GE exalts Reagan in new TV ad while pandering to the right and rewriting history

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Run time: 00:32 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WW9FqwTi3ac   Posted on YouTube: March 17, 2010 By YouTube Member: CQblogger Views on YouTube: 3064   Posted on DU: March 27, 2010 By DU Member: Amerigo Vespucci Views on DU: 1821

 

GE exalts Reagan in new TV ad while pandering to the right and rewriting history

http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/ge-exalts-reagan-new-tv-ad-while-pandering

By karoli Saturday Mar 27, 2010 7:00am

GE now joins the Reagan History Rewrite project as a new contributor, blanketing the airwaves with this nonsense, celebrating Ronald Reagan's "Centennial" while pandering to the right wing with tales of his majesty and legend.

Angelo (aka StopBeck on Twitter) was kind enough to list some facts as an antidote for GE's spin:

Ronald Reagan destroyed unions...cut the budgets for education, EPA, poverty programs, etc...engaged in a public policy initiative aimed specifically at screwing over the poor...advanced the prison-industrial complex...hollowed out the Federal government to the best of his ability...ironically espoused the belief that government was the enemy (hello! he was the president *facepalm*)...was reckless and neglectful in responding to HIV/AIDS...tried to cut disabled people from social security rolls (that’s right...disabled people)...HUD grant fraud…Sewergate…

And let's not forget the greatest achievement of his Presidency: the Iran-Contra arms for hostages deal.

GE takes billions of dollars for defense contracts and other goodies from our government, and sees nothing wrong with singing Reagan's praises on Rush hate talk radio?

[Turbineguy]

1. Let's give credit where credit is due.

He had a good line of bullshit and the country fell for it.

[Maccagirl]

4. Not credit...

Blame.

[jxnmsdemguy65]

2. Reagan was a turd and Nancy was the blowjob queen of Hollywood...

[mediaman007]

3. Ronald Reagan-Only president to wear a Nazi uniform!

[rfranklin]

5. Reagan was bought and paid for by GE...

http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/03/17/ge-and-ronald-reagan-the-mutual-gift-that-keeps-on-giving/

....In a very real way, General Electric was the vehicle that Reagan rode in his journey from film star to politician. It was a symbiotic relationship, too: Although GE paid Reagan $150,000 in the mid-1950s -- when his movie career had stalled and such a salary was worth more than $1 million in today's dollars -- GE had a reputation for working its people hard. Reagan was no exception. For eight years, he was the host and sometimes star of "General Electric Theater," a Sunday night program that aired on CBS, and a prolific "corporate ambassador" who traveled the country speaking at GE factories. There were a lot of them: Under chief executive Ralph J. Cortiner, a pioneer in decentralization, GE had 139 plants in 38 states, according to Lou Cannon in "Governor Reagan: His Rise to Power" -- and Reagan spoke at most of them, delivering as many as 14 speeches a day.

http://paulsjusticepage.com/reality-of-justice/ch2-class.htm

Because of tax changes they lobbied for and the Reagan tax cuts generally, GE paid no taxes between 1981 and 1983 when their net profits were $6.5 billion. In fact, in a classic example of corporate welfare, they received a tax rebate of $283 million during a time of high national deficits even though they eliminated 50,000 jobs in the United States by closing 73 plants and offices. Further, “Citizen GE” is one of the prime environmental polluters and is identified as responsible for contributing to the damage of forty-seven sites in need of environmental cleanup.

[pnorman]

11. Boulwarism

Everyone knows that Ronald Reagan was once a Democrat--a "bleeding heart, hemophiliac liberal," as he liked to put it. Everyone also knows that, by the 1960s, he was a conservative. What fell in between and why is the dark continent of Reagan studies. Biographers invoked dubious explanations: his visit to a dreary postwar London under Labour Party rule; his encounters with Hollywood communists; his conservative father-in-law; his frustration at finding himself in the highest tax bracket. These may leave over a decade unaccounted for, but they just speak to the same inscrutability that led Reagan's authorized biographer, Edmund Morris, to throw up his hands in despair and write fiction instead of history.

