Ronald Reagan

Ronald Reagan was one of the worst Presidents this country has seen. He was a total phony who would read from a script to hide his worsening dementia. He cared not an iota for the common man, but was a typical republican, only interested in enriching his big business buddies, and laying waste to the third world. Least we forget, it was Reagan's policies that brought 1) Change to the federal tax system, giving massive tax breaks to the wealthy and big business, and shifting a horrendous tax burden to the middle class; 2) Change to environmental laws, wrecking havoc on natural resources, endangered species, and the health and welfare of all Americans; 3) Change to labor laws, wrestling hard-earned workers' rights from unions, and causing at least one industry, air traffic control, into paralysis, affecting the safety of air traffic for more than a year; 4) Change to American foreign policy, by selling arms to Iran, and forwarding the profits to right-wing Central American dictators to help fund their death squads; 5) Change to monetary policies resulting in his leaving office with the largest federal deficit yet seen in US history; 6) Change to education - when he could not disband the US Department of Education, as he campaigned to do - he succeeded in reducing Federal education spending by 50%, and ravaged local education control by diverting funding to the state leve. In addition, there are millions of Californians whose minds and memories are not so feeble as to fail to remember not only the miserable years of the Reagan presidency, but the painful, bitter years of the Reagan governorship. I for one, being a student at the University of California during Reagan's governorship, saw firsthand his efforts, and "success" in dramatically raising tuition costs while slashing budgets, terminating construction projects, firing Clark Kerr, the popular President of the University, and enraging faculty with his declarations that the state "should not subsidize intellectual curiosity". His massive cuts to health and welfare benefits in California, and in particular, mental health care, is the single biggest cause of the massive increase in homelessness in California over the past three decades - the tossing out into the streets of thousands of sick people who could not function in society.