Mount Rushmore

[TGHusker]

To bad Trump:

 

Quote

"There is no more carvable space up on the sculpture," McGee-Ballinger said. "When you are looking on the sculpture, it appears there might be some space on the left next to Washington or right next to Lincoln. You are either looking at the rock that is beyond the sculpture (on the right), which is an optical illusion, or on the left, that is not carvable."

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/mount-trumpmore-its-the-presidents-dream-rep-kristi-noem-says/ar-AAwitym?li=BBnb7Kz

[BigRedBuster]

4 minutes ago, TGHusker said:

FDR, John Adams, and Reagan (shows up as Carter *#@)    I see you changed it now - you put Reagan on the list.   I don't think I can change my vote!!

 

John Adams - while only a 1 term president, his greatest contribution is being the driving force behind the convention that drafted the Declaration.

 

FDR - his response to the great depression and to WW2.  Most conservatives dislike him because he brought on the era of big govt and large govt spending programs but he did enough to give hope back to the country.  Some would argue that his programs extended the depression and that it took WW2 to get us out of it - but that is for a different thread.  The fact is, he did lift America when it needed it.  He led us during WW2 and worked with allied nations to bring an end to the greatest threat mankind had known up to that point. 

 

Reagan - Working with others to end the cold war, restoring America out of near depression economic crisis of the Carter/Nixon years.  Bringing respect back to our nation in the area of foreign affairs and initiating an economic expansion that went well into the 1990s.  Like FDR, he brought hope back into the vocabulary of Americans. 

Good list.

 

I went with John Adams simply so that I could say I have a relative on the mountain.

 

[Big Red 40]

FDR is the only one close for me. Reagan did major damage to the middle class of this country (Me). No thanks

[TGHusker]

15 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

Good list.

 

I went with John Adams simply so that I could say I have a relative on the mountain.

 

Ok curiosity got the cat.  Tell us how he is a relative

[mrandyk]

I would replace Teddy with FDR.

[JJ Husker]

Is there a buncha room on the mountainside ajacent to the current 4 heads? Last I knew adding more wasn't really an option. Or is this just a "if they could" scenario?

 

I was about to go off on whoever picked Clinton but then I saw NUance's suggestion and kinda liked it 

[BigRedBuster]

10 minutes ago, Comfortably Numb said:

Is there a buncha room on the mountainside ajacent to the current 4 heads? Last I knew adding more wasn't really an option. Or is this just a "if they could" scenario?

 

I was about to go off on whoever picked Clinton but then I saw NUance's suggestion and kinda liked it 

It’s not an option. 

[BigRedBuster]

2 hours ago, TGHusker said:

Ok curiosity got the cat.  Tell us how he is a relative

Funny story about that. 

 

Supposedly, he had an affair with a maid. 

 

I’m a decendent from that. 

 

It’s a story that has been in our family tree for a lot of generations. Who am I to question it?

[JJ Husker]

1 hour ago, BigRedBuster said:

It’s not an option. 

Yeah, I was pretty sure it wasn't an option. So I'm sort of curious what prompted the question and the big ole poll. Did Trump say something stupid and egotistical....again?

[Moiraine]

2 minutes ago, Comfortably Numb said:

Yeah, I was pretty sure it wasn't an option. So I'm sort of curious what prompted the question and the big ole poll. Did Trump say something stupid and egotistical....again?

 

 

 Yes. A South Dakota rep running for governor said he wants his face on Mt. Rushmore and he didn't appear to be joking when he said it.

[BigRedBuster]

33 minutes ago, Comfortably Numb said:

Yeah, I was pretty sure it wasn't an option. So I'm sort of curious what prompted the question and the big ole poll. Did Trump say something stupid and egotistical....again?

It’s a question that gets asked a lot. 

[TGHusker]

14 hours ago, BigRedBuster said:

Funny story about that. 

 

Supposedly, he had an affair with a maid. 

 

I’m a decendent from that. 

 

It’s a story that has been in our family tree for a lot of generations. Who am I to question it?

So I guess we need to call you Sir now with that near royal linage??

[TGHusker]

15 hours ago, mrandyk said:

I would replace Teddy with FDR.

We can do a reality TV show - and call it Celebrity President Makeover

[BigRedBuster]

Just now, TGHusker said:

So I guess we need to call you Sir now with that near royal linage??

Weeeelllll.......

 

I'm sure my ancestor wasn't quite treated like royalty when the mom was the maid.

[TGHusker]

17 hours ago, Big Red 40 said:

FDR is the only one close for me. Reagan did major damage to the middle class of this country (Me). No thanks

I don't want to derail this thread to talk about just one president, but I had to answer the bold above.  I can't speak  to your personal experience, Big Red,  but despite claims to the otherwise, Reagan did not do major damage to the middle class.  Real job growth, wage growth, reduction in inflation, interest rates, and taxes all had positive affect on the middle class. 

 

This article, written shortly after the Reagan era,  gives factual information from studies on the growth of jobs, African American employment and wages,  tax relief, income gaps, and the affect of Reagan's policies to stop wage stealing inflation and high interest rates and how there was upward growth in all income brackets as a whole during his tenure - including many moving out of poverty and into the middle class.  Too much to copy and paste here but if I could I'd paste the whole article.   I've copied portions.

