus is not science. So, even if 99% of scientists believe in global warming, that doesn't determine it is or is not true.  Science either is or is not, and it doesn't matter what individual scientists believe. Science is not up to a vote.

Millennials are the product of our public schools, which have been indoctrinating our kids with the liberal agenda since 1979. They are also the product of higher learning, which is also indoctrination centers. They are taught propaganda in terms of what they think is real and what they believe. To them, theories, feelings, beliefs, emotions are real.

They do not read about politics. To them, politics is all emotion. They see someone has a problem, they say something like, "I feel your pain!" Then they create programs that someone else has to pay for." When they don't work, they blame republicans for getting in the way of progress. When they fail, they don't get criticized due to good intentions.

When they see or read that others think differently for them, it is an eye-opening experience. They cannot understand how anyone could vote for Trump, for instance.

For instance, they believe we are destroying the planet. They believe that it might not even be here in 20 years. They believe we are destroying it fast. They believe the polar ice caps are melting. They believe polar bears are living on floating plates of ice. They believe the ozone is disappearing. They are scared to death that this is happening.

Okay, so this is how they continue to vote for people who want to make so many regulations in the name of global warming that the economy sputters. And while the U.S. has a sputtering economy because of it all, China is the beneficiary because they don't buy into the crap science.

Millennials do not have any facts to support their fears and beliefs, to them it's just a fact because it sounds good; it's fact because it's the propaganda they have been taught at public indoctrination centers.

They hate Trump, not because they don't support him on the issues, but because Trump speaks the truth. They have been protected from the truth at the indoctrination centers. They hear Trump's rhetoric, they hear Trump's jokes, and they can't handle it. They are so offended by what they hear, that they haven't even considered the issues.

You ask a Millennial one issue that Trump stands for, and they won't hear your question. They see Trump as racist, homophobe, bigot, etc. That's as far as their minds are allowed to go, as they are not trained in schools how to think for themselves. They are unable to see beyond the rhetoric.

They hate Trump. They hate republicans. And they especially hate conservatives. Anything they are told by the media about Trump, republicans, or conservatives is thought to be the gold standard view. They have a stereotypical view of whatever the media says about republicans. They take it verbatim. They do not question anything unless it's said by conservative news sources.

As Rush Limbaugh said:

"It's really a case study in Pavlov's Dog, in groupthink, in how indoctrination and propaganda actually work. And they think that we are all products of propaganda. They think they're the open-minded thinkers and enlightened ones, highly educated, super-intelligent, very perceptive, lightyears ahead. They have that in common with many young people. But I just picked one story here to give you an example. They're just beside themselves. They thought Trump was a buffoon and they thought everybody else thought Trump was a buffoon.

They thought Trump might get 20% of the vote. They thought Donald Trump was the way he was portrayed on Saturday Night Live. If they wanted to get a dose of Trump, they watched YouTube videos of Saturday Night Live and Alec Baldwin portraying Trump. Likewise, they thought Hillary Clinton was the smartest person in the world, smartest woman in the world, eminently qualified. But the thing is, 95% of Silicon Valley thinks the same way, from the executives on down on down to the employees. 

The reason they think this way is because they are indoctrinated to think a certain a way in schools, and through journalism. They think they are getting the big picture. They think they understand America. When, in reality, they are sheep herded by the indoctrination centers. 

Gerald R. Ford: A Conservative At The Wrong Time

Gerald R. Ford was a moderate Republican who became the first and only person to become President without being elected President or Vice President. He also had the misfortune of entering the presidency at a time when Americans were fed up with liberalism but not quite ready for a conservative president.

Some people might contend that Ford was a Conservative. However, I think this was mainly because he was way more conservative than Lyndon B. Johnson, and even more conservative than even Richard M. Nixon. So, he did have conservative tendencies. That said, he was not, by any means, a conservative of the likes of Ronald Reagan; he was in no way the leader of the Conservative Movement that was salivating, waiting for an opportunity to gain control of the republican party.

For lack of a better comparison, he was more of a moderate republican, along with the likes of George H. W. Bush, Bob Dole, John McCain, and Mitt Romney, all of whom would lose (with the exception of 1988) their bids for the Presidency.

For the sake of simplicity, let us just assume that he was a conservative. The American people may actually have been ready for a conservative. Who wasn't ready was the republican establishment, which had a false belief (and still does) that a moderate president has a greater chance of drawing in independent voters and winning the presidency than a conservative one. He also had the misfortune of entering the office when liberalism, while on the downswing, was high on pride after the Watergate scandal.

