Taking Back Our Stolen History
Reagan, Ronald
Reagan, Ronald

Reagan, Ronald

(Feb 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004, age 93) served as the 40th President of the United States of America from 1981 to 1989. He was the 33rd Governor of California (1967–1975), following a successful career in film and television. In 1981 he survived an assassination attempt, supposedly by lone nut (John Hinckley, Jr.). Reagan was a movement conservative who succeeded in moving the nation to the right in terms of reducing federal regulation and lowering taxes. He promoted individual liberty and the conviction that government was the problem and private enterprise the solution. He cut taxes but despite his proposals, spending and the federal deficit went up. After a short sharp recession early in his first term, the economy was strong by 1984. Proclaiming “It’s Morning Again in America”, Reagan carried 49 of 50 states to win reelection. He moved the Supreme Court and the federal courts to the right with his appointments.

Reagan’s supply-side economic policies were based on the libertarian ideas of Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics. “Reaganomics” was based on the idea that tax cuts will spur savings and investment. Reagan was strongly opposed to the concept of Big government, advocating a reduction in the size and budget of the federal government. During his terms in office, he faced a divided Congress split between Republican and Democratic control for six of his eight years as president. Reagan was known for forging alliances with “boll weevil” (conservative) Democrats to overcome the apparent majority led by Democratic Speaker Tip O’Neill.

The Langemann Papers reveal that Le Cercle discussed how they could promote Ronald Reagan against Jimmy Carter. Spook Nicholas Elliott reported that in this context positive contact had been made with George H. W. Bush.[3] Reagan’s election was facilitated by the October surprise conspiracy, a secret deal with Iranian hostage takers to give them weapons in order to prevent the release of the US embassy hostages before the 1980 US presidential election. In the event, the hostages were released hours after Reagan was inaugurated, but the official narrative still denies that this deal happened.

An assassination attempt was made against Ronald Reagan on March 30, 1981. The official narrative is that a “lone nut”, John Hinckley, Jr. carried it out in an effort to impress actress Jodie Foster. Others have suggested that it was a plot to assume full political control of the presidency by his vice president, George H W Bush.[4]

Reagan’s Conservatism

In a speech, immediately after assuming the presidency in 1981, he outlined his philosophy. After listing “intellectual leaders like Russell KirkFriedrich HayekHenry HazlittMilton FriedmanJames BurnhamLudwig von Mises” as the ones who “shaped so much of our thoughts,” he discussed only one of these influences at length:

  • It’s especially hard to believe that it was only a decade ago, on a cold April day on a small hill in upstate New York, that another of these great thinkers, Frank Meyer, was buried. He’d made the awful journey that so many others had: He pulled himself from the clutches of “The [communist] God That Failed, and then in his writing fashioned a vigorous new synthesis of traditional and libertarian thought — a synthesis that is today recognized by many as modern conservatism.
  • It was Frank Meyer who reminded us that the robust individualism of the American experience was part of the deeper current of Western learning and culture. He pointed out that a respect for law, an appreciation for tradition, and regard for the social consensus that gives stability to our public and private institutions, these civilized ideas must still motivate us even as we seek a new economic prosperity based on reducing government interference in the marketplace.
  • Our goals complement each other. We’re not cutting the budget simply for the sake of sounder financial management. This is only a first step toward returning power to the States and communities, only a first step toward reordering the relationship between citizen and government. We can make government again responsive to the people by cutting its size and scope and thereby ensuring that its legitimate functions are performed efficiently and justly.[5] Reagan rose to power speaking of Traditional values such as hard work, faith, family, God and patriotism (ideas that liberals call “racist”). Reagan strongly opposed progressive taxation, redistribution of wealth, the welfare state, and nationalization.

Political analyst Henry Olsen argues in The Working Class Republican that Reagan’s political views were more closely aligned with Franklin D. Roosevelt than typically thought, and that Reagan was more of a traditional blue-collar, working-class conservative than a libertarian.[6][7]

Reagan a RINO?

