simard@loral.UUCP (Ray Simard) (11/05/84)
In article <516@tty3b.UUCP> mjk@tty3b.UUCP (Mike Kelly) writes: > >My article was simply commenting on the number of people who support Reagan >seemingly only because it's in their narrow economic interest to do so. To >me, that's craven politics at its worst. At the risk of repeating myself, let me comment: (1) I am one of the Reagan supporters to whom you refer. I also know per- sonally many others. (2) Neither I nor they are supporting him out of "narrow economic interest". We happen to believe that the best benefit we can give the poor is a healthy, growing economy, wherein the greatest number can find a place to contibute their talents and be compensated for it. We don't believe in a constant-wealth model, in which the "rich" can only prosper and remain rich by grubbing the "share" of the poor and middle-income groups. (3) The figures indicate that twenty years of tax-driven "compassion" have milked taxpayers of all levels of some five-hundred-BILLION dollars. The resultant benefit to the poor? The poor have gone from 14.7% of the population to 15%. Simply put, it is not "narrow economic interest" or selfishness to demand an end to the forced draining of our productive labors to be dropped down this rathole. Show me results, and I'll back your programs. But you can't; there aren't any. >What can a President do? He can take seriously the potential of arms con- >trol and negotiate with the Soviets, like every other President for the past >thirty years. Reagan hasn't. I can't recall exactly how many times we've been to the bargaining table since Reagan took office, but I do recall who it was that either refused to arrive or walked out every time. And it wasn't the U.S. The Soviets are very much aware of the public pressure on the Administration to get an arms deal, and they are not about to waste that opportunity by not holding out for a much more favorable (to them) accord than would be the case without that pressure. Reagan has striven no less than other presidents - but it takes two to tango, and the Soviets are sitting this one out, wait- ing for a tune they like better. The Soviets have made it clear they don't like Reagan very much, and you can bet that, among other reasons, they have held back from realistic negotiations to deny Reagan an arms agreement and therefore harm his chances for reelection. If, as it appears, he is reelected anyway, they may continue to play the same game, or maybe face facts. >He can take seriously the threat of industrial waste and acid rain and move >agressively to address these problems. Reagan hasn't. Admittedly, the environment is not Reagan's most shining area. Nevertheless, the spate of vitriol aimed at him from the environmental advo- cates is mostly undeserved. What I keep hearing, on this net and in the news, is complaints, not about the environment _p_e_r__s_e, but about how many corporations are being investigated, prosecuted or fined. This says a lot about the most vocal of the "environmentalists". If they would become truly pro-environment, instead of anti-business and anti-corporate, they would get a much better hearing- and they'd find out that Reagan hasn't been doing that badly. >He can pursue sane defense policies, based on eliminating the waste in the >Pentagon budget (now at $300 billion). Reagan hasn't. Negative. Reagan has asked for waste reduction. Let's define waste properly, not merely in terms of military programs one doesn't happen to agree with. (I agree that, like the rest of the federal bureaucracy, the military is overfed.) >He can pressure for democracy from countries depending on U.S. support, >rather than legitimizing dictatorships in Chile, Guatemala, the Phillipines >and South Africa. He hasn't done that either. Funny how, over the past several administrations, most of these dicta- torships were in existence much as they are now. But somehow, Mr. Reagan is suddenly responsible for "legitimizing" them. We have fought long and hard to get the government out of specifying what is moral and what isn't in our personal lives. We don't want the police asking about our sexual habits, or busting couples cohabitating out of wedlock. Yet, we are supposed to be the moral authority over the globe. We don't have the right. Our decision to support these often unpleasant governments is that, in the opinions of those employed to study such things, the failure to do so would cause more damage, to that country as well as ours, than to help keep the current government afloat. Those opinions may be wrong, and I don't always agree with them (Allende in Chile, for instance), but I don't believe we have any business specifying the way other governments must govern before we will support them. -- [ I am not a stranger, but a friend you haven't met yet ] Ray Simard Loral Instrumentation, San Diego {ucbvax, ittvax!dcdwest}!sdcsvax!sdcc6!loral!simard