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A recent Gallup survey found that at 19 percent, Reagan topped the list for the third time in 12 years. President Abraham Lincoln came in second at 14 percent, followed by President Bill Clinton at 13 percent.
President John F. Kennedy rounded out fourth at 11 percent, and President Barack Obama came in seventh, at five percent.
Amazingly enough, President George W. Bush was chosen by just two percent, placing him in 10th: one spot ahead of President Thomas Jefferson, an influential member of the nation's founders.
Originally posted by DimensionalDetective
Either this poll is absolutely chock-o-block full of BS to the Nth degree, or americans are becoming more and more dumbed down by the day.
DUBYA ranked above THOMAS JEFFERSON?!? Are you freakin kidding me?
Nobody can be that incredibly ignorant, can they? Nevermind. lol
Americans' views on the topic of great presidents appear to have coalesced around three presidents: Lincoln, Reagan, and Kennedy. One of these three has been at the top of the list in each of eight surveys conducted since 1999.
[...]
This "greatest president" question is open-ended, meaning that respondents are asked to name a president off the top of their head. This type of measurement tends to increase the mention of recent presidents. Democrats, for example, are most likely to name Clinton -- the most recent Democratic president not currently in office -- as greatest. Republicans, in slightly different fashion, tend to skip over the two most recent Republican presidents, the two Bushes, and instead are most likely to choose Reagan.
Originally posted by Whereweheaded
reply to post by inforeal
On the contrary, the Reason Reagan is revered as the greatest president, is because not only did he free the hostages form Tehran, and not only did he stop the cold war, but he also capitalized on the " computer " industry, and not only promoted the science, but promoted the jobs that were in line with it. He reduced the deficit, lowered the GDP, and the list goes on.
Whether you like him or hate him, the FACT is, is that he was the most successful President in the last 3 decades.
Originally posted by Whereweheaded
Whether you like him or hate him, the FACT is, is that he was the most successful President in the last 3 decades.
But the rich fought back, and won big-time in 1980 when Reagan, until then the fringe “Voodoo economics” candidate who was heading into the election trailing far behind Jimmy Carter, was swept into the White House on a wave of public concern of the Iranians taking US hostages. Reagan promptly cut income taxes on the very rich from 70% down to 27%. Corporate tax rates were also cut so severely that they went from representing over 33% of total federal tax receipts in 1951 to less than 9% in 1983 (they’re still in that neighborhood, the lowest in the industrialized world).
The result was devastating. Our government was suddenly so badly awash in red ink that Reagan doubled the tax paid only by people earning less than $40,000/year (FICA), and then began borrowing from the huge surplus this new tax was accumulating in the Social Security Trust Fund. Even with that, Reagan had to borrow more money in his 8 years than the sum total of all presidents from George Washington to Jimmy Carter combined.
Reagan didn’t free the hostages he illegally made a deal before the elections so the Iranians held on to them so Carter could loose the elections in 1980.
Reagan didn’t stop