Deregulation of rails also had massive effects down the line. There was a lot of consolidation that just made everything significantly more expensive and caused us to be more dependent on oil thanks to the massive rise in the trucking industry
Thanks for your comment but in this community we always like to see sources.
Could you provide some citations to support your claim?
The deregulation was kind of inevitable. It was a bad time for railroads before it and it was a slightly less bad time for railroads after it.
I strongly suspect that in the long run the solution will be to nationalize the rails and signaling then license private companies to run on them
Except now train travel is a joke and building out high-speed rail is nearly impossible
The big thing that killed passenger rail in America was the US Postal Service ending it’s contracts with railroads for mail services. Before that they paid a significant sum to railroads to run an RPO (railroad post office) on the trains to sort and deliver mail along the line. Simply running an RPO would be net enough income to keep woefully underutilized passenger services profitable. RPO service ended in 1978 but was in decline before then due to shifting the sorting and transport to sorting facilities and trucks respectively
This is not to mention how the war on drugs lead to massive effects on vital industries such as hemp
That reminds me I wanted to look up if the non drug use parts of marijuana plants can be processed into fabric too or if it’s any different. Like 20 years ago when google still worked. I forgot though. Also if marijuana seeds are the same food wise as hemp seeds. probably not worth the price though
Hemp can be manufactured into clothing or ropes. The problem is, that basically nobody does this. And hemp and marijuana seeds are the same, except for the THC(not to sure if the seeds contain THC)
Industrial hemp is a roughly $6 Billion dollar industry, globally. Relatively small, but certainly significant, and forecasted to grow around 20% annually through 2030.
Yeah, but the market for hemp clothes is relatively small. Hemp gets used for a lot of other products, but not that much in clothing.
Although the two plants are of the same species, hemp plants grown for fiber used to make rope are different from marijuana plants grown for flowers that produce THC (the “drug part”) in many physiological and practical ways. As different as a wolf from a shih tzu, or a crabapple from a honeycrisp.
For the most part, THC is produced in the flower of the cannabis plant. Most cannabis plants are either male or female (not both), and only female plants produce flowers.
Since hemp plants are cultivated for fiber, they usually have thick, strong, stalks. It’s better to grow them taller as opposed to wider, to fit more plants in a field. Both male and female plants can be used for fiber. Female hemp plants do grow small flowers, and those flowers do produce small amounts of THC, but not enough to be worth harvesting. Legally, modern hemp plants grown for fiber have less than one third of one percent THC content.
Since marijuana plants are cultivated for flowers, they usually have multiple, branching stalks, and they often spread and grow bushy at the top. It’s better to grow them wider as opposed to taller, so each plant can spread out and produce multiple flower stalks. The thin, branching stalks of these relatively short female marijuana plants could be used for fiber, but there’s probably not enough material there to be worth the effort. Meanwhile, many producers claim their marijuana flower to have 25% THC content or more.
It’s thought that cannabis flowers produce THC for at least two reasons. One is that the compound is sticky and helps hold on to pollen that might drift past from nearby male plants. Another reason is that it acts as a sunscreen for the flowers. The flowers produce THC to capture pollen, and also to protect themselves from the sun when they are wide open and waiting for the pollen to come.
Cannabis seeds don’t contain any THC (except whatever small amount may be left over from the flowers that produced them). All else being equal, the seeds of a hemp plant and the seeds of a marijuana plant should have the same value as a food source or industrial resource. Seeds from marijuana plants are rarer, though not necessarily more valuable.
One reason marijuana seeds are rare is that cannabis flowers produce way more THC when they are left unfertilized. The plant is producing THC in order to attract pollen, so as long as there is no pollen around, the plant just keeps producing more THC. It is by far most efficient to keep THC-producing female plants isolated from male plants. But this means those flowers are never fertilized and never produce any new seeds.
Long ago, it was common for marijuana bud to have seeds. Cannabis flowers grown outdoors are much more difficult to keep from being fertilized. Seedless marijuana bud, “sinsemilla,” was an uncommon treat for many illicit cannabis consumers in the '70s, '80s, or even into the '90s. More recently, relaxed legal regulation and technological advances have made controlled indoor marijuana growing much easier and more effective, and much more common. These days the paradigm has flipped, and it’s highly unusual (and maybe a little insulting) to find seeds in any flower purchased for THC consumption.
