June 9, 2008 archive

Ronald Reagan came into office with three major ideas in mind. Vastly expand defense spending, cut taxes on the wealthy, and do something about the annual budget deficit, then hovering around $80 billion a year. He did increase defense spending, something rightwingers still like to falsely claim sent the Soviet Union into bankruptcy. And he did cut the top tax rate from 70% to 50% to 38% to 28%, giving already wealthy Americans gigantic increases in income while starting us down the road toward a Third World skewing of the ratio between rich and poor. He achieved this with the assistance of more borrowing than all the Presidents who had preceded him. Compared with the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania, however, Reagan was a piker.

The Great Communicator had image-conscious speechwriters. When Reagan first addressed Congress in February 1981, he said:

I’ve been trying … to think of a way to illustrate how big a trillion is.  The best that I could come up with is that if you had a stack of $1000 bills in your hand only four inches high you would be a millionaire. A trillion dollars would be a stack of $1000-dollar bills 67 miles high.

I’m a bit overwhelmed after the last day of the National Conference on Media Reform. It was only a half-day today, but boy did they pack it in. I don’t know if its a result of the impact of what I just heard or the exhaustion of 3 days of all this, but today I cried 3 times in 4 hours. I was that moved by it all. I’ll try to walk you through 3 speeches I heard today. I’m hoping some of it winds up on youtube and if it does, I’ll add it to the essay.

First of all, I watched a film distributed by the Media Education Foundation titled “Tim Wise: On White Privilege.” This guy packs some power into what he has to say. I’ve read and heard an awful lot about this topic. And this speech is perhaps one of the most powerful I’ve ever heard. Here’s a clip of it from youtube:

I forgot about the evening pony.  Here’s some peaceful.

Have at it.

R. Carlos Nakai

Amazing Grace