Likewise, even though Nixon, a moderate (with moderate meaning liberal leaning) republican, was fresh off his second landslide victory in 1972, democrats held control of both chambers of Congress. While Ford may have been a good conservative with good conservative ideas, these and other forces would work against him.

He was born in Omaha, Nebraska, although he grew up Grand Rapids, Michigan. He became a star football player at the University of Michigan. He then served as assistant football coach at Yale, where he earned his law degree.

He was first elected to Congress in 1948, and from 1965 to 1973 he served as Minority Leader. When Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned in disgrace due to the Watergate Scandal on October 10, 1973, then President Richard M. Nixon chose Representative Gerald Ford to succeed him. This made Ford the first person to become Vice President under terms of the 25th Amendment.

Then, when President Nixon resigned in disgrace, also due to the Watergate Scandal, less than a year later, Ford became the 38th President of the United States. He kept some of Nixon's cabinet members, although he named some of his own. To please the liberal wing of the republican party he nominated Nelson D. Rockefeller as his Vice President, thereby making Rockefeller the second person to be named Vice President using terms of the 25th Amendment.

Among his first orders of business, after filling out his administration was to assure the American populace that he would not be an "imperial president," like FDR, Johnson, and Nixon before him.

What is an "Imperial President?"  The term was coined in a 1973 book by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., who observed that, since FDR created the Executive Office of the President in 1939, the White House had become overcrowded with staff. In this way, Schlesinger observed that the executive had overstepped its Constitutional bounds: it had become too large and was gaining too much control over the people at the expense of freedom and liberty.

So, Ford assured the populace that this executive overreach would not continue during his tenure in the Washington.

FDR had increased regulations on transportation, communications, finance, and other businesses. Like FDR, Nixon was a fan of federal regulations. Ford was the first post-FDR President to begin a trend toward slashing New Deal regulations in order to get government out of the way so that businesses had more freedom and were more likely to make profits and expand to create more jobs. During the 1980s, Ronald Reagan would continue this trend.

All seemed to go rather well for the Ford administration, that is until he decided it would be a good idea to pardon Richard Nixon for crimes he might have committed during the Watergate scandal. To Ford, this seemed like an honorable idea, as the nation did not need to endure the embarrassment of a criminal trial against a former President.

So, in 1974, not long before the mid-term elections, Ford pardoned Nixon. This did not sit well with the liberal press and was highly criticized; the nation had witnessed a scandal so mischievous that it cost the nation its President and Vice President, and now there would be no trial.

Ford's decision and the media lamenting over it would end up costing republicans many Congressional seats to democrats during the mid-term election.

Like his anti-imperialistic Washington view, Ford's fiscal policies, or his economic policies, were in line with conservatives. He believed it was important to cut the size of government by slashing regulations, slashing taxes, and decreasing spending. Yet he clashed with the democratic Congress and vetoed 66 bills that would have increased spending.

A problem he faced was stagflation or an economic situation where economic growth was low, and unemployment was high at the same time that inflation was high. This was the first time the United States had ever faced this situation, so no one was certain what the remedy was.

Ford believed the solution was to combat inflation through:

• Decreased government spending on social programs, and this was accomplished by his vetoes. This was good. 
• Curbing spending by the private sector, and this was accomplished by raising taxes on personal income. He failed to get this through a democrat controlled Congress. 

Part of the reason for stagflation was not Ford's fault, as international forces caused oil prices to skyrocket. This created an energy crisis. Gas prices were high. Most cars were huge gas guzzlers. And, for the first time, American factories were facing competition from Japanese and German imports.

Despite his efforts, the economy continued to lag and inflation continued to climb. Unemployment was 4.8% when he entered office in 1972, and when he left office it was 8.0%. During the same timespan, consumer price inflation increased from 3.4% to 11%. This, along with high prices, made planning for the future difficult.

In 1975, he had an opportunity to put a conservative judge on the Supreme Court when New Deal justice William O. Douglass resigned. But in an attempt to keep the peace (or, showing his libera tendencies) between himself and a democratic controlled Congress, he nominated John Paul Stephens, who would become a very liberal Justice, although not nearly as liberal as Douglass.

