<div dir="ltr"><div><font face="georgia, serif">Good Morning Visionaries:</font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif">For those who do not take the Daily News, you will find my biweekly column below. A longer version appeared in the Sandpoint Reader last week, and the 2,000-word version (attached) will appear in Pocatello's Idaho State Journal on Sunday.</font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif">Every year on Reagan's birthday I take the occasion to demythologize this man's presidency. Read <span style="color:black;text-align:center">“Why Reagan Cannot Save the Republicans” and
“Defense, Deceptions, </span></font><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;text-align:center;line-height:115%;color:black">and Deficits” at </span><a href="http://www.nickgier.com/ReaganPage.htm" style="font-family:georgia,serif;text-align:center"><span style="line-height:115%">www.NickGier.com/ReaganPage.htm</span></a><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;text-align:center;line-height:115%;color:black">; and “Ten Myths </span></div><div><font face="georgia, serif"><span style="text-align:center;line-height:115%;color:black">about Ronald Reagan’s Presidency” at </span><span style="text-align:center;line-height:115%"><a href="http://www.nickgier.com/ReaganMyths.pdf" style="text-align:center">www.NickGier.com/ReaganMyths.pdf</a></span> </font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif">My next column has the provisional title "Refugees are People, Too." Please attend the rally in East City Park on Saturday.</font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif">nfg</font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div><div><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center;line-height:150%"><b><span style="line-height:150%;font-family:georgia,serif;color:black">Obama and
Reagan: Assessing Their Legacies</span></b><span style="line-height:150%;font-family:georgia,serif;color:black"><span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center;line-height:150%"><span style="line-height:150%;font-family:georgia,serif;color:black">By Nick Gier, The Palouse Pundit<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%"><span style="line-height:150%;font-family:georgia,serif;color:black"> Ronald Reagan would have been 106 on
February 6, so I would like to compare his achievements with Obama’s.<br clear="all">
Critics love to paint Obama
and the Democrats as big spenders, but <span style="background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial">Reagan administration
did not return to Jimmy Carter’s lower level of spending until 1984. <br clear="all">
Data from the St. Louis
Federal Reserve shows that Reagan reduced federal spending, as a percentage of
GDP, by only 2 percent at the end of his two terms. In his first six years Obama reduced federal
spending by 2.7 percent.<br clear="all">
</span> For the most part
Obama’s policies have saved tax payer’s money. Let’s look at the auto bailout
first: $79.7 billion in federal dollars were invested, and $70.4 billion was
returned to the Treasury. Mitt Romney would not have saved the auto industry,
so just think how the economy would be today without GM and Chrysler. <span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:150%"><span style="line-height:150%;font-family:georgia,serif;color:black">Let’s now assess the success of TARP, Obama’s
attempt to save the banks and insurance companies. The government invested $245
billion, and already by 2011, $244 billion had been returned to the Treasury. When
the books were closed in 2014, tax payers had made a tidy $15.3 billion profit.
<br clear="all">
Let’s now turn to the Obama
stimulus, which cost $825 billion, including $275 billion in personal and
business tax cuts. T<span style="background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial">he Gross Domestic Product
rose by 3.2 percent, and the Congressional Budget Office found that stimulus “created
higher output and employment than would have occurred without it.”<span></span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;color:black">
</span><span style="line-height:150%;font-family:georgia,serif;color:black">When one talks about the national debt, it is
not fair to count that inherited from one’s predecessors. Currently the most recent components of that
debt, starting with the largest share first, are the Bush tax cuts, the loss of
revenue due to the Great Recession, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and then
Obama’s stimulus. <br clear="all">
</span><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;color:black"> </span><span style="line-height:150%;font-family:georgia,serif;color:black">Obama borrowed money at very low interest
rates to save the economy, but Reagan and the Bushes sold federal bonds to wage
war, one cold and two hot. <span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:150%"><span style="line-height:150%;font-family:georgia,serif;color:black">Reagan was forced to increase taxes 7 times
in his 8 years to fend off increasing deficits because of his tax cuts and
defense spending, but he still tripled the national debt.<br clear="all">
The new Congress just passed a budget bill
that will add $1.7 trillion to the deficit over ten years. With tax cuts even more
severe than George W.’s, and new spending that Trump wants for infrastructure
and defense, we will go much deeper in debt. <br clear="all">
The claim that Reagan won the
Cold War is an exaggeration.</span><span style="line-height:150%;font-family:georgia,serif"> Every president from Truman to Reagan should
get credit for the firm bipartisan stand against the Soviet Union. Reagan stood
at the end of the slow economic collapse of a failed ideology and had the good
luck of dealing with a pragmatic Soviet leader.<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:150%"><span style="line-height:150%;font-family:georgia,serif">Obama’s
campaign against ISIS has been so successful that these terrorists can claim
only their small capital Raqqa and the western half of Mosul. Terrorist attacks
will of course continue, and they well increase if Trump follows through with
his promise of indiscriminate bombing.<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:150%"><span style="line-height:150%;font-family:georgia,serif;color:black">Both Reagan and Obama were superb speakers,
but Reagan succeeded far better than Obama in uniting the American people and
persuading them, including many Democrats, that his policies were the right
ones. <br clear="all">
I’m forced to agree that
Reagan was a transformational president, even though I believe his policies
have been bad for the nation. Obama failed to reverse the Reagan legacy, because
he could not convince the public that government can do good and that taxes are
the price one pays for civilization. <br clear="all">
Unfortunately, we now are
faced with a tax cutting, deficit creating Congress and a renegade president. Unlike
Reagan, Trump will most likely read Bush, Sr.’s lips: “No new taxes.” The
predicted economic growth of 4 percent will not happen, so we will be faced
with a fiscal disaster of epic proportions.<br clear="all"> Nick Gier taught philosophy at
the University of Idaho for 31 years. <span></span></span></p></div><div class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div> <div style="height:auto;width:auto"> <div> <div><div><font face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div></div></div></div></div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><font size="2"><div><font face="georgia, serif">A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in. <br><br>-Greek proverb</font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif"><br>
“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity.
Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance
from another. This immaturity is self- imposed when its cause lies not
in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it
without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! ‘Have courage to use your
own understand-ing!—that is the motto of enlightenment.<br>
<br>
--Immanuel Kant<br>
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