The following is Chapter Three of my book,  Naked at the Mic / The Survival of a Liberal in a Time of Peril.  After last night’s three hour televised Republican Debate, I was compelled to reprint Chapter Three of my Book for readers who may not be familiar with the true legacy of Ronald Reagan, so white washed by last night’s Reagan tribute by all  the Republican candidates. Here is the truth of what Ronald Reagan’s presidency really did for the U.S, and how the Republican Party created a  “conservative” cult icon.

L.A. Steel                        

Chapter Three:                     Ronald Reagan President of the Cult of Conservatives

On June 5, 2004, Ronald Reagan took his last breath on earth. After the public homage that blessed his soul before God and man, he was finally laid to rest. He had a long and interesting life that few except for Nancy and his kids will ever fully know. Many admired his public life; that is until his Hollywood make up wore off, and the movie script speeches ended. Then the world saw him for what he was, a reactionary in a plaid suit. But according to conservatives, fundamentalists, and Republicans, his soul ascended into heaven, where he now sits with the former chairmen of General Electric and speaks directly to George W. Bush.

Throughout his presidency, the media managed to cover up his mental collapses, and his Alzheimer episodes, which were witnessed by many close to him. I always wondered if it was just part of the role he played so well. The role of the old, always smiling, always laughing, and forgetful grandfather with died brown hair. I admit I actually voted for him in 1980.

Yes, I voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980, and again in 1984. The reason for my decision was that I couldn’t stand Jimmy Carter, and did not trust Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferrarro. What the hell were the Democrats thinking about? In retrospect, 1980 was the year the Democratic Party died, but they weren’t officially buried until November 3, 2004. I wrote their obituary on my website.  Like all vampires, the Democrats went into a long sleep, regaining their strength in darkness, to eventually rise again and victimize the American public.

I don’t wish to go into my own checkered past of how I whole heartedly fell for the American Dream, and worked hard at developing a successful business, only to see it destroyed by the stupid economic policies of Jimmy Carter, and watch the United States sink into a massive recession where 18% and 21%, 30-year adjustable rate mortgages were all that were available to an average home buyer. In 1980 and 1981, large and small businesses failed by the hundreds of thousands around the country. In the late seventies, Americans waited hours in lines on odd and even days to fill their gas tanks. Gas prices rose daily because of the OPEC boycott, and the deliberate rigging of oil prices by the big oil companies to raise oil prices to thirty-five and forty dollars a barrel equating then to slightly over $1.00 per gallon at the pump. A one hundred percent rise in less than one year. Under the leadership of G.W. Bush and Barack Obama those gas prices seem like an incredible bargain, but when adjusted for inflation, $3.00 and up per gallon is about equally as outrageous. On top of this sudden and painful indignity by OPEC, Iran and the Ayatollah Khomeini, the revolutionary leader of Iran (whose favorite pass time was watching Bugs Bunny cartoons) managed to attack the U.S. embassy and capture fifty- two Americans hostages and hold them for four hundred and thirty-five days without retaliation by the U.S. except for one long delayed attempt by a small Special Forces team that failed miserably as their helicopter crashed in the desert due to a mechanical failure. By then everyone in the country had had enough of Jimmy Carter, as well as his brother Billy, who pissed on the side of every federal building in Washington D.C. and took money from anyone who would give it to him to buy influence with Libya or with his brother Jimmy.

Those are a few of the reasons I voted for Reagan; it seemed like his “trickle down” economic policies were better than anything the Democrats were offering. Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter got us into the economic mess; Ronald Reagan’s smoke-and-mirrors economics got us out of it for a short while, even as he tripled the national debt, gave tax breaks to the wealthiest one percent of citizens, revised tax laws to cripple the middle class, tripled military spending, cut welfare entitlements by creating two million homeless, and killed hundreds of thousands of Central Americans with his support of Negroponte’s use of right wing death squads to kill leftist political opposition growing in South America. And we must never forget Ronald Reagan’s support of Iraq in Saddam Hussein’s war against Iran, which killed one million people by conventional and chemical weapons, and that the Reagan administration sold weapons to both sides. (Remember the Iran-Contra Affair?)  By October 1987, the country was in its worst stock market bust since the Great Depression, and the near out of control real estate boom of the mid-eighties had come to a screeching halt with the new Reagan tax law of 1987, which crippled the middle class, completely demolished the lower middle class, and annihilated the poor.