Thanks. I only knew about THC difference between them and wasn’t sure if the other details were as different as your examples or similar along the lines of the nutritional value of many cabbage plants being similar.
Thanks for your comment but in this community we always like to see sources.
Could you provide some citations to back up your claim?
Big Oil had a big part in banning hemp. Hemp rope was used in boat docking and nylon rope ended up replacing it.
Why is this an image of text? Makes it a lot harder to reply to, and you specifically asked for a reply.
Tripling the Debt
Usually, when someone accuses a POTUS of significantly impacting the national debt, they are lying, as Congress controls the country’s wealth. This is no exception. For example, Reagan’s repeal of the Windfall Profit Tax on Oil is usually used as part of the claim, but what he signed passed both the House and the Senate with veto-proof majorities; claiming he had anything significant to do with their passing is deeply disingenuous.
Dropped the income tax rate
Not going to bother with a link this time; it should be fundamental, basic common knowledge that a POTUS has no power over income tax rates. That’s as Congressional as it gets. See statement above for a linked example of how Congress controls taxes.
Sold 500 missiles to Iran
This is an easy one; it was significantly more than 500.
Let 90k Americans die of AIDS
I have no idea what this is even about. Do you mean the Watkins Commission?
Claim about Reagan’s impact on mental institutions and its impact on homelessness
The first half sounds truthy, and certainly vague enough to be impossible to “debunk”, with the major caveat that, as with taxes, it’s a near-certainty that Congress did the lion’s share of this. The real meat on these bones is your claim that eroding the institutions led to a homelessness crisis (and tour subclaim that the crisis is still happening). I don’t have time to debunk that, gotta get to work, but I wanted to acknowledge my failure to do so. It might be super true or super false, and either way I’m genuinely curious.
You do realize Congress passes bills for the president to sign, the president negotiates with congress to get bills pass FOR the president to sign into law, so yes congress passes parts for the president to sign SO that congress and the president can get what they want.
10 monkeys in a room trying to order pizza is hard to do when you don’t have a zoo keeper to tell them what there getting.
I think the way you attempt to keep Congress and the Executive separate skirts the actual way politics work even if the governmental mechanisms supports your point. In other words, there’s a reason why it’s called Reganonics and the Regan tax cuts. In a world without parties, I would agree with you.
Second, you don’t address budget deficient and the role in the national debit. Budgets are created by the executive and then approved by the legislature. You can see that between 1981 and 1989, the budgetary deficit was greatest during Republican rule.
And relative to economic output (GDP), it was the worst between 81 and 86.
All of this is to say that the president matters in effecting the debt.
PS. Your link isn’t to the Windfall Profit Tax on Oil but to Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act. I don’t think they are the same thing, but correct me if I’m mistaken.
Presidential veto.
Any sources that he used it? If not. He’s on the hook.
Congress did the lion’s share of this
It’s almost like that’s the way it typically works. The President sets the agenda, and has a reasonable amount of control on what gets presented to Congress.
The president is literally the de facto leader of his party. Anything and everything the party does, he is responsible for on paper.
Thank you for your objective take on OP’s claim, and for providing sources as well 👏
Just before he was elected, his campaign conspired to prevent the release of US hostages, a move they made to make Carter look bad. This is one of the reasons he won. The man worked directly against the benefit of US citizens for personal gain.
It’s a shame that Carter gets the blame for failing to reach an agreement to release the hostages, instead of Regan getting pinned for the much worse behavior of deliberately delaying their release.
Thanks for your comment but in this community we always like to see sources.
Could you provide some citations to back up your claim?
Someone else here already linked a wiki article that summarizes it. As far as I know, the most recent source is a retelling of events from Ben Barnes: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/18/us/politics/jimmy-carter-october-surprise-iran-hostages.html.
That sounds shockingly similar to some current happenings…
Where did you learn that?
This is widely known now.