In foreign affairs, Richard Nixon called for all forces to be removed from South Vietnam, and Ford was President when it fell victim to Communism. This was one of the sadder events of the Ford administration. All the efforts of the American military and all the lives lost in the name of Freedom were for naught and no thanks to a democratic Congress that seemed to want to see their own country punished and humiliated. 

He supported Nixon's detente approach to the Cold War with the U.S.S.R or Russia. The idea was that both countries would benefit from increased trade and the decreased threat of nuclear warfare. 

Former California Governor Ronald Reagan greatly disapproved of this policy when he ran against Ford during the 1976 Presidential campaign. Reagan also championed for easing regulations and cutting taxes as a means of rebooting the economy.

The up and coming Conservative movement were eager to get a (true) conservative into the Whitehouse, and Reagan was their man. Standing in their way, however, was the republican establishment.

As noted earlier, the establishment had then and still does this false belief (that both Reagan and Trump would prove wrong) that moderate republicans have a better chance of winning. Ford was the embodiment of this establishment. And even though he was former governor of California, Reagan was the embodiment of anti-establishment.

While his policies succeeded at improving the economy and reducing inflation, unemployment remained high. Reagan gave him a good fight, although Ford would be the eventual republican nominee.

The democrats chose a relatively unknown, a Washington outsider, as their nominee. Carter was actually expected to win easily, yet Ford gave him a good fight. Ford lost to Carter by an electoral count of 240 to 297, and a popular vote of 48.0% to 50.1%. 

Ford assumed the office of the President at a time when the nation felt great distrust in government due to Watergate, and a defeatist attitude due to perceived failure in Vietnam. He seemed to improve trust in government, and Faith in the American foreign policy.

He also assumed the office at a time when the economy was depressed amid a period of massive inflation. Perhaps as a result of battling with a liberal Congress, his ideas failed to get the economy moving again and thereby failed to get the public excited about his Presidency.

Not helping matters was the fact that, despite being known as an athlete in his youth, he was a very clumsy president. Chevy Chase, during a Saturday Night Live Skit, made fun of Ford's clumsiness, making everyone well aware of it. Also not helping was, during a presidential debate, Ford seemed confused about Poland being independent of the Soviets, and this seemed to hamper his image.

Ford is often seen as a failed president. In retrospect, we can see that Ford was a good man and a good conservative with good ideas. He may even have had a chance at becoming a great president if only he had given a chance at one more term, or at least one full term.

He just so happened to come into office at a difficult time for the advancement of his good ideas. But he did have some success, and for that, we herald him as an above average president.

References:

1. Gerald R. Ford, Whitehouse.gov, http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/vice-president-agnew-resigns, accessed 11/12/16
2. Gerald Ford, Conservapedia, http://www.conservapedia.com/Gerald_Ford, accessed 11/12/16
3. Detente, history.com, http://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/detente, accessed 11/12/16
4. Remembering Gerald R. FordRemembering Gerald R. Ford, http://www.nationalreview.com/article/219602/model-ford-nro-symposium, 11/12/16

I do not want republicans to move to center and negotiate with the party that lost, as Obama suggested to Jimmy Fallon

So, Donald Trump is the 45th President of the United States. Hillary Clinton lost. Obama's agenda was repudiated. Still, there are those who champion for the Trump administration to move to the center and to negotiate with democrats.

Before the election a democratic friend of mine wanted me to watch a video of Obama on the Jimmy Fallon show.

Fallon: "Do you think the republicans are happy with their choice? 

Obama:  "Um, we are! But I don't know how they're feeling.  That was too easy. But, the truth is, actually, I am worried about the republican party... But democracy works, this country works, when you have two parties that are serious and trying to solve problems. And they've got philosophical differences, and they have fierce debates, and they argue, and they contest elections. But, at the end of the day, what you want is a healthy two-party system. And you want the republican nominee to be somebody who could do the job if they win. And you want folks who understand the issues, and where you can sit across the table from them and you can have a principled argument and ultimately can still move the country forward. So, I actually am not enjoying, and I haven't been enjoying over the last seven years, watching some of the things that have happened to the Republican party, 'cause there's some good people in the Republican party. There are wonderful Republicans out in the country who want what's best for the country and may disagree with me on some things, but are good, decent people. But what's happend in that party, culminating in this current nomination, I think, is not actually good for the country as a whole. It's not something Democrats should with for. And my hope is that, once we get through this cycle, there's some corrective action, and they get back to being a center-right party and the Democrat party being a center-left party, and we start figuring out how to work together. 

