Thursday, March 3, 1994
A look at Reaganomics
by John Rossomando
Collegian Staff
Liberals constantly spread
falsehoods and misinformation
about the 1980s,and the
complete economic success
which occurred during the
1980 s. Liberals hardly have
anything to crow about
economically speaking. Every
time that an economic Liberal
has been in the White House
the economic picture has
almost always been one of
disaster. The Liberals bash the
1980 s in order to mask their
own economic failures. Let’s
let Ronald Reagan’s record
speak for itself.
When Ronald Reagan
became president in January
1981, the U.S. economy was
in the midst of its worst crisis
since the Great Depression.
Unemployment was 7.4% and
inflation had pushed interest
rates to 21%. Real income had
been pushed to its lowest point
in history as a result of the
Carter tax hikes. The morale of
the American people had been
extremely cut as a result of
Vietnam and Watergate. The
United States was the laughing
stock of the world when
Reagan came to office, and
when he left office in 1989 we
■ 111 ■ Reagan was right!
Bombarded by beavers
by Dave Barry
Syndicated Columnist
Today’s topic -- and we wish
to stress that this has nothing
whatsoever to do with the
Clintoa administration - is
Beavers In The News.
Here at the Center For Being
Alarmed, we have been
monitoring the beaver situation
for more than two years now,
and we feel that the time has
come to aim you, the public, to
what is going on, so that you
can take appropriate action in the
form of whimpering in tenor.
Let’s review the sequence of
events, bearing in mind that we
are not making ANY of these
events up; they all were reported
in actual newspaper items sent
in by many alert readers.
We will start with 1992, when
wildlife authorities in
Celmsford, Mass., in an effort to
control the burgeoning local
beaver population, decided to
have a team of veterinarians give
them (the beavers) vasectomies.
The New Haven Register stated:
“The beavers will be enticed
with tasty bark to swim into
traps. ... Female beavers will be
released, but males will be held
andvasectomizcd.”
At this point, the question
you are asking yourself is:
“How does The New Haven
Register know the bark is
tasty?” Trust me, it knows. It
were proud to be Americans
again. So were the 1980 s as
bad as Liberals make them out
to be?
Liberals charge that only the
rich benefitted from the Reagan
tax cuts during the 1980 s, and
the rich got richer and the poor
got poorer.
If this were true, why do
Treasury Department figures
indicate that the share of
income growth by the top 1%
was 160% higher under Carter
than under Reagan? According
to the Congressional Budget
Office, the top 1% paid 25%
of all income taxes during the
1980 s, and they paid 40% more
income taxes in 1990 than they
had paid in 1980. The bottom
60% paid 11% of all income
taxes in 1990, 20% less in
income taxes than they had
paid in 1980. Between 1980
and 1992 the wealthy paid
more of a percentage of taxes
compared to all other groups
combined. The top 1% paid
more taxes under Ronald
Reagan than they had paid
under Jimmy Carter. Income
taxes were reduced upon all
groups with the lower groups
experiencing a greater cut in
taxes than the bracket above
them.
How can Liberals also claim
is staffed by journalism
professionals.
Anyway, while authorities in
Chelmsford were vasectomizing
male beavers, authorities in
Colorado were attempting to
implant Norplant contraceptive
devices in female beavers. This
effort was covered extensively in
The Denver Post and The Rocky
Mountain News (which at one
point ran this headline:
BEAVERS GET NORPLANT
WHILE WOMEN WAIT IN
LINE).
The highlight of this effort
occurred when wildlife
authorities invited the press to a
Denver veterinary hospital to
witness the first beaver implant,
which was to be performed by
Dr. David Robinson.
Everything was ready; The
cameras were rolling, and the
sedated beaver was on the
operating table, breathing
anesthetic gas through a little
cone over its snout. Robinson,
wearing a rubber glove (you
don’t want to take any chances,
not with your modem, sexually
active beaver) made one final
examination, and then
announced: “It’s a male.”
The News published a
wonderful photograph of this
event, showing Robinson with
his arms around the beaver,
groping his (the beaver’s) private
region, looking concerned.
“The problem with beavers is,
that Ronald Reagan cut the
“safety net” far the poor when
federal spending on welfare
increased under the Reagan
Administration? It increased
from $l4O billion in 1982 to
$lBO billion in 1992 with an
annual 3% growth rate
according to the 1993 World
Almanac.
If things were so bad in the
1980 s why did our economy
experience the longest
sustained period of growth in
history? From December 1982
until July 1990, the economy
experienced 96 consecutive
months of growth, an
unparalleled achievement.
From 1982 until 1990, 20
million new professional jobs
their sexual organs are drawn
way up inside their body
cavities," explained Robinson,
in a statement that will elicit
strong beaver envy from any
male human who was ever
pedaling a bicycle hard when the
chain broke.
