Talk:Ronald Reagan

beginning notes

I've started work on this major article. I prepared the Bibliography originally for Wikipedia. Richard Jensen 11:35, 5 April 2007 (CDT)

Please leave this notice at the top of the article. So, Dr. Jensen, we aren't using any part of the WP article that you haven't written? --Larry Sanger 12:01, 5 April 2007 (CDT)

correct. Richard Jensen 12:33, 5 April 2007 (CDT)

Iran contra question

I've got some questions about the Iran-Contra section. It seems to make a lot of statements about Reagan's state of mind and knowledge that aren't easily supported. I also believe the statement "No Reagan official was charged with illegal behavior in Iran-Contra; some were charged with cover-up afterwards, but those charges were reversed on appeal" is false. I could be wrong, but it was my recollection that Elliott Abrams, for one, was charged with multiple felonies, and convicted of a couple misdemeanors. I don't think the charges were reversed, and I don't think he was the only one. I do think Poindexter's conviction was overturned on a technicality. Bernardo Attias 01:38, 10 April 2007 (CDT)

officially, "Abrams pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor charges of withholding information from Congress. Abrams admitted that he withheld from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) in October 1986 his knowledge of North's contra-assistance activities."[1] that is, coverup after the event. Likewise McFarlane pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of withholding information from Congress. So it needs a rephrasing. Thanks Richard Jensen 10:55, 10 April 2007 (CDT)

Pronunciation of his name

I seem to remember his name was pronounced reegn when he was a film actor but raygn when he was President Peter Jackson (talk) 16:29, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

Hadn't thought of that. I lived in Los Angeles as a late teenager when he was a spokesman for GE, then was elected gov. for the first time in '66. Then lived in Tahiti off and on, and in S.F., and I think, trying to stretch my mammary, that it was both Reegan and Raygun, depending on the person yer talking to. Like tomatoes and to-mah-toes. An interesting point, however! Hayford Peirce (talk) 01:43, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

provenance of section on "Efforts to impeach"

When on Dec 15, 2022 I merged the section "Efforts to impeach" into this article, the text I brought in was taken from a now-deleted, unlinked stub "Efforts to impeach Ronald Reagan", which was created in Citizendium by George Swan on 23 July 2022. In my "merge" edit comment, I did not make clear that this was George's information, so I'm clarifying that here. Later in the Content Forum, George also explained that he had brought the text of the stub from Wikipedia (where it still resides at "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_efforts_to_impeach_presidents_of_the_United_States#Ronald_Reagan") and that he wrote the original text. Thus, for now, I will add a notice to the "Efforts to impeach" section pointing here, because I want to make the provenance of the information clear, as well as the discussion about it in the content forum. Pat Palmer (talk) 08:03, 19 December 2022 (CST)

some general comments about this article

This article would benefit by updates from someone with a perspective of time having passed. My feedback is more of where the emphasis lies; the individual parts seem mostly okay. My first reaction to both it and Oliver North is that, to me at least, Iran Contra is one of the MAJOR things I recall about both of them, whereas at present it is glossed over quite lightly. So I would highlight those in the lead-in for each article. And, Reagan also broke the airline pilots union strike by executive intervention--something that had never been done before and was like an earthquake starting a landslide for loss of power of unions in the United States. Also, Reagan almost sent the country into a recession paying for Star Wars, which was also very controversial in the programmer world that I worked in, because no experienced programmer really likes the thought of trusting software that can aim a laser at the earth not to make a huge mistake. People forget about how expensive that program was because Clinton came along and righted the budget again, and of course, that Clinton improved the budget was forgotten in the wake of his personal pecadillos. But, breaking the airline pilots strike and getting Star Wars started should have sections of their own, and possibly be mentioned more clearly in the lead as things Reagan is remembered for, in my opinion.Pat Palmer (talk) 13:52, 20 December 2022 (CST)

It's certainly been claimed that his boosting of the arms race using credit against the stronger US economy was what broke the Soviet economy & forced reforms ending in Soviet collapse. I don't know how widely accepted that is. (It's also not obvious currently how good a thing that was. Religious persecution has resumed, against JWs, but Russia hasn't gone back to being a giant prison camp. Indeed it's been claimed Putin has been "encouraging" dissidents to leave to make things easier for himself.) Peter Jackson (talk) 05:49, 22 December 2022 (CST)

I don't know the truth of that claim either, but I've always suspected it of coming from Republican zeal to claim credit. What I seem to remember is, that at the end of Reagan's tenure, the federal budget deficit was higher than ever due to spending on the "Star Wars" military project (intended eventually to have lasers on satellites which could shoot down at things, which almost all of my technology friends abhorred for the reasons stated). Maybe the eastern powers tried to match that but I've never seen a shred of proof about it; the fall of the Berlin wall could just as easily be attributed to social changes such as happened in the U.S. in the 1960's. The U.S. federal budget deficit became even higher during the subsequent 4 years of the senior Bush, who pursued a war in Iraq. Clinton, starting in 1992, zealously cut the size of government agencies until he achieved the first, and I think only, budget surplus of the modern era. Getting people off payroll is THE recommended way to deal with a budget crisis. It worked, and a brief period of economic wellness followed. But the scandals of Clinton's second term overshadow that matter in all the press. The budget surplus was immediately erased during the younger Bush's tenure because he pursued foreign both Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Defense spending in this country is now astronomical, while domestic welfare spending, science spending, childcare spending, spending on the arts, etc. is extremely low. I think I am being pretty objective about this, but it would take a historian steeped in data science to prove it definitively. Pat Palmer (talk) 07:38, 22 December 2022 (CST)