A Republican running on Reagan’s platform today; of what he actually did, not his rhetoric and ideology; would likely be rejected by the party base and probably be labeled with the dreaded RINO tag. Here’s why:

  1. Reagan granted amnesty to illegal immigrants. This is toxic for Republicans in this election cycle. Anything short of  “send them all home” is fodder for the party purists. Regardless of ideology, the concept of sending, at a minimum, 12 million people back to country X is impractical and probably not even possible. As one who believes in pragmatic politics, what Reagan did was right. But where he failed, and where Presidents since have as well, is securing the border. Without a secure border, it’s impossible to prevent illegal immigration.
  2. Ronald Reagan raised taxes. True, he also authored one of the largest tax decreases in history, but these days, if you don’t sign Grover Norquist’s no-taxes pledge , you aren’t a real conservative.  God forbid we tax fatty food or sodium, things that result in health problems later in life that we all end up paying for through Medicare. That’s a sin in today’s conservative orthodoxy.
  3. Ronald Reagan spent us into a deficit. Because of the tax cuts he enacted, coupled with the massive increase in defense spending, our national debt rose from roughly $700 billion to $3 trillion during Reagan’s time in office. We shifted from being the largest creditor in the world to the largest debtor. We also dramatically increased our borrowing from foreign nations , which continues today.
  4. Ronald Reagan helped facilitate the Savings and Loan crisis. Not entirely dissimilar from the financial crisis in fall 2008 , the savings and loan crisis ended up being costing $125 billion in a taxpayer-funded bailout. Although the bailout itself didn’t take place when he was in office, he  bears some responsibility, as the crisis happened during his time and his policies of deregulation contributed to it.
  5. Ronald Reagan compromised. Yes, he is the origin of much of modern conservative dogma, from supply-side economics to the culture war (his greatest failure, in my opinion). But as with any good President, Reagan knew the value of compromise. Partly out of necessity, given that he had to work with a Democratic house for the entirety of his Presidency, but partly because he knew that, despite the need to have a political base, that any base of any party or ideology is not representative of a majority of Americans.

Source: RedState; See also: OutsideTheBeltway

I’m not trying to rain on Reagan’s parade here. The country was a better place the day he left office than the day he took it by most measures. But hearing him discussed today, you’d think he followed the conservative manifesto to a tee, cured cancer, and saved abused puppies in his downtime.

The reality is far different. He was a strong conservative, but he was also a pragmatist when the situation called for it.  That pragmatic quality that seems to be lacking in many of today’s conservative voices. The movement as a whole would be well served to try and mimic their hero in that respect, so that America can continue to be that shining city on a hill that Reagan so believed in.

Bitter Divorce

Ronald Reagan married actor Jane Wyman in 1940. The pair met in 1938 on the set of the comedy “Brother Rat.” Wyman was twice divorced by the age of 21, but the young actress was, “smitten with [Reagan] at first glance,” according to their adopted son Michael. Indeed, Wyman went to drastic lengths to secure Reagan’s hand in marriage. According to biographer Bob Spitz, after months of Reagan putting off the union, Wyman was hospitalized after harming herself. Reagan agreed to marry her.

The cracks in this already toxic union would soon appear. Wyman was reportedly “infuriated” by Reagan’s “incessant chatter” and mocked him as having “diarrhea of the mouth.” She was frustrated also by his ambition, which she perceived as distracting him from their marriage. Furthermore, he was envious in 1948 when Wyman won the Oscar for Best Actress in “Johnny Belinda.” It then transpired that Wyman had a fling with her “Johnny Belinda” co-star Lew Ayres (via Reference).

Magnanimously, Reagan announced that he would accept the affair and move on. However, later in 1948, Wyman filed for divorce, citing “mental cruelty.” Described by National Affairs as an unfair accusation, Reagan would channel this experience into overturning the laws of “fault-based divorce.” In 1969, as governor of California, Reagan signed the nation’s first no-fault divorce bill, which eliminated the need for spouses to have a reason for divorce. Now, Californians could divorce at will, and the bill was swiftly emulated by states across the union. Reagan would later describe the bill as one of the biggest mistakes of his political life. (Grunge)

Emotionally Distant Father

According to the Miller Center, Ronald Reagan was an emotionally distant person. His wife Nancy said, “There’s a wall around him. He lets me come closer than anyone else, but there are times when even I feel that barrier.” Reagan’s emotional distance was evident in his youth. Despite being a gregarious student who played football, captained the swimming team, acted in theater productions, and presided over the student council, biographer Bob Spitz said he had “no close friends” (via Biography). Spitz suggested that Reagan’s barrier was a legacy of his father, whose charming demeanor hid his womanizing and alcoholism.