In the eyes of the new conservative administration, middle-class Americans earned too much money in the late eighties. That stopped when Reagan and Paul Volcer, then Chairman of the Federal Reserve, opened the floodgates of federal money and cheap loans, which caused the same sort of massive inflation experienced during the Carter presidency. It has become increasingly obvious that Republicans can’t stand it when too many people make money—at least when those people are representative of the population at large. Their answer to this perceived dilemma was to expedite tax cuts for the wealthy and at the same time devalue the dollar to create inflation, thereby moving money from the hands of the middle class into the hands of the elite. Republicans had always been known as the party of big business. Traditionally, it was the Democrats who were supposed to look out for the little guy. But that all changed under Carter. And Reagan and conservative Republicans saw the opportunity they had long been waiting for, one they thought they might never see again after Nixon’s resignation and Ford’s defeat.

The great Republican push to have FDR’s face removed from the dime, and replaced by Ronald Reagan’s, was seen as ‘appropriate.’ Reagan, after all, had more to do with the devaluation of the American dollar than anyone in history since Woodrow Wilson. The value of the American dollar in 1981 was worth ten times more than it is at this writing in 2011. For example, in 1981 average U.S. home values for a single 3-4 bedroom house in livable condition were $35,000 – $60,000 dollars; by 1988, the price of the average home had doubled, and in some states tripled, in value. Today those same houses are selling for between $350,000 – $600,000 dollars. In 1981, a loaf of bread cost .20 cents. A gallon of gas was less than a dollar. In 2011, a loaf of bread sells for over $2.00, and for other than white enriched bread the cost is over $3.00 per loaf. Gasoline soared to over $4.00 per gallon, thanks to the Wonder Bread years of Reaganomics, Carter incompetence, and Clinton complacency, George Herbert Walker Bush’s Gulf War, and George W. Bush’s Special Ed Economic programs and pseudo war diplomacy. Only since late 2008 have gas prices gone down to below $2.00 per gallon, and yet the price per barrel of oil has shrunk back down to less than $40 dollars per barrel. Yet in 2009, prices soared near three dollars a gallon, again until 2011 where the price per gallon is back to over $4.00.

In 1979, bank failures had reached an all time high, and by Reagan’s inauguration in 1981, the Savings and Loan Scandal was in full view of the public and had wiped out almost all Savings and Loans and half of the small commercial banks in the country. The creation of interstate banking laws allowed Citicorp, Chase, Mellon and every other Federal Reserve Bank to consolidate and acquire the real estate and loan assets of millions of Americans at pennies on the dollar, then sell them off through the vehicle of the Resolution Trust Corporation. Many sales were often made to the same people from whom they had stolen the property. These banks drastically reduced the prices, or in some cases gave back the properties to developers at a small fraction of the original loan value. I can attest to this because I personally brokered many such deals with banks, and with the Resolution Trust. In short, and as a result of policy, Real Estate cartels flourished in the early and mid-eighties in order to take advantage of the great deals in commercial and residential real estate. By the end of the real estate boom of the 1980s, these cartels had realized as much as one thousand percent returns on some of their investments. In Connecticut, Colonial Realty, before its collapse, had amassed untold fortunes for its owners and original investors. The greed and corruption of this single firm later caused the collapse of numerous Connecticut banks, as well as the criminal indictments of lending officers and bank presidents.

The famous story reported by Connecticut television news programs, as well newspapers, detailed Colonial Realty’s founders Sisti and Google, and CFO Shutz, had stolen and defrauded banks and investors of an estimated $250,000,000 dollars.  Shutz turned state’s witness, but was later suspiciously found dead. His death was determined a suicide. Sisti and Google both received short jail sentences and had to pay back 250 million dollars to angry investors. Colonial Realty’s first office was a phone booth in New Britain, Connecticut. The founders memorialized the phone booth by displaying it in the lobby of their multimillion-dollar office facility for the world to see. The Sisti mansion in Farmington, Connecticut cost an estimated sixty million dollars to build in the early 1980s. It was auctioned off and bought back by the banks that had financed it. The highest bid was three million. The bid was so low because no one could own clear title to the property.