The burden of proof is on the claimant. That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. Please provide it
Sir, this is an internet.
Sources should be easy to find, then.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_October_Surprise_theory
Check the references.
This is one report about it. It’s fair to ask for sources of course but also literally all I had to do was do one web search.
I did not see repealing the fairness doctrine mentioned.
This is what is basically allowing media like fox “news” to spout straight up lies and made up news, while selectively not mentioning, twisting or brushing over actual news.
It’s also what allowed Sinclair to start their buying spree and create a hidden broadcast network of similar right-wing propaganda and lies. John Oliver had a very good episode on them: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GvtNyOzGogc
For me this is the biggest sin of Ronald Reagan. Without this change to content quality control, there wouldn’t be so many Americans who live in an alternate reality, which is also what is allowing the republican party to not even try to govern & is allowing them to be as despicable as they are. Those rightwing “news” channels will after all just brush over their gaffes & instead conjure some made up scandal again over something democrats or one of the designated out groups has allegedly done.
I believe the fairness doctrine only applied to print media so unfortunately we’d still have the same clusterfuck as far as television goes.
Not to defend this ghoul or anything lol I wish there was a hell so he could be rotting in it.
No, it was to any media company that had a broadcast license, so television and radio.
You’re right! I don’t know why I read that argument so many times whenever this is brought up…
Fox News is cable. And was never subject to the fairness doctrine. It may have had a small impact on AM radio. But nothing near the impact of all the consolidation that happened under Reagan and Clinton.
A small impact on AM radio? You know why AM radio is exclusively reactionary conservative nonsense right? It was 100% the fairness doctrine.
I think the reason AM radio is right wing is it’s only good for talking, and the people who listen to long conversations as their form of media consumption tend to be conservatives.
Mostly consolidation of ownership. Don’t get me wrong, the fairness doctrine and played a small part. But single ownership of a vast swath of stations did far more damage than lack of fairness doctrine.
Not to mention how fair was the fairness doctrine? Did it truly serve a purpose giving voice to other opinions etc? Or was it largely limited to the same few mainstream ones? Socialist, social democrats, anarchists, communists?
Fox news was launched when the fairness doctrine was already dead for many years and Rush Limbaugh was huge. Without the repeal of the fairness doctrine, right wing talk radio shows wouldn’t have been so ubiquitous. Without similar alternate fact content from many sources, fox news alternate facts would have to be closer to reality out of necessity or they would have no credibility with their target audience.
It’s one of those things where one thing lead to another. Without the repeal of the fairness doctrine, fox news as we know it today, would simply not exist. Here’s a good article on it: https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2021/how-rush-limbaughs-rise-after-the-gutting-of-the-fairness-doctrine-led-to-todays-highly-partisan-media/
I don’t get your comment about how the impact on am radio was “small”. Consensus seems to be that the repeal in 1987 was the start of the shift to the alternate facts radio shows on am radio: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative_talk_radio
Most consolidation came later and it’s definitely a contributing factor, but this shift was already well under way before most of the consolidation happened.
Fox News was conceived in the 1970s. Yes, it started after the fairness doctrine was ended. The fairness doctrine never applied to it in any way however. Even then in the late '90s early 2000s, much of the content was designed with the concept of the fairness doctrine in mind. Any overtly political show, such as Hanity and Colmes. Already had a fake diverse/alternate voice built in. The fairness doctrine was always toothless and easily bypassable
Rush Limbaugh as problematic as he was. Was largely pushed by large conservative owned radio networks. There is some correlation between the end of the fairness doctrine and Limbaugh’s national syndication. But no clear causation. No part of the fairness doctrine would have impacted syndication. And his show exist fine before and after.
Plenty of people nostalgically lament the loss of the fairness doctrine. But none can actually explain how it would help. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a big fan of the concept. But the problem is, who is the arbiter of what is “fair”. Or when it is fair. It makes a difference.
Fox news was launched in 1996. In did not adhere to the fairness doctrine in any way. Yes it did follow classic panel show formatting with multiple guests with differing opinions, but that’s just the classic format for those shows, that’s not the fairness doctrine. You can even find shows like that in Russia. Fairness doctrine would be for example that every time that a fox news slandered someone, that person would be able to demand airing a rebuttal on fox news.