Ronald Reagan’s most contentious relationship was with his daughter Patricia, better known as Patti Davis (her mother’s maiden name). In an interview with The Daily Beast, Patti spoke of her “many, many years of drug abuse,” adding that she was “a drug addict from the time I was 15 well into my 20s.” Of course, this was very much at odds with her father’s “War on Drugs” or her mother’s famous “Just Say No” campaign.

Patti seems to have channeled her negative familial energy into “Home Front,” her debut novel. Davis tells the story of an ambitious politician who, like her father, becomes governor of California and then president of the United States. The fictional president and his first lady have a very close relationship, one that becomes isolated from their children, whom they begin to view as political liabilities. (Grunge)

Early Democrat

According to presidential historian Mike Purdy, Ronald Reagan “idolized” Franklin Delano Roosevelt and was a Democrat voter for much of his Hollywood career in the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s. However, after his leadership of the Screen Actors Guild and the actor’s union, during which he experienced physical bullying from labor unions, Reagan joined the Republican Party in the early 1960s.

Another formative experience occurred when he became a host for “General Electric Theater,” a weekly prime time television series on CBS (via Biography). As part of the job, he also served as a General Electric spokesman, which further polished his eloquence as he espoused the company’s pro-business philosophy.

As president, Reagan would often joke about his past life as a Democrat. In 1982, reporter Sam Donaldson asked, “You have blamed mistakes of the past and you have blamed the Congress, does any of the blame belong to you?,” to which Reagan replied, “Yes because for many years I was a Democrat.” (Grunge)

FBI informer

In October 1947, in the lead-up to the McCarthy era, the US Congress House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) subpoenaed a number of people working in the Hollywood film industry to testify at hearings. HUAC had declared its intention to investigate whether Communist agents and sympathizers had been planting propaganda in US films. The hearings opened with appearances by Walt Disney and Ronald Reagan, then president of the Screen Actors Guild and an FBI informer.[1] Disney testified that the threat of Communists in the film industry was a serious one. In his testimony before the HUAC, Reagan named several members of his union as communist sympathizers. (Later his first wife, actress Jane Wyman, stated in her biography with Joe Morella (1985) that Reagan’s allegations against friends and colleagues led to tension in their marriage eventually resulting in their divorce.) In response, several leading Hollywood figures, including director John Huston and actors Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, and Danny Kaye, organized the Committee for the First Amendment to protest the government’s targeting of the film industry.[2]

Reagan Won the Most Electoral Votes in History in 1984

In 1980, Ronald Reagan’s rival was Jimmy Carter, a president overwhelmed by the Iran hostage crisis, unemployment, inflation, and intermittent energy woes. With a historically weak opponent, Reagan won in a landslide, securing 489 electoral votes and 44 states, according to ThoughtCo. It was among the largest margins of victory in American history, yet Reagan would prove even more dominant four years later. He entered the November 1984 election with an approval rating of 58%, and although Reagan flopped during the first debate with rival Walter Mondale, the president bolstered his popularity at the second debate by using his signature wit (via Gallup/Slate).

When the moderator pressed Reagan on his age – he was 73 – the president replied, “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” Remembered as one of Reagan’s most enduring quips, the president would crush Mondale and the Democrats, winning 525 of the 538 electoral votes, the largest number in presidential history. However, it was not America’s most lopsided election. That was achieved by Franklin Roosevelt, who won 98.5% of the electoral college, just 0.9% more than Regan’s 97.6% landslide. (Grunge)

MAGA Slogan

Donald Trump will forever be associated with “Make American Great Again,” but he was not the first candidate to use this term. In 1980, Ronald Reagan used the slogan at rallies and on merchandise, such as this campaign pin. The slogan would also conclude Reagan’s promotional ads, in which the candidate would speak of “better government” rather than “bigger government.” Reagan would also appeal to a similar voter base as Trump. The so-called “Reagan Democrats” were traditionally Democrat voters, many from the Rust Belt, who turned to Reagan because of his views on jobs and the economy. (Grunge)

Assassination Attempt

President Ronald Reagan had been on the job just 69 days when John Hinckley shot him outside the ​​Washington Hilton Hotel. According to the Reagan Library, Hinckley fired six times, hitting police officer Thomas Delahanty, Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy, and Press Secretary James Brady, who suffered a life-changing brain injury. The sixth bullet struck the limousine, ricocheted, and struck the president deep in his chest.