The land was set up by its owner Ben Sisti as a 60-year land lease, and split up amongst several dummy corporations. The banks advertised the property around the world, and found a famous American celebrity to buy it for a reported twenty million dollars. His name was Mike Tyson, the Heavyweight Champion of the World. Tyson spent several years in the mansion, and after his financial and career demise and jail sentence, he sold the mansion to a famous rap artist by the name of Fifty Cent for a reported three million dollars. The mansion was reported sold again in 2007, for the reported sale price of two million dollars.

The FSLIC was overwhelmed by failed banks and foreclosures during the early eighties and began to hire the former presidents and vice presidents of the failed banks to clean up the financial messes they were responsible for creating in the first place. I can attest to this as a fact since I was a real estate and mortgage broker during the eighties and nineties and dealt with and knew personally many of the former bankers turned bailout managers for Resolution Trust Corp. We can thank Jimmy Carter’s deregulation of the banking industry for that mess, as well as the $250 billion price tag to the American taxpayers for the bail out. Many might remember John McCain as being one of the Keating Five, who were involved with the Savings and Loan collapse.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, houses, commercial buildings, and businesses, could not be sold without sellers granting mortgages to their buyers. As the 1970s boom eventually busted, and the 1980s started with 16% to 21% mortgage rates, the only way to buy real estate during that time was OPM (Other People’s Money.)  The mortgage industry dried up; banks were not lending. Sellers became the bankers. Creative Financing was the real estate byword. Once sellers and private investors began to fill the void left by the banks, middle class Americans began to make money and the recession ended. Average Americans were now the bankers. Billions of dollars were placed in fifteen and thirty-year bonds backed by government guarantees, and FHA mortgages were granted for affordable housing loans at return rates of 14% and 16%.  The equity made on homes and commercial property during the boom years of the early and mid-eighties was lent out by sellers to buyers, deferring capital gains taxes through installment sales and interest only loans at interests rates of 14% -18%.  Parents of baby boomers that were nearing retirement could live well on their savings’ interest, social security, pension and a substantial monthly income from lent equity to buyers of their homes. These loans were secured by home mortgages. Banks soon felt the squeeze. The phenomena of the middle classes taking over the mortgage business forced the banks to ease the money supply by bringing down interest rates. Buyers refinanced their seller mortgages with lower bank interest rates and paid off their seller-financed loans within five to seven years. Most seller-financed loans were structured with a balloon payment in the fifth, seventh or tenth year. I can attest to this because I drafted many of them. Bankers began to dislike brokers like me. Banks will always lend money to people who don’t need it, but not to the minority borrower or to the cash strapped developer or middle class businessman, or to the first time buyer.

The Reagan effect on the national mind-set sent the U.S. economy spinning into blind optimism. I was caught up in this insane illusion as well for a while because I felt I had two choices, bad or worse. It so happen both were worse in 1980. What was a red blooded, bull headed, American male supposed to do, vote for a wimp like Carter?    Well, I did it; I cast my first Republican vote for president, and I have regretted my decision ever since, because it helped lay the groundwork for the election of George Herbert Walker Bush and later George W. Bush. George Bush senior came in the back door through Reagan. Few people liked or trusted him in 1988, but when compared to the Democrat’s choice of Mike Dukakis, there was but one choice. I wrote in my vote for Jesse Jackson that year. I was floored by his great convention speech. By 1992, the choices were clear: twenty percent of voting Americans voted for Ross Perot. Even though Perot had officially dropped out of the race, my vote was a protest vote, as were millions of others, which ultimately got Clinton elected.

Under George Bush Sr. we got the first Gulf War and a formal introduction to the New World Order, and another tax increase to pay off the Reagan/Bush deficit; that brought a booming economy to a screeching halt. Wrong tactic! They should have thought more like Junior and just printed more money. After Carter and Reagan, the dollar was virtually worthless anyway.