Rush Limbaugh was first nationally syndicated in 1988. The fairness doctrine was done away with in 1987. It’s really no coincidence and it’s plenty documented and discussed. Check the 2 links I send you earlier for starters.
Don’t forget record setting interest rates.
Thanks for your comment but in this community we always like to see sources.
Could you provide some citations to back up that claim?
I bought a house in the summer of 1988. My interest rate was 10.9% APR. Nobody batted an eye about it either…
Because homes were still affordable then.
1988 Median Household Income ~27k
1988 Median Home Price ~113k
So a home was 4x annual salaryFor 2023 the numbers were ~59k and ~$418k Roughly 7x annual salary.
The problem in that equation isnt the cost of housing, its the low wage growth.
https://usafacts.org/data-projects/housing-vs-wages
The cost of homes in the United States has outpaced wage growth over the past decade. According to the Federal Finance Housing Agency, home prices rose 74% from 2010 to 2022. The average wage rose only 54% during the same time.
It doesn’t really matter which side is out of whack. Housing is unaffordable.
Continuing with the high interest comment that sparked this thread, back then a 10.5% interest mortgage in a typical house was 45% of median income and in 2023 a 6.5% interest mortgage was 53%If mortgages were still 10.5% in 2023 housing would be 78% of median income.
It surely does matter if it is to be changed. But if you just want to complain, sure its irrelevant.
yeah man… at the time, I was 25 and single and I doubt I made even $12k per year doing oil changes. The house I bought was $33k, and I had two roommates who pretty much covered my <$350 per month house payment. I shelled out a couple hundred more for utilities and could still afford to eat and buy weed…
The only comment that even attempts to debunk anything while offering sources is buried by downvotes. This community is badly in need of moderation.
You’re not wrong, but as it’s literally been six months since anyone posted anything here I’ve decided to let the discussion continue as long as the topic stays on Regan’s presidency.
What comment is that? Not seeing it.
That comment fails to take into account that the Republicans had veto proof majorities when Regan was in office, so really they got whatever they wanted.
That would be a good counterpoint. Even better if you could find some a source or two to support it 😎
Sure thing boss:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_pressure_injection_injury
Not sure how that relates to your previous comment, but interesting nonetheless.
Too many conversations at one time! Lol
Usually any comment of value is downvoted on lemmy
Doesn’t seem to be the case here
Said usually
Nice b8 m8.
Because they’re not entirely accurate. And the ratio of downvotes to upvotes should’ve sparked skepticism. The replies point out why it’s not completely accurate.
Over-moderation is exactly why we’re here. I’m not so quick to ask for people to do my fact-checking for me. You probably shouldn’t be, either. I don’t want a mod making that decision.
I scrolled through every comment looking because I thought you had seen one. Did I miss it?
Technically Reagan started closing mental institutions while he was governor of California. He promised to open up alternatives and never did. It was a popular action that started when “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” showed abuse in the mental health system and the new system was suppose to have fixed those issues.
This is the problem, is that mental health abuses still happen today in whats left of mental health system in america.
We don’t need to tear it down, we need a federal oversight authority with balls and power to revoke licenses, issue massive fines, etc etc, with the funding and manpower to randomly inspect these facilities and interview patients at the drop of a hat, at any time of year, possibly multiple times a year.
and we need massive incentives to get hordes of new people, doctors, nurses, therapists, etc, into education to become qualified in their respective fields to do these jobs, and the fair pay for them.
My point was only that Reagan didn’t destroy the mental health systems while he was president. If you try bringing that up to a supporter, they will try and gotcha you on it. The other stuff was just to give some context as to why he was able to get away with it. Republicans never let a tragedy go to waste.
California was the first state to start dismantling their mental health systems and other states followed their lead, so most of the blame is still on him.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_Health_Systems_Act_of_1980
Repealed by Reagan.
I don’t think we should call them mental health abuses. There is abuse in the mental health system.
mental health abuses
I prefer the term “perverse psychiatry”.