“There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that it was close,” said Jerry Parr who hurled Reagan into the limousine (via CBS News). According to Del Quentin Wilber, “If Jerry Parr was a split second slower, he [Reagan] would have gotten it in the head, if you look at the angle he was going at, it would have hit Reagan in the head.” Still, the situation was grave. As Parr examined the president for injuries, Reagan started to spit up “profuse amounts of red, frothy blood.” The bullet had lodged itself in the president’s lung just one inch from his heart, a location that Dr. Benjamin Aaron described as a “pretty vile place,” adding that his first thought was, “is this a salvageable case?”

Reagan lost 40% of his blood, yet, remarkably, as the medical team prepared for surgery, the president quipped, “I hope you are all Republicans!” Dr. Giordano replied, “Today, Mr. President, we’re all Republicans” (via National Review). (Grunge)

Nicaragua

For eight long years the people of Nicaragua were under attack by Ronald Reagan’s proxy army, the Contras. It was all-out war from Washington, aiming to destroy the progressive social and economic programs of the Sandinista government — burning down schools and medical clinics, mining harbors, bombing and strafing, raping and torturing. These Contras were the charming gentlemen Reagan called “freedom fighters” and the “moral equivalent of our founding fathers”.

“Iran Contra”

Reagan’s Vice President, George H. W. Bush, organized a large off-the-books drugs for guns deal involving cocaine importation into the USA and shipping of weapons to the “contras“. Reagan’s long-drawn-out statements on the subject can be summarized as follows:

  • I didn’t know what was happening.
  • If I did know, I didn’t know enough.
  • If I knew enough, I didn’t know it in time.
  • If I knew it in time, it wasn’t illegal.
  • If it was illegal, the law didn’t apply to me.
  • If the law applied to me, I didn’t know what was happening.

Libya

On 2 December 2010, in a video conference link to staff and students at the London School of Economics, Muammar Gaddafi alleged that the case against Abdelbaset al-Megrahi had ‘been fabricated and created by’ Britain’s former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and former US President Ronald Reagan. He suggested that US CIA officials had been behind the 21 December 1988 Lockerbie bombing in which 270 people were killed.

“These are the people who created this conspiracy” said Gaddafi, referring to the alleged role of Thatcher and Reagan in Megrahi‘s conviction and life sentence over the attack on Pan Am Flight 103. “The charges directed towards Libya were based on unfounded evidence in an attempt to weaken the Libyan Revolution and limit its resources and abilities”.[5]

In making his allegation, Gaddafi did not include George H W Bush in this conspiracy which suggests that if Thatcher and Reagan had indeed ‘fabricated and created’ the Lockerbie bombing case against Libya, they would have done so in the interregnum between the 8 November 1988 US presidential election and President-elect Bush taking over from Reagan on 20 January 1989.

Gaddafi’s alleged Lockerbie conspiracy could well have been hatched on 15 November 1988 when President Reagan and Prime Minister Thatcher were photographed in the White House library and would undoubtedly have discussed Iran’s threat to retaliate massively for the shooting down of Iran Air Flight 655 by USS Vincennes on 3 July 1988 with the loss of 290 civilian lives. The two leaders might then have decided to open secret negotiations with Iran and seek to limit the revenge attack to just one US aircraft.[6] The US and UK would not have wanted to antagonize the Iranians further by blaming Iran for the retaliation, so would have selected ‘mad dog’ Gaddafi to be their whipping boy.

Western Intelligence Agencies (including the CIA, MI6 and apartheid South Africa’s SSC) would have been party to such negotiations and would have had a say in selecting both the sacrificial aircraft Clipper Maid of the Seas (Pan Am Flight 103) and the target UN Assistant Secretary-General & Commissioner for Namibia (Bernt Carlsson).