As soon as the video was over, I said to my friend:

"That's exactly what I don't want. I don't want more government. I want them to oppose democrats. I want them to reject their agenda. I don't want every time there's a problem to solve it with more government. More government is the antithesis of what the founders wanted. They wanted limited government. More government takes away liberties. I want republicans to oppose new laws, new regulations, and new taxes. I don't want more regulations. I want to get rid of the department of education, not add to its power. I want to give education back to the states so that parents and teachers can decide what kids learn, as opposed to eight liberals sitting in a room in Washington. I want to get rid of the IRS. I want to take power away from government agencies like the EPA so we can get rid of regulations based on global warming hoax that is burdensome to the economy. I don't want to move the liberal agenda forward, I want to stop it. I voted for republicans to stop Obamacare, not negotiate with democrats so it can keep functioning. I want them to cut funding for it. I want them to place bills on his desk repealing Obamacare. I want them to place bills on his desk getting rid of global warming regulations. But they don't do that. They do move to the center. Rather than opposing amnesty, they come up with their own amnesty program. The bottom line: I'm tired of that. I want them to oppose the party whose agenda has caused all the problems our country faces. So having someone like Trump IS actually good for the country as a whole, someone who calls a liberal a liberal and a liar a liar and who wants to stop the liberal agenda at all costs to make America great again... to take it back to where it was before Obama succeeded in fundamentally transforming it, moving it forward from a capitalistic nation to a socialistic-like nation."

I was on a roll. And as I went on my friend sat stiffly on the couch, crossed his arms, puckered his lips, and pretended to ignore me. I guess I offended him, as he was convinced I would agree with Obama about moving to the Center.

The Forgotten Man

The Forgotten Man -- by Jon McNaughton
President Obama is stomping on the Constitution,
and all the presidents and a guy on the bench:
he is the one left out. He represents the working class.
He is the working guy being forced to pay for
all the entitlement programs. He is the guy forced
out of his job when factories move across the border.
Trump ran with THAT guy in mind.

Franklin D. Roosevelt used the phrase "The Forgotten Man" on April 7, 1932, during a Fireside chat in reference to the impoverished people in the U.S who needed money and didn't have access to any. They had to do without, and we as Americans had the duty to help them out.

He said they were forgotten, and he used that phrase to convince Americans to pass his progressive programs, whereby he taxed the people who made money to give it to those who had little money to feed themselves and their families.

Thus, the most common reference to "The Forgotten Man" today usually refers to the meaning as FDR eluded to in that 1932 speech.

However, the original use of that phrase was by a Yale professor named William Graham Sumner (1840-1910) and his meaning was completely different from that used by FDR.

Graham's definition was in reference to the average working class American like you and me. We are the real forgotten men and women. We are forgotten because of our politicians and their progressive movement; they are so concerned about creating entitlement programs for taking care of the poor and the needy that they have forgotten about us -- the one's flipping the bill.

Sure the rich can be taxed to a certain extent, but the top 5% of income earners already account for 86% of all revenue from taxes. So in order to pay for all the government programs, the middle class must also be taxed.

Graham, in an 1883 speech, described the forgotten man this way: You have four men: A, B, C and X. A and B get together and decide something has to be done to help out X, who is poor and has no job. So to help X, A and B pass a law whereby A, B and C will be taxed so the money can be used to help out X.

A and B can afford to give the charity. But C is just your common man trying to make a living. And when the government taxes him, he is unable to get by, or barely able to get by. Because he is forced to help out X, he has to make cut backs other places. In essence, he is the true Forgotten Man.

Graham describes the Forgotten Man as such:

It is when we come to the proposed measures of relief for the evils which have caught public attention that we reach the real subject which deserves our attention. As soon as A observes something which seems to him to be wrong, from which X is suffering, A talks it over with B, and A and B then propose to get a law passed to remedy the evil and help X. Their law always proposes to determine what C shall do for X or, in the better case, what A, B and C shall do for X. As for A and B, who get a law to make themselves do for X what they are willing to do for him, we have nothing to say except that they might better have done it without any law, 'but what I want to do is to look up C. I want to show you what manner of man he is. I call him the Forgotten Man. Perhaps the appellation is not strictly correct. He is the man who never is thought of. He is the victim of the reformer, social speculator and philanthropist, and I hope to show you before I get through that he deserves your notice both for his character and for the many burdens which are laid upon him.