 

 

https://www.firstthings.com/article/1991/04/the-rich-the-poor-and-reaganomics

Quote

 

Admittedly, it is not easy to get at the truth, especially since most journalism, on which we depend for our sense of what is going on, is both intellectually weakest and most partisan in reporting economic questions. It is best, therefore, to go directly to primary sources, in this case the neutral annual report of the Census Bureau, Money, Income and Poverty Status in the United States, 1988 (Series P-60, No. 166).

This record shows, in sum, that the Reagan administration did far better for the poor than did the Carter administration. In particular, the economic achievements of black Americans reached all-time highs. Yet this is not the record most people have heard of through the media.

 

 

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The basic facts of the Reagan years are now a matter of historical record. The Harvard economist Lawrence Lindsey expected to show that the growth achieved by Reaganomics decreased the taxes of the rich and hurt the poor, but found that the facts were exactly the reverse, as he reports in The Growth Experiment (1988). And later figures than his, the figures for 1988, can now be matched against the figures for 1980, Carter’s last year. One can measure exactly how much Ronald Reagan achieved for the poor and what an enormous increase in taxes he exacted from the rich, even while lowering tax rates across the board.

Quote

 

Reagan exempted virtually all the poor from federal income taxes, in part by almost doubling personal exemptions. Thus, a household earning less than $14,000 was by 1986 highly unlikely to be paying any federal income tax at all. (The effect of this was weakened by the steep increases in Social Security Taxes [FICA] mandated during the Carter years.) The Tax Reform Act of 1986 continued the reform process, expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit to the point where households with dependents in effect now pay no federal taxes up to nearly $10,000, and only a fraction of the combined employer/employee contribution to FICA up to nearly $20,000.

In 1976, Carter had attacked President Ford for a “misery index” much lower than his own policies were to cause by 1980. Carter ended up with interest rates at 19 percent, inflation at 13.5 percent, and unemployment at over 7 percent—a total of 40. By the end of his term, Reagan lowered this total to 17: interest rates 8 percent, unemployment 5.2 percent, inflation less than 4 percent. (In the narrow sense, the misery index counts only the inflation plus unemployment rates: a total of 20 for Carter, 9 for Reagan.)

All this was very good for the poor—not only the drop in inflation (which under Carter had driven so many people into poverty), but also the rise in employment and income. For example, the number of blacks employed when Carter left office was 9 million; during Reagan’s eight years, this number shot up to 11.4 million. A higher proportion of black adults was then employed than at any time in history.

Partly for this reason, the total income received by the 27 million American blacks, which in 1980 was $191 billion (in constant 1988 dollars), soared in 1988 to $25

9 billion. This sum is larger than the GNP of nearly all of black Africa and, indeed, of all but ten nations in the world.

 

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Because of the success of Reaganomics in generating an unprecedented number of months of uninterrupted economic growth, the media began to turn attention away from the absolute condition of the poor and towards a second issue: inequality. The Census Bureau divides the 92 million U.S. households into five equal segments (“quintiles”), ranked by annual reported income, and the media began to stress the fact that the proportion of income earned by the bottom 20 percent declined during Reagan’s two terms. Most journalists overlooked the more important reality that the total income of the bottom quintile (in constant dollars) rose substantially between 1980 and 1988, by nearly 15 percent.

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In one of its measurements, the Census Bureau divides households by fixed (real) dollar amounts into nine brackets. According to this method, the percentage of American households reporting an income of 115,000 or less dropped between 1980 and 1988 from 28.8 to 27.3 percent. The percentage of households reporting in the next two brackets, between $15,000 and $49,999, decreased by more: from 55 percent to just under 52 percent. These figures indicate that households at the lower end were moving upwards. And indeed, the percentage of those earning from 150,000 to 174,999 jumped from 11.3 to 13.4, while the percentage of those in the next bracket, $75,000 to $99,999, also jumped (from 2.9 to 4.2) and the percentage of those earning more than $100,000 actually doubled, from 1.6 to 3.2. In sum, from 1980 to 1988, lower brackets were shrinking, upper ones expanding; Americans were moving up. Indeed, if you want a pocketbook reason for President Reagan’s popularity, recall that the number of American households reporting an income of $50,000 or more (in constant 1988 dollars) grew by 6.3 million between 1980 and 1988, and the percentage of working-age Americans holding jobs (63.4 in July 1988) reached an all-time high.

 

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In comparing these facts to the more commonly heard accounts of the Reagan era, it may help to note that those who deride Reagan usually rely on two tricks. The most important of these is to report figures starting from 1979, instead of 1981. In this way, they bring into the picture the last two extremely damaging Carter years, with their withering inflation. They thus lay on Reagan blame for the devastation Carter wrought. The other trick is the usual one of not allowing conservatives to play on the same level playing field as liberals; when they lose on an issue, they change the subject and never admit defeat.

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There is much in the Reagan years for a fair-minded observer both to celebrate and to fault. One should raise serious questions about the federal deficit, the deregulation of the Savings and Loans, and the restructuring of industry through buyouts and takeovers. On these issues, one should hear out both the prosecution and the defense and form a judgment. But on the issue whether the poor benefited more under Reagan or under Carter, and whether the rich paid a larger share of federal income taxes under Reagan or Carter, a fair-minded judgment is also called for, and this one is clearly in Reagan’s favor.

 

The census report quoted in the article:

https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/1991/demo/p60-171.pdf