Thus on 22 December 1988 (the day after the Lockerbie bombing), President Reagan phoned Downing Street:[7]

“Margaret, I understand you have just returned from the site of the Pan Am crash. I want to thank you for your expression of sorrow on the Pan Am 103 tragedy. On behalf of the American people, I also want to thank the rescue workers who responded so quickly and courageously. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims of this accident, both the passengers on the plane and the villagers in Scotland”.

On 28 December 1988, seven days after the Lockerbie bombing, when there was as yet no evidence ostensibly pointing to Libyan culpability, Ronald Reagan in one of the last acts of his Presidency, extended sanctions against Libya and threatened renewed bombing raids.[8]

Sure enough, the joint US/UK investigation into the bombing soon found ‘evidence’ pointing towards Libya for the sabotage of Pan Am Flight 103. According to author and journalist, Ian Ferguson, it was a case of ‘reverse engineering’ whereby Libya had been fitted up for the crime and the inculpatory evidence followed (see the 2009 documentary film Lockerbie Revisited).[9]

El Salvador

El Salvador’s dissidents tried to work within the system. But with US support, the government made that impossible, using repeated electoral fraud and murdering hundreds of protestors and strikers. When the dissidents took to the gun and civil war, the Carter administration and then even more so, the Reagan administration, responded with unlimited money, military aid, and training in support of the government and its death squads and torture, the latter with the help of CIA torture manuals. US military and CIA personnel played an active role on a continuous basis. The result was 75,000 civilian deaths; meaningful social change thwarted; a handful of the wealthy still owned the country; the poor remained as ever; dissidents still had to fear right-wing death squads; there was to be no profound social change in El Salvador while Ronnie sat in the White House with Nancy.

Guatemala

In 1954, a US Deep state instigated coup overthrew the democratically-elected government of Jacobo Arbenz, initiating 40 years of military-government death squads, torture, disappearances, mass executions, and unimaginable cruelty, totaling more than 200,000 victims. For eight of those years the Reagan administration played a major role.

Ronald Reagan gave dictator Efraín Ríos Montt millions of dollars of military hardware and in December 1982 went to visit him. At a press conference of the two men, Montt was asked about the Guatemalan policy of scorched earth. He replied “We do not have a policy of scorched earth. We have a policy of scorched communists.” After the meeting, referring to the allegations of extensive human-rights abuses, Reagan declared that Ríos Montt was getting “a bad deal” from the media. On December 4, Reagan declared:

“President Ríos Montt is a man of great personal integrity and commitment. … I know he wants to improve the quality of life for all Guatemalans and to promote social justice.”[10][11]

The murderous nature of General Montt’s regime was widely understood at the time. He was known to have remarked: “If you are with us, we’ll feed you, if not, we’ll kill you”.[12]. On 10 May 2013, convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity, Ríos Montt was sentenced to 80 years imprisonment.[13]

Grenada

Reagan invaded the tiny island nation of Grenada in October 1983, an illegal and immoral war, to this day surrounded by lies (such as “endangered” American medical students). The invasion put into power individuals more in line with US foreign policy interests.

Afghanistan

After the Carter administration provoked a Soviet invasion, Reagan came to power to support the Islamic fundamentalists in their war to eject the Soviets and the secular government, which honored women’s rights. In the end, the United States and the fundamentalists “won”, women’s rights and the rest of Afghanistan lost. More than a million dead, three million disabled, five million refugees; in total about half the population. And many thousands of anti-American Islamic fundamentalists, trained and armed by the US, on the loose to terrorize the world, to this day.

“To watch the courageous Afghan freedom fighters battle modern arsenals with simple hand-held weapons is an inspiration to those who love freedom,” declared Reagan. “Their courage teaches us a great lesson — that there are things in this world worth defending. To the Afghan people, I say on behalf of all Americans that we admire your heroism, your devotion to freedom, and your relentless struggle against your oppressors.” [1]

The Cold War

As to Reagan’s alleged role in ending the Cold War … pure fiction. He prolonged it. Read the story in William Blum’s Book, “Killing Hope”[2]

Other examples of the amorality of Reagan and the feel-good heartlessness of his administration

Reagan, in his famous 1964 speech, “A Time for Choosing“, which lifted him to national political status:

“We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry each night. Well, that was probably true. They were all on a diet.”