I think any institution where an individual has power over others is going to have some twisted, bad apples in there. Everyone I know knows someone who had a teacher in school go out their way to harm a child… Always for no other reason than personal gratification and bitterness. I absolutely believe there were and still are Nurse Ratcheds out there.
which is why you need well funded, well manned, aggressive oversigh with the power to issue immediate fines, revoke licenses, etc.
An imperfect solution where a perfect solution does not exist. Highly susceptible to corruption and waste, but I sure as heck would vote for it!
Given that homelessness rates almost directly correlate with cost of living, and not whether or not mental institutions exist, that’s the wrong reason to blame Reagan for a rise in homelessness. All of the union busting under his presidency is a much better reason
He also oversaw a doubling of the prison population during his presidency. That’s not entirely (and maybe not even mostly) his fault - Congress and plenty of states were all about being “tough on crime,” but he was definitely on board with it. That probably also contributed to homelessness. People are significantly more likely than the general population to be homeless post-incarceration, and anyone who’s done time can tell you that it makes a lot harder to get a good job.
What about all the homeless that are too mentally ill to even sign up for welfare? Not that welfare even comes close to cost of living. There are quite a few of them.
Well when you just dump people out of their (admittedly terrible) psyche housing into nothing, the homeless population increases quickly.
removed by mod
Almost all mental health institutions were either run by the state or country and relied on very little federal funding. Their popularity collapsed after the 1975 movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest that depicted such institutions in negative light. Reagan may be to blame for the other items but not this.
Thanks for your comment but in this community we always like to see sources.
Could you provide some citations to back up your claims?
Perhaps you are unfamiliar with JFK’s movement for deinstutionalization? If there was a serious cut in federal funding, it happened then. Reagan didn’t bring it back, but it was already mostly gone by his time. A good book to read is “American Psychosis: How the Federal Government Destroyed the Mental Illness Treatment System” by E. Fuller Torrey. Many historians who discuss the decline in public mental health in the US specifically site the book (and later the movie) One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest as a principle cause for the shift in dollars. And really, the institutions were bad. Very bad. The attempt to replace them with something else ended-up being replaced with … nothing else except crime, homelessness, and police.
They were called State Houses for a reason. However, they did rely on no small amount of federal funding, even indirectly. Carter started a bill (MHSA1980) that was supposed to help mental health institutions like these, Regan killed it, and the promise was that the states would rework how these mentally ill were handled. Nobody ever got around to it. Taxes = evil, and there was also a study that was pushed hard by anti-tax types to “mainstream” mental patients. More cost cutting by closing State institutions and booting the patients into the public and like I said, the help never materialized. That’s the quick and dirty version.
The movie had nothing to do with it.
You are only partially correct about Reagan. He isn’t entirely responsible, but he absolutely had a hand in it. Cutting a bunch of the MHSA and the failure was also the State’s unwillingness to maintain public Institutions, but that ties in with the deregulation during the early ‘80s (Reagan’s doing) as well as fixing Medicare prices to hospitals so that hospitals had to look elsewhere to make money, and that means you and I paid more.
So yeah, loss of mental health care facilities and health care costs in general are directly tied to the Reagan administration’s actions in the early 1980s.
Perhaps you are unfamiliar with JFK’s movement for deinstutionalization? If there was a serious cut in federal funding, it happened then. Reagan didn’t bring it back, but it was already mostly gone by his time. A good book to read is “American Psychosis: How the Federal Government Destroyed the Mental Illness Treatment System” by E. Fuller Torrey. Many historians who discuss the decline in public mental health in the US specifically site the book (and later the movie) One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest as a principle cause for the shift in dollars. And really, the institutions were bad. Very bad. The attempt to replace them with something else ended-up being replaced with … nothing else except crime, homelessness, and police.
Thank you for the clarification
No, that pretty much covers it
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
Being out on the street is undoubtedly bad but you should not be clamoring to return to the days of stuffing homeless people into mental institutions. Indefinite involuntary commitment without trial or appeal is barbaric and that’s setting aside the kind of “treatments” they used and what they considered “disorders”.
Please, just give them homes.