The Reagan legacy wasn’t really understood until after his death. Then once the sickening accolades by the media had fumigated the American public with the cheap perfume of hypocritical eulogies, those who knew what Reagan really stood for heaved in nauseated disgust. The artificial resurrection of Reagan’s political swagger by George W. Bush in the 2000 campaign, and his parody of Ronald Reagan became nothing more than a caricature of a Republican Icon. The only remote comparison of Reagan and G.W. Bush is that both were fixated on one wrong idea: the notion that all Americans were, or at least should have been, rich Republicans. Reagan’s grand vision was to feed the rich and kill off the poor. He had started out middle class, as he felt most Americans should, and by making a few good choices and with a little luck, they too could become sports announcers, movie actors, G.E. spokesmen, Governor of California, and President of the United States. One big idea is all he had, but it was all he needed to fool the American public into blind optimism.

Ronald Reagan created his own image. He made people like him—almost trust him. He didn’t seem to be a guy that would willfully lie. It took six years of his presidency before the mask wore off and the actor started to misread his script. During his second term in office everything went down the tubes. Iran Contra was in full view.  His Star Wars delusion of world military domination was discovered by all in the know as an impossible dream. Billions went into building up a peacetime defense without any apparent enemies.  Homelessness, tax cuts for the rich, and soaring government and private debt were the wave of the eighties. Reagan’s undying devotion and loyalty to big business and defense contractors such as General Electric, and his ease of telling the big lie, is the ugly tail of the dragon of the Reagan legacy.

Ronald Reagan released the caged dragon. He unleashed the Military Industrial Complex, and championed murderous dictatorships around the world, calling them “freedom fighters.” Serious doubts surfaced about his capacity to understand what was happening around him. People around him began to wonder if he was really in control.

I liked “Bed Time for Bonzo”, “Hell Cats of the Navy” and several of his other films.   As all enigmas are imitated, Ronald Reagan has his impersonators. It didn’t take long before the right wing crazies saw their chance to grab power from the unsuspecting American people, who were mesmerized by Reagan’s hypnosis act of eternal optimism, and by his post World War II vision of a spotless America. During the Reagan era Christian cults flourished by fleecing the born again, guilt ridden, American conscience. Television evangelists such as Tammy Faye and Jimmy Baker, Jimmy Swaggart, Oral Roberts, Pat Robertson, and Jerry Falwell’s Silent Majority, along with hundreds of smaller ministries, were all competing for the same charity buck. The Christian Television Network (CTN) exploded with the alms of millions of Americans as reformed alcoholics and drug addicted singers crooned gospel songs, trying to convince American audiences that giving money to a television evangelist was guaranteed by God to increase their investment ten-fold. Guarantees were testified and sworn to, as God’s promise to members of the family ministries all ending by a shout of HALE-LU-YAH!  How many poor misguided souls still listen to the cynical pleas of these hucksters saying, “Give unto me and I will multiply your riches”? These defrocked, mercenary, ministers of the 1980s became the mutual fund salesmen in the 1990s. Reagan was a menace to America, and a menace to the world. His legacy is the dementia afflicting our government today with rampant corruption and heartless indifference to the people our representatives are elected to serve. Liberalism was criminalized and exiled under Reagan, and unions were demonized. Liberals have been fighting to repair and defend their honor ever since. Liberalism is a philosophy that embraces the good of Mankind.

In November of 2003, CBS created a bio drama about Ronald Reagan. It was an unauthorized version of his presidency portrayed by James Brolin, husband of Barbara Streisand. If it had been anyone else but Brolin playing Ronald Reagan, then it might have caused less controversy; however the casting directors and executives at CBS had their own agenda, and went ahead with their choice of a lead actor. All the hoopla that surrounded its release was like Hollywood liberals kicking an active, nationwide, hornets’ nest of conservatives. During the first week of November 2003, every conservative talk show in the country, on television and on radio, attacked the CBS producers for coming out with this made for television movie about Ronald Reagan.  As I’ve noted, I really had little love for Ronald Reagan, but the guy was in his last year of life and was in the final stages of Alzheimer’s. To put out a mean spirited docudrama about a living former president, and the icon of American conservatism, was just a completely stupid idea. They could have done this after his death, but instead they decided to promote it while he was totally incapacitated and unable to defend himself.  I don’t blame the right for jumping all over it, but what I do dislike, and is so typical of conservative cultists, was the unfair portrait it painted of all liberals.