Now who is the Forgotten Man? He is the simple, honest laborer, ready to earn his living by productive work. We pass him by because he is independent, self-supporting, and asks no favors. He does not appeal to the emotions or excite the sentiments. He only wants to make a contract and fulfill it, with respect on both sides and favor on neither side. He must get his living out of the capital of the country. The larger the capital is, the better living he can get. Every particle of capital which is wasted on the vicious, the idle, and the shiftless is so much taken from the capital available to reward the independent and productive laborer. But we stand with our backs to the independent and productive laborer all the time.

I just think this is such an interesting concept. Basically, the concept is that lawmakers get together and decide to help the poor by taking from the common man, and they "overlook" the class of Americans that make the country possible -- the forgotten man.

While history tells a story where FDR ended the Great Depression by helping out FDR's Forgotten Man, Shlaes tells the true story about how FDR overlooked the true Forgotten Man, who was overtaxed and burdened by regulations.

Jon McNaughton, who created the painting displayed, depicts a U.S. where, in order to pass the programs needed to help man X, or FDR's Forgotten Man, Obama ignored the Constitution. This is why in his painting he has Obama standing over a copy of the U.S. Constitution, with most of our Presidents observing this with confused expressions on their faces as though saying, "What are you doing with OUR country?"

Donald J. Trump ran for president by tapping into the frustrations of Sumner's Forgotten Man. In his acceptance speech in the early hours of November 9, 2016, he said, "The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer"

Further reading:

• Sumner, William Graham, "The Forgotten Man And Other Essays," 1867, New Haven, Yale University Press
• Shlaes, Amity, "The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression," 
• Shlaes, Amity, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KGlBHyVeYUThe Forgotten Man," You Tube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KGlBHyVeYU

Donald Trump: Liberalism Rejected!!!

So, Donald Trump has been elected to be the 45th President of the United States. Now democrats and the media are calling for him to reach across the aisle to ease tensions in Washington. What is forgotten here is that by electing Trump, the people have rejected the democratic party; rejected the democrat agenda; rejected Obama's agenda; rejected liberalism; rejected globalism.

For some reason, people fail to see what just happened. They fail to see that American citizens do not like the current direction the United States is heading, and have clearly said they want to go in another direction. That, I believe, is why Trump was elected president.

I think that democrats, and the media, are so terrified of Trump that they have never taken the time to actually listen to anything he has said. They were so busy being offended because of political correctness that they failed to listen.

(I think this is also true of many people who did not vote for Trump based on things he said, that they were so offended that they failed to listen to the substance of his words and his agenda.)

Now the media and democrats are suffering from denial. They seem to be failing to accept that those large crowds that attended Trump rallies were interested in the substance of what Trump was saying. They have already made up their minds that he is a racist, bigot, homophobe, etc., so they refuse to even give him a chance.

So now they are saying he needs to reach across the aisle. As we place "reach across the aisle" into our interpreter, it means, "move forward the liberal agenda."

Look! The liberal agenda was rejected. People are hungry for a new direction. They want change. They are tired of jobs leaving and not coming back. They are tired of illegal immigrants coming into our country, taking away the few jobs that are available and driving down wages.

They fail to understand what Trump stands for because they have not listened to what he has said. They have not heard the voices of the millions of people who supported him. They can't understand how people could support such a bigot because they failed to listen to him.

Obama has been telling the people that what they now live in is the new normal. That 94 million people no longer in the workforce is the new normal. That not getting a raise every year is the new normal.

And the people rejected this notion. Trump said that dreamers should never stop dreaming and that America's best days are ahead. And this is what so many Americans still believe. Trump tapped into this. The media failed to see it. Democrats failed to see it.

The people rejected big government. They rejected Obamacare. They rejected amnesty. They rejected the notion that America should be a nation of victims. Americans want to be working, they don't want to be among the 94 million working age people who are sitting around collecting money from entitlement programs paid for by people who are working.

The people also rejected a republican establishment that kept getting elected on the notion they would reject liberalism and Obama's agenda, only to support it and to fund it. Or, even if they didn't support it, they made no efforts to stop it. For example, they could have easily unfunded Obamacare, but they didn't.

The left does not want to give up on the notion of moving their agenda forward. So, in the face of defeat, they now ask that Trump reaches across the aisle and offer an olive branch to them and their agenda. Trump should not cater to such calls.