How Reagan’s Propaganda Succeeded

[twomp]

In the 1980s, CIA propaganda experts and military psy-war specialists oversaw the creation of special programs aimed at managing public perceptions in both targeted foreign countries and the United States, according to declassified documents at Ronald Reagan’s Presidential Library.

These documents – discovered in 2010 – buttress previously disclosed evidence that President Reagan’s CIA Director William J. Casey played a key behind-the-scenes role in pushing this political action initiative, which recruited well-heeled private-sector conservatives to subsidize the secretive government operations.

The documents show that Casey used a senior CIA propaganda and disinformation specialist named Walter Raymond Jr., who was placed inside the National Security Council in 1982, to oversee the project and to circumvent legal prohibitions against the CIA engaging in propaganda that might influence U.S. public opinion or politics.

Though Raymond formally quit the CIA after going to the NSC, documents from Raymond’s personal NSC files reveal that he often passed on recommendations regarding the propaganda initiative after meetings at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, or after conversations with Casey himself.

In one Nov. 4, 1982, “secret” memo, Raymond described Casey reaching out to right-wing mogul Richard Mellon Scaife, who was already working with other conservative foundation executives to fund right-wing publications, think tanks and activist groups seeking to shift U.S. politics to the Right.

Read the rest here:

https://consortiumnews.com/2015/06/04/how-reagans-propaganda-succeeded/

[H. E. Panqui]

...reagan was yet another stinking republicrat puppet...and gd fool...reagan mythologists riddle my local 'tea party' (all republicans)...exposing these teabaggers as merely the activist wing of the stinking republican party...yuck!!...

http://archive.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard60.html


The Reagan Years: Libertarian Rhetoric, Statist Policies
How did Reagan manage to pursue egregiously statist policies in the name of liberty and of "getting government off our backs?" How was he able to follow this course of deception and mendacity?
Don't try to get Ronnie off the hook by blaming Congress. Like the general public – and all too many libertarians – Congress was merely a passive receptacle for Ronnie's wishes. Congress passed the Reagan budgets with a few marginal adjustments here and there – and gave him virtually all the legislation, and ratified all the personnel, he wanted. For one Bork there are thousands who made it. The last eight years have been a Reagan Administration for the Gipper to make or break.
http://archive.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard-collection.jpg (http://archive.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard-collection.html)There was no "Reagan Revolution." Any "revolution" in the direction of liberty (in Ronnie's words "to get government off our backs") would reduce the total level of government spending. And that means reduce in absolute terms, not as proportion of the gross national product, or corrected for inflation, or anything else. There is no divine commandment that the federal government must always be at least as great a proportion of the national product as it was in 1980. If the government was a monstrous swollen Leviathan in 1980, as libertarians were surely convinced, as the inchoate American masses were apparently convinced and as Reagan and his cadre claimed to believe, then cutting government spending was in order. At the very least, federal government spending should have been frozen, in absolute terms, so that the rest of the economy would be allowed to grow in contrast. Instead, Ronald Reagan cut nothing, even in the heady first year, 1981.
At first, the only "cut" was in Carter's last-minute loony-tunes estimates for the future. But in a few short years, Reagan's spending surpassed even Carter's irresponsible estimates. Instead, Reagan not only increased government spending by an enormous amount – so enormous that it would take a 40 percent cut to bring us back to Carter's wild spending totals of 1980 – he even substantially increased the percentage of government spending to GNP. That's a "revolution"?
The much-heralded 1981 tax cut was more than offset by two tax increases that year. One was "bracket creep," by which just inflation wafted people into higher tax brackets, so that with the same real income (in terms of purchasing power) people found themselves paying a higher proportion of their income in taxes, even though the official tax rate went down. The other was the usual whopping increase in Social Security taxes which, however, don't count, in the perverse semantics of our time, as "taxes"; they are only "insurance premiums." In the ensuing years the Reagan Administration has constantly raised taxes – to punish us for the fake tax cut of 1981 – beginning in 1982 with the largest single tax increase in American history, costing taxpayers $100 billion.
Creative semantics is the way in which Ronnie was able to keep his pledge never to raise taxes while raising them all the time. Reagan's handlers, as we have seen, annoyed by the stubborn old coot's sticking to "no new taxes," finessed the old boy by simply calling the phenomenon by a different name. If the Gipper was addled enough to fall for this trick, so did the American masses – and a large chuck of libertarians and self-proclaimed free-market economists as well! "Let's close another loophole, Mr. President." "We-e-ell, OK, then, so long as we're not raising taxes." (Definition of loophole: Any and all money the other guy has earned and that hasn't been taxed away yet. Your money, of course, has been fairly earned, and shouldn't be taxed further.)