Immediately following the election of George W. Bush in 2000 (an election that I and many others believe was stolen), the fringe right began creating a somewhat threatening and very aggressive defense of the system that had installed him as president, and of the Republican Party itself. G.W. Bush, until 911, was at a 30% national approval rating, and falling. Talk of impeachment was everywhere, and the facts supporting an illicit election were more than evident. The sad truth is that the Republicans did steal the election, but the lay-down, complicit media simply rolled over and stopped reporting the particulars once the Bush and Reagan appointed judges on the Supreme Court disallowed the Florida recount.  The Christian right went hog wild defending the moral integrity of George Bush, the Republican Party on whole, as well as the new president’s much imitated style of Ronald Reagan. Calls for Reagan to be placed on Mt. Rushmore, and to replace FDR on the dime, were the conservative obsession of the day, which continued through Bush’s second stolen election in 2004. By November of 2003, the conservatives were very sure of themselves, and most conservatives had undergone a courage transfusion as a result of the defeat of Democrats in the House and Senate. Conservatives had ethnically cleansed the radio and television news media of all liberal talk shows, and forced stations to dumb down all talk show formats to mimic Fox News’ Hannity and Colmes shows. Almost all (except the L.A. Steel Show) were silenced, and any insult, no matter how slight (or how accurate) regarding the patron saint of American conservatism was seriously challenged. Conservatives regularly monitor my program, and they were waiting eagerly that first week of November 2003 to hear what I would say about the CBS Reagan movie.

The afternoon before that November 2003 show, Leila, my co-host, had undergone hand surgery and was unable to be on the show that night. Bill Marshall, my cosmo biologist and a regular on the program, had called earlier that day to say he would be late getting to the studio. I entertained the audience solo for the first hour. I didn’t mention the Reagan movie. As I said before, I felt that CBS was wrong to attack a living former president when he was totally impaired and unable to defend himself. If nothing else, it showed a lack of good sense and good taste. I was relieved when Bill arrived at the studio. It is much easier talking to someone in the studio when you are on the air, rather than just talking to a microphone with no one else around. Bill mentioned the Reagan docudrama as soon as he sat at the microphone. He said he “didn’t believe any group had the right to demand censorship of a political movie, regardless who or what it depicted! After all, this is America, and freedom of speech is still a protected right!”

I agreed with him, but stated that I felt CBS was wrong in kicking Reagan when he was so vulnerable and unable to defend himself. If the movie had been made and aired after his death, then it wouldn’t have been as big an issue. That was all we said about the Reagan movie and went on to other topics. No one called the studio that night to complain about my comments; instead a conservative listener with a recent courage transfusion by the right wing media defense of Ronald Reagan called the station manager the next morning and complained vehemently about my comments, and complained about my show’s liberal format. Joe, the station manager, defended my stance, and said the station had nothing to do with the content of my program. Joe called me that morning and asked what I had said. I told him that I defended Reagan on the movie issue, and had recorded the show, and would play it back for him. He laughed and said the person was really angry, but she was complaining about my show in general and the Reagan remark set her off. I thought that if I only got one complaint on that slight mention of Reagan, then very few people had a problem with it. That is the way my listeners usually respond to me. Perhaps I’m preaching more to the choir, but I know many conservatives listen and some actually monitor the show each week.

These days few of my listeners complain. I think that is because I now tend to question the left as hard as I attack the right on many issues. Not everyone agrees with everything I say, but no one has ever complained that I’m a hand puppet or mouthpiece for any political party or agenda. A few months after the Reagan docudrama aired, two friends and loyal listeners sent me an article and asked if I would read it on the air. It was written by a psychologist regarding the cult mentality of the religious right, and analyzed the similarities, dangers and characteristics that characterize psychotic obsession and fascist nationalism. It was a well-written article by a woman psychiatrist. Unfortunately, I have searched my archives for it but cannot find it to credit the author. My co-host Leila, who holds a Masters Degree in Psychology, felt that the article had great validity and wanted to read it on the air. Within minutes after reading the article the phone began to ring in the outer office; Leila left her microphone and went to answer it.  She was gone for several minutes while I continued the show, and I could hear her defending herself, and asking the caller if she wanted to raise her concerns on the air. The caller declined the invitation but finished her tongue lashing of Leila then hung up. Leila came back to the microphone and said, “One lady seriously disapproved of being labeled a cultist.”