In truth, though, Reagan wasn't that inscrutable. Scholars just never figured out where to look. Now, a most unlikely figure has pointed the way to a breakthrough. When I peer-reviewed Thomas Evans's The Education of Ronald Reagan: The General Electric Years and the Untold Story of His Conversion to Conservatism, published this week by Columbia University Press, I thought it an odd coincidence that the author, whom I hadn't heard of, had the same name as one of the partners at Richard Nixon's 1960s law firm. (As part of the peer-review process, I learn the author's name but nothing else.) It turns out that it's the very same person. The Case of the Conservative Conversion, appropriately enough, has been cracked by a retired corporate lawyer. As Evans demonstrates, the key was a corporate encounter.

There's something else everyone knows about Reagan: In the 1950s, with his career on the skids, he took a job hosting a TV anthology program, General Electric Theater, and giving motivational speeches at G.E. factories around the country. That leads to another swing-and-a-miss theory on the great communicator's great conversion: It started when he noticed that factory workers were frustrated by out-of-control taxes and runaway government.

It's a theory to flatter a favorite conservative prejudice--that other things being equal, middle Americans naturally agree with them. The scenario is at least half-true. G.E. workers were concerned with out-of-control taxes and runaway government. But there was nothing natural about it. It was the product of one of the most remarkable p.r. campaigns in American corporate history. It was run by Reagan's most important but most obscure ideological mentor: Lemuel Ricketts Boulware.
.
.

http://www.ocnus.net/cgi-bin/exec/view.cgi?archive=107&num=27377

[pscot]

6. Worst president ever

Tip O'Niell called him an amiable dunce, but he was far worse. He was an angry man filled with poisonous attitudes and a delusional sense of American exceptonalism. He was a snakeoil salesman, who spun a Norman Rockwell fantasy about a return to an American golden age that never existed outside of Hollwood and his own fevered imagination. The country bought it whole. We believed because we wanted to. Reality is hard. Reagan offered an easy way out and we took it. It was a phony offer; bait and switch; a pipe dream. Now we're waking from our 30 year opium stupor to find we've been rolled. Our money's gone, the place is a shambles and we can't quite figure out how we got here.

Major problems like energy independence, environmental decline and climate change were shoved aside. Militarism, empire building and the consolidation of wealth into fewer hands were given top priority. The privatization of gevernment, offshoring of our manufacturing base and the bubble economy were begun under Reagan. We're paying the price now, and and our current leadership has yet to come out of the opium fog. They're still locked into using the mis-shapen, anti-democratic templates created by that disastrous regime. The son-of-a-bitch should have been buried face down.

[Maccagirl]

12. Beautifully written and well-reasoned

Kudos.

[gtar100]

13. Great synopsis

[swilton]

7. INSANITY

[Indi Guy]

8. GE is a huge part of the Military-Industrial Complex that Ike warned us about...

It successfully lobbies for and gets $billions in government defense contracts.

It also owns NBC, MSBNBC, and CNBC. Other corporate giants own the other msm. Ya wonder why hard news has pretty much dried up?

[szatmar666]

10. Reagan & papa Bush more than quadrupuled the National Debt

because of military spending that GE benefited from. Reagan had nothing to do with the Berlin Wall coming down. The Berlin Wall came down because the Hungarian reform communist gov of Miklos Nemeth opened the Austrian Border in Aug 1989 and let the east germans leave making the Wall de facto obsolete and that's why it collapsed 3 months later. It had nothing to do with US foreign policy and very little to do with Gorbachev, except Gorbi made promises that he will honor bilateral agreements of soviet troop withdrawals and not interference in Hungarian domestic politics. So he had an important passive role, but he did not conceive of the idea.

[WhoIsNumberNone]

9. I'm rec-ing this-

Not because i don't hate Reagan and all those goofballs and crooks who want to make a saint of him- but because I hope people will also read the description and comments.

[Yeahyeah]

14. NBC News will probably expose this.I believe in NBC News.Brian Williams eyes are very truthful.

[GeorgeGist]

15. PROGRESS is our most important product

Ronald Reagan - GE mouthpiece.

[stlsaxman]

16. Here's the REAL Ronald Reagan-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRdLpem-AAs