Sorry, but this is idealistic hogwash. Giving people homes does not solve debilitating mental illnesses like schizophrenia, nor does it solve drug addiction.
Housing should be universal, but rehabilitation of some sort is needed for a large plurality of homeless people and just throwing them into an apartment does not heal social ills.
Throwing homeless people into asylums doesn’t solve homelessness unless you intend to keep them there forever. Mental illness is over represented in homeless populations but correlation is not causation. Homelessness is not a mental illness.
Using due process to put people (housed or not) with serious mental illnesses into a dedicated care facility is fine. Suggesting that all homeless belong in there as a matter of policy is just an excuse to sweep them out of sight without solving any underlying issues by just assuming that the underlying issues are all mental illness.
Using due process to put people (housed or not) with serious mental illnesses into a dedicated care facility is fine.
That’s my point. My desire is a system where the homeless are assisted in transition back to normal life, including rehab if they’re suffering from addiction.
I don’t believe all the ills of the homeless are tied to mental illness.
Then I’m not really sure what your point has to do with mine. What you’re describing is not what Regan destroyed through deinstitutionalization, and I wouldn’t really call a system like that a “mental institution”.
B-But why would we waste taxpayer money into improving the welfare of the people?
Give everyone homes and you prevent a lot more problems as well.
Right to housing would help so many people better their lives by leaving bad situations they are only in because they don’t have any where else.
We would all benefit by not having to suffer just to have a safe place to sleep. We wouldnt have to enslave ourselves to other people or employers and could make better choices for our lives(even though people will still make bad choices)
I’m with you that the state should provide housing for them.
But schizophrenia is a serious disease and is prevalent (20%) in this group. Those people need psychiatric help. Only a home won’t fix it.
I do not think an elevated incidence of a specific mental illness among a population makes it justifiable to legalize throwing them all into indefinite psychiatric detention without oversight or trial. I’m all for having facilities where schizophrenic people can get care they need in a safe environment. I’m not for using those institutions as homeless storage facilities because people can’t separate homelessness from mental illness in their head. You can and should address both separately.
Nobody wants to stash all homeless people in psychiatric care, unlimited at that. That would overload their capacity thousandfold and makes no sense, this shit is expensive. Right now it seems you’re pushing some kind of narrative… Can you back up your claims?
What claims are you asking me to back up specifically? The meme above is evidence enough that people believe institutions are an appropriate solution to homelessness, but if you’re looking for more evidence of those claims: you can find plenty such arguments in a cursory google search.
Any such policy would be de-facto unlimited because homeless people don’t stop being homeless when you discharge them from an institution. You could just have them committed again.
There’s a middle ground, isn’t there? Like there are people out there that won’t get better without forced intervention. It’s not electroshock or nothing, we have more knowledge about proper humane treatment now.
The middle ground is give them homes and counseling. Not give people an easy way to shove the problem out of sight while creating another private prison industry.
Not all homeless are mentally ill. Asylums are not a place for people without homes. The notion that every person living on the street has something wrong with them that will fix their homelessness if you treat it is absurd, dangerous, and insulting.
we have more knowledge about proper humane treatment now.
They thought what they were doing at the time was proper and humane, too. Homosexuality was classified as a mental illness until 1973. Conversion therapy is still a thing. How many modern-day therapists do you think would try to “treat” a homeless trans person who winds up in their asylum?
That’s fair. I do also believe in just giving people homes and therapy. I also think that there are people who need more help than just that.
There are, absolutely, but that’s something you could say about both housed and unhoused. Those concerns should be kept separated. Conflating mental illness with homelessness just causes stigma and gives people an excuse to pretend like the cause, and thus solution, lies within the individuals who end up homeless rather than how society is structured and governed.
removed by mod
removed by mod
In Europe they have sanitariums which I think can help keep people safe without them being prisoners.
Locally there is just social safety net after safety net. If you talk to any homeless that are left over, they have moral differences and reject the help or care, or they are not homeless just addicted and need the extra money from begging to pay for more highs. They go back to their managed group home for dinner and lodging.
But I bet he made a lot of money while doing that.
