Nathan Newman on Reagan’s legacy:
Kerry and the “responsible” Dems can play the bipartisan game that Reagan was not an evil monster, but I won’t. This is a man who supported Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein when it suited his Cold War purposes, then we are expected to forget that thousands died in New York City because this man thought playing “enemy of my enemy is my friend” games wouldn’t lead to consequences. The pit at Ground Zero is Ronald Reagan’s legacy.
But let’s not forget his trade policies. Through the IMF, Reagan promoted structural adjustment programs that demanded that poor nations stop growing food and start growing cash crops to pay off debt to Northern banks. Poverty and malnutrition soared throughout Africa and Latin America. And tied to trade were new requirements that those nations enforce intellectual property laws, especially on prescription drugs, so that if those poor people got sick, they could no longer afford drugs needed to keep them alive.
That Reagan led an assault on labor unions is a given. The PATCO strike and the crushing of the air controllers union was a defining moment of Reagan’s Presidency. The assault on wage levels and health care by employers under Reagan went non-stop and the number of unionized workers plummetted.