Hilarious eh? and delivered with that trade-mark, disarming, self-deprecating smile of his

“Undermining health, safety and environmental regulation. Reagan decreed such rules must be subjected to regulatory impact analysis — corporate-biased cost-benefit analyses, carried out by the Office of Management and Budget. The result: countless positive regulations discarded or revised based on pseudo-scientific conclusions that the cost to corporations would be greater than the public benefit.”

Kick-starting the era of structural adjustment. It was under Reagan administration influence that the International Monetary Fund and World Bank began widely imposing the policy package known as structural adjustment — featuring deregulation, privatization, emphasis on exports, cuts in social spending — that has plunged country after country in the developing world into economic destitution. The IMF chief at the time was honest about what was to come, saying in 1981 that, for low-income countries, ‘adjustment is particularly costly in human terms’.

Silence on the AIDS epidemic. Reagan didn’t mention AIDS publicly until 1987, by which point AIDS had killed 19,000 in the United States.” – Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman [3]

“Reagan’s election changed the political reality. His agenda was rolling back the welfare state, and his budgets included a wide range of cuts for social programs. He was also very strategic about the process. One of his first targets was Legal Aid. This program, which provides legal services for low-income people, was staffed largely by progressive lawyers, many of whom used it as a base to win precedent-setting legal disputes against the government. Reagan drastically cut back the program’s funding. He also explicitly prohibited the agency from taking on class-action suits against the government — law suits that had been used with considerable success to expand the rights of low- and moderate-income families.”

The Reagan administration also made weakening the power of unions a top priority. The people he appointed to the National Labor Relations Board were qualitatively more pro-management than appointees by prior Democratic or Republican presidents. This allowed companies to ignore workers’ rights with impunity. Reagan also made the firing of strikers an acceptable business practice when he fired striking air traffic controllers in 1981. Many large corporations quickly embraced the practice. … The net effect of these policies was that union membership plummeted, going from nearly 20 percent of the private sector workforce in 1980 to just over 7 percent in 2006. ” – Dean Baker [4]

Reaganomics: a tax policy based on a notion of incentives which says that “the rich aren’t working because they have too little money, while the poor aren’t working because they have too much.” – John Kenneth Galbraith

“According to the nostrums of Reagan Age America, the current Chinese system — in equal measure capitalist and authoritarian — cannot actually exist. Capitalism spread democracy, we were told ad nauseam by a steady stream of conservative hacks, free-trade apologists, government officials and American companies doing business in China. Given enough Starbuckses and McDonald’s, provided with sufficient consumer choice, China would surely become a democracy.”
– Harold Meyerson [5]

Throughout the early and mid-1980s, the Reagan administration declared that the Russians were spraying toxic chemicals over Laos, Cambodia and Afghanistan — the so-called “yellow rain” — and had caused more than ten thousand deaths by 1982 alone, (including, in Afghanistan, 3,042 deaths attributed to 47 separate incidents between the summer of 1979 and the summer of 1981, so precise was the information). President Reagan himself denounced the Soviet Union thusly more than 15 times in documents and speeches. The “yellow rain”, it turned out, was pollen-laden feces dropped by huge swarms of honeybees flying far overhead. [6]

Opinions

In October 1971, a majority of the UN General Assembly voted (against the wishes of the US) to recognize the PRC. The next day Reagan commented to Richard Nixon, in a recording which was withheld until after Reagan’s death out of concern for his “privacy”: “To see those, those monkeys from those African countries — damn them, they’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes!” Nixon gave a huge laugh. Reagan was less blatantly racist than Richard Nixon, but still mounted a “passionate defense of the apartheid states of Rhodesia and South Africa”. [14]

Notes:

  1. 21 March 1983, in the White House
  2. ISBN 1567512526 “Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II”, p.17-18. Also for the five countries listed above, see the respective chapters in this book, Some of which are also posted on Wikispooks
  3. June, 2004; Mokhiber is editor of Corporate Crime Reporter; Weissman, editor of the Multinational Monitor, both in Washington, DC
  4. April, 2007; Baker is Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Washington, DC
  5. Washington Post columnist, 3 June 2009
  6. “Killing Hope”, p.349

Sources:

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