Income tax rates in the upper brackets have come down. But the odious bipartisan "loophole closing" of the Tax Reform Act of 1986 – an act engineered by our Jacobin egalitarian "free market" economists in the name of "fairness" – raised instead of lowered the income tax paid by most upper-income people. Again: what one hand of government giveth, the other taketh away, and then some. Thus, President-elect Bush has just abandoned his worthy plan to cut the capital gains tax in half, because it would violate the beloved tax fairness instituted by the bipartisan Reganite 1986 "reform."
The bottom line is that tax revenues have gone up an enormous amount under the eight years of Reagan; the only positive thing we can say for them is that revenues as percentage of the gross national product are up only slightly since 1980. The result: the monstrous deficit, now apparently permanently fixed somewhere around $200 billion, and the accompanying tripling of the total federal debt in the eight blessed years of the Reagan Era. Is that what the highly touted "Reagan Revolution" amounts to, then? A tripling of the national debt?

[Anti Federalist]

These documents – discovered in 2010 – buttress previously disclosed evidence that President Reagan’s CIA Director William J. Casey played a key behind-the-scenes role in pushing this political action initiative, which recruited well-heeled private-sector conservatives to subsidize the secretive government operations.

How about that?

I would have figured Casey was too busy running guns and coke into and out of Central America.

[pcosmar]

Reagan was a puppet.. Under control after he was shot,, mindless near the end.

Bush ran the Reagan White-house. And he was CIA.

[Anti Federalist]

Reagan was a puppet.. Under control after he was shot,, mindless near the end.

Bush ran the Reagan White-house. And he was CIA.

Yup this.

And Bush was another busy beaver, running coke and guns through Central and South America as well.

[Zippyjuan]

Reagan was a puppet.. Under control after he was shot,, mindless near the end.

Bush ran the Reagan White-house. And he was CIA.

Reagan was shot just seven months into his first term- before he had really done much of anything. Kind hard to say he changed after that. But we can also look at his time as governor. On taxes for example, he both lowered and raised them- as president and as CA governor, he signed what were at the time the largest tax increases in the state's/ country's history. The attempt didn't change him much- except on the guns issue.

[anaconda]

Reagan was shot just seven months into his first term

69 days into his first term, actually.

[Zippyjuan]

Even earlier- just over two months. Thanks.

[pcosmar]

Even earlier- just over two months. Thanks.

And though he said some good stuff,, he didn't run shit. It was run for him with his face and signature on it. (a puppet)

Bush ran the Reagan WhiteHouse.

[anaconda]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwJDs1cg9Eo


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJXzohdF-MA

[anaconda]

...

[Peace&Freedom]

If Rand somehow wins the GOP nomination, look for the establishment to "Bush him" as they did Reagan, to twist his arm to put a rabid CIA robohawk bankster on the ticket as his VP. If he doesn't, newsflash---ISIS lone nut assassinates Republican candidate! Or, Republican leaders, in repeat of '64, walk out of the convention, pledge to sit out the election! So, Rand-Rubio, anyone?

[William R]

Reagan was a puppet.. Under control after he was shot,, mindless near the end.

Bush ran the Reagan White-house. And he was CIA.

That's a few bricks short of a full load type comment

[erowe1]

Read the rest here:

In one Nov. 4, 1982, “secret” memo, Raymond described Casey reaching out to right-wing mogul Richard Mellon Scaife, who was already working with other conservative foundation executives to fund right-wing publications, think tanks and activist groups seeking to shift U.S. politics to the Right.

I wonder what "to the right" really means here. My hunch is that it means something closer to "to the left," or "interventionist."

[pcosmar]

That's a few bricks short of a full load type comment

^^ proof of the effectiveness of the Propaganda.

Ron Paul,,who supported Ronald Reagan in the beginning was disgusted enough by his administration to resign from the Republican party.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ron_Paul%27s_1987_Resignation_Letter_to_the_RNC

[Slave Mentality]

Reagan was only thinking about his Jelly Belly Empire. He was not even a good actor. They have been puppets since day one. London is where the money train ends.

[The Northbreather]

I cringe when Rand mentions Reagan.

does this happen to anyon else?

[Zippyjuan]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzXPWZ0HKts

[r3volution 3.0]

I have mixed feelings about Reagan.

On the one hand, his policies were indisputably a net loss for liberty (a few good reforms, but mostly more government).

On the other hand, I'm not sure if it's appropriate to blame him personally, since he did seem to genuinely believe in liberty, or rather the people around him and the Congress (and perhaps whoever organized the assassination attempt...;)).

On a third hand, we should definitely be impressed by and trying to learn from his electoral success - whatever his policies once in office, he did run on a decidedly small government platform, and won in a landslide: twice.