The Reagan Mythology
I was amused by Ron Hart’s “Viewpoint” (May 24th issue) concerning the GOP and the mythology of Ronald Reagan. Reagan is now being held up as the paragon of GOP values by right-wingers like Hart. Interesting. I remember clearly in the 1980s how conservatives claimed Reagan wasn’t conservative enough and shills like Richard Viguerie and Paul Weyrich wanted conservatives to form a third party.
Reagan did not cut taxes; he shifted the tax burden. Whatever tax benefits most Americans received from the cuts in the marginal tax rates were more than made up by having to pay more FICA taxes and the closing of tax deductions in the 1986 tax code. According to the Tax Foundation, the average American was paying more taxes in 1989 than in 1981.
Hart writes of Reagan’s “mantra of limited government.” What government agency did Reagan eliminate or privatize? If Hart wants a conservative role model, he needs to look to Margaret Thatcher not Reagan.
As a financial investor, Hart should know that when Democrats are in the White House the economy does better — not worse — than under GOP management. As Carol Vinzant pointed out on Slate.com, since 1900, Democratic presidents have produced a 12.3 percent total return on the S&P 500. The Republicans have only produced an 8 percent return.
Clarence Murphy
Memphis
The Rant
Last week’s “Rant” by Charley Reese (May 24th issue) started out well enough. Indeed, it was refreshing to read the unvarnished truth for once about the operation of this ghastly war. But I was brought up short to discover that Reese’s greatest villains are “pointy-headed intellectuals.”
Since when? Any intellectual worth his university position could have told President Bush, had he or she been asked, that history indicates the Muslim nations are dangerous to interfere with. Literature warns against hubris. The disciplines of theater and psychology reveal the Oedipus complex (surely operative through Bush 43’s attempt to fix Bush 41’s mistakes at the end of the Iran-Iraq war).
The real culprits are the overly-influential profiteers, who recommended war despite being told by our own intelligence community that they risked disaster. It is regrettable that Reese’s otherwise trenchant observation should have foundered on such an obvious prejudice.
Joanne Malin
Memphis
The War at Home
I want to thank the Flyer and writer Mary Cashiola for the article about Rosine Ghawji (“The War at Home,” May 10th issue).
I have known Rosine for more than 35 years, and she is one of the most courageous and loveliest people I have ever known. Rosine not only paid for Dr. Ghawji to attend medical school in the United States in order to become certified to practice here, she has had the sole responsibility for raising her two sons.
There has been a great deal of misinformation about Rosine, and because of this she is very grateful, as are so many who know her, for your courage in putting her story in the Flyer. Dr. Ghawji and many of his family members are connected to terrorism and have been for many years.
Rosine has raised two outstanding sons who have excelled scholastically, athletically, and socially thanks to her loving care and attention. Judge Donna Fields has ordered Rosine’s children to be Muslim by a court order, and they must go in September to Saudi Arabia with their father and his family. Fields has also given full custody of Rosine’s younger son, who is still a minor, to his father. This judge is an absolute disgrace to the judicial system.
Thank you again for publishing this article and bringing much of the truth to light in Memphis.
Mary Connelly
Memphis
Relief From Gas Prices
Only one more spring and summer before America gets some relief from gas prices. That’s when the Bush-Cheney team and their friends at the oil companies leave the White House.
We have been told that it’s the lack of new refineries that has driven up the price of gas. After almost six years of complete control of the government, the president and his party couldn’t manage to get the oil companies to build one new refinery? The oil companies are recording record profits every year, and the administration has stood by while the consumer has been ripped off.
Jack Bishop
Cordova
