From: laelth@yabbs
To: Cochise@yabbs
Subject: re: Anarchy in General etc.
Date: Tue Feb  1 03:40:47 1994

Cochise:
    Excuse me, but what left -wing liberal establishment in Washington are 
you talking about?  In case you're not aware of this, the U.S. has the 
most conservative government of any nation in the Industrialized World.  
That includes Japan, Canada, Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, you 
know, the economic powerhouses.  Yes, of all these governments, ours is 
the MOST conservative.  Those of us who are REALLY on the left are quite 
unhappy with what's been happening in Washington, so I don't know what 
you're so upset about.
    Let's take a look at the last few decades.  Since 1968 Republicans 
(conservatives) have controlled the White House for 21 years and the 
Democrats (liberals, supposedly, but not really) have controlled the White 
House for four years.  If you want to blame someone for the state that 
we're in blame the conservatives.  After all, it was Reagan who cut taxes 
and increased government spending in the 1980s.  He gave us the national 
debt.  It is true that a Democratic House AND a Republican Senate passed  
Reagan's 1981 tax code and budget, however, we must not lose sight of the 
fact that Reagan was elected by a HUGE landslide.  Congress was afraid of 
Reagan, and for the first couple of years they gave him anything that he 
wanted.  As a direct result of changes initiated by Reagan in the early 
1980s we got the ballooning federal debt (@$4.5 trillion now), we got the 
S&L Scandal (we're still bailing out failing banks), the rich got a tax 
break and got richer, the poor got poorer, and we got an expensive drug 
war that failed miserably.  You can blame this on some left-wing 
establishment if you like, but the fact is that all of this came about as 
a direct result of the policies of Ronald Reagan.  True, we experienced 
years of economic growth, but we'll be paying off Reagan's debt for 
decades.  I don't know about you, but I didn't get my $4.5 trillion worth 
in the 1980s.  I don't think that it was worth it.
    You mention FDR in your post, and villify him as the demon who 
initiated all these new social programs in the 1930s.  You imply that we 
don't need those programs now.  What programs, specifically, don't we 
need?  It's very popular these days to run around screaming (very much 
like Chicken Little) "cut spending! cut spending!"  The fact is, there's 
nothing substantial left to cut.  We spend @$1.4 trillion/year.  We 
collect in taxes @$1.1 trillion/year, leaving us with a defecit of @ $300 
billion/year.  The entire defense budget is @$300 billion/year.  Do you 
want to completely eliminate the defense budget?  We spend over $200 
billion/year merely on the INTEREST on the national debt, and this payment 
keeps going up becaust the debt keeps growing.  We might (if we tried
very hard, and caused a lot of pain) be able to cut another $50 billion 
from the budget, but this would still leave us with a tremendous defecit, 
@$250 billion/year and rising.
    Clearly this is a big problem, and there are no simple solutions, 
although I've seen some childishly simplistic solutions passed of as 
"realistic" on this very list.  Please honor me, and yourself by 
considering more carefully who you blame for your woes.  Frankly, I wish 
there were a left-wing establishment in Washington that you could blame, 
but the fact is that true leftists are few and far between in this most 
conservative of nations.

-laelth