We laughed and then went on with the show. It amazes me how someone can lie, cheat, steal, create a war and have millions of ardent defenders, yet the truth has very few defenders; yet when it is spoken it disarms and wounds all its opponents.

In January 2004, I received a very strange invitation from CPAC, The Conservative Political Action Conference. They invited me to their annual convention, for grassroots activists and broadcasters, to be held at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, D.C. Apparently, they were inviting liberal talk show hosts that year. I declined the invitation, but I wrote an article about it on my web site, and I also read it on the air.

An Invitation to Hell

1 /15/ 2005

1/27/05

(CPAC) is the Conservative Political Action Conference an annual convention of grassroots conservative activists and broadcasters held in February at the Ronald Reagan Building in D.C. To my great surprise I received an invitation to attend the conference and interview some or many of the conservative pundits and political celebrities who will be gathered there. At first I thought the letter was a joke by one of my listeners until I decided to call the media coordinator to confirm my invitation and ask if they were aware that I was a liberal talk show host. She laughed and said, “Yes we knew you were a liberal show but we decided to invite liberal talk show hosts to this convention to raise the level of interest, in fact Al Frankin is going to debate G.Gordon Liddy.” I realized at that moment that either I was being sucked into a dare or that CPAC was openly offering liberals a forum or at least a microphone to hear what we might have to say. (Right.)

I was still a little stunned to find out that my invitation wasn’t a mistake and that I was being given the chance to interview and listen to some of the top pundits and conservative thinkers in the country. WOW, I thought what a great opportunity for a small radio station, liberal talk show host to go toe to toe with some of the greatest blunder heads in the world. I spoke to a few friends and my station manager and all said it was a great opportunity and chance to get some real meaningful discussions with the right and far right. I thought this was a good idea until I looked up the conference agenda.
Novak debates Donaldson. Speakers, Ann Coulter, Mitch McConnell, etc.etc.blah, blah, blah,the list just got worse and worse. Then we celebrate with the Young Americans, and a grand Ronald Reagan Banquet. I was certain I could never survive a minute in that Hell without one of Dante’s divine guides. Then I thought, what the hell was I thinking? Was I for one minute thinking that I could possibly get an interview with anyone of these conservative clones of merit? Me, Mr. Liberal, this is all a grand set up to probably screw me and any other poor sucker liberal talk show host into the woodwork. Not only was the list of attendees less than stellar,(last year they had Dick Cheney), it appeared that the list of conservative pundits and politicos attending this year was dramatically downgraded to C list Celebs and politicians. This was probably why they invited the Liberal media.

I realized that my going to this conference could only result to my decent into a Liberal’s Hell. Three days of droning Christian conservatives praying for G.W.Bush and the rise of a theocratic government in the U.S. would warp my mind into ideas of becoming a suicide bomber. I foresaw my discomfort level rising to levels of unbearable pain and agony tantamount to greater torture than that inflicted on prisoners at Abu Gharib. What a nightmare! I thought of trying to phrase a non insulting question, or trying desperately not to blurt out in anger a scream of WHY! or HOW! Knowing that the answer I received if any would make less sense than my own question as I descended deeper into conservative madness, deeper into Hell, nearing the fiery furnace of the comprehension of Christian Right Wing Conservative Young American Neocon Bushism. AAHHHHH!!!!!

There is much to be said about preaching to the choir, staying within your realm of understanding and not tempt madness. Liberalism is not madness nor is it a disease as so many crackpot, Christian, neocon, nutters like to declare it to be. Liberalism is the reasonable and ultimate method for the ascension of mankind from the Hell of ignorance and the damnation of human extinction. Liberalism is the belief in the best of man; conservatism is the belief in the worst of man. These are the direct meanings from Webster’s Dictionary. Do not let anyone sway you from the truth, mingling with fools can only be tolerated by fools.

L.A.STEEL

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