Now we move to 1993, during
which the following news items
were published (we are still not
making any of this up):
The Spokane (Wash.)
through a 100-
foot tree, which fell on a
“passing wood-chip truck,”
causing about $2,000 damage.
The Review reported that “The
driver and police were laughing
over the incident, with jokes
flying about the beaver
ambushing the truck in order to
get at the tantalizing wood
were created and thousands of
small companies and
businesses started up. Interest
rates fell from 21% in 1981 to
4.6% in 1989. During the
1980 s the Gross National
Product doubled from an
economy the size of Germany’s
to what it is now as a direct
result of Reagan’s tax cuts. In
1980 the GNP was $2.7
trillion and by 1990 it had
grown to over $5.06 trillion. If
Reagan’s tax cuts were so bad
for the country how could this
have happened?
During the 1980 s income
grew at a faster rate than
anytime in history. According
to the U.S. Bureau of the
Census, the average real family
income grew by over 15%
from 1982 until 1989, and
income for the poorest one
fifth grew by almost 12% in
the same period. The number
of families earning more than
$50,000 increased from 25%
in 1980 to over 31% in 1990.
The Treasury Department
Bureau of Tax Analysis
reported that those who were in
the bottom tax brackets, of
those 65% advanced at least
two brackets from 1981 until
1990. The Federal Reserve
estimates that incomes between
$lO,OOO and $50,000
chips.”
The Associated Press repotted
on a lawsuit in Chippewa Falls,
Wis., resulting from an incident
wherein “a beaver chewed
through a tree, causing it to fall
on a fence, allowing Holstein
heifers to escape from a pasture
and wander onto some railroad
tracks.” Eight heifers were
killed by a train.
The Winnipeg (Canada) Free
Press reported that a 71-year-old
outdoorsman was sitting on the
tailgate of his pickup truck when
he felt a sharp pain. “He looked
down,” reported The Free Press,
“and realized a large beaver had
sunk its teeth into his left leg.”
Fortunately - and let this be a
lesson to those who would limit
the rights of citizens to keep and
bear hockey sticks the man
had a hockey stick. “He beaned
the beaver several times until it
clamped on to his hockey stick
with its teeth,” stated The Free
Press.
(We received one other
extremely alarming beaver report
in 1993 but we are too tasteful
to mention it here, because it
involved an incident on die Brule
River in Wisconsin wherein a
beaver gnawed through a tree in
such a way that it landed in a
fatal manner on a canoeist)
So the pattern is clear The
beavers are striking back.
Perhaps you are not concerned
about this. Perhaps you live in
experienced a higher percentage
of net growth than the top 1%.
If the poor got poorer it sure
was not among the black
population. The black middle
class grew from 2.6 million in
1979 to 3.6 million in 1989.
The number of people in
poverty decreased between 1983
and 1989 by over 3.8 million
people.
How can Liberal Democrats
such as President Clinton like
to make it seem that the
Reagan administration did
absolutely nothing to curb the
growth of the budget deficit
when Ronald Reagan was the
first to propose a balanced
budget amendment? He was
constantly embroiled in a battle
with Congress to bring
spending under control, and his
budgets were always dead on
arrival when they got to
Congress because the
Democrats loved to play
politics.
In 1982 Reagan raised taxes
at the assistance of Congress
and it caused the deficit to
balloon. The Democratic
Congress continued spending
out of control causing larger
and larger deficits. From 1987-
1989 the deficit went down to
$l5O billion. Reaganomics
died in 1990 when George
Bush rased taxes.
an urban area, and think you’re
safe from attack. Perhaps you
are a fool. Consider the
following item from the Dec.
15, 1990 installment of the
syndicated feature Ripley’s
Believe It Or Not:
“In the 19505, beavers WERE
DROPPED BY PARACHUTE
IN CALIFORNIA to build dams
in areas threatened by erosion!”
That’s right: Beavers can be
dropped from airplanes. They
could land ANYWHERE. And
please do not be so naive as to
try to tell us that the
government would not do such a
thing. The government, and we
say this as a loyal, taxpaying
citizen, is completely out of its
mind. The government is
perfectly capable of suddenly
deciding to drop mass quantities
of beavers on urban areas,
especially if an economist
suggests that this might create
jobs.
So that is the situation.
Nobody is safe. What can you
do? You can be on constant
alert. You can refuse to sleep
and constantly dan your eyes
around in a nervous manner.
You can carry a hockey stick at
all times, even to work.
Perhaps your co-workers will
laugh. Perhaps your boss will
want to have a word with you.
Perhaps he will beg like a
yellow dog for your help when
he feels the Chomp of Doom on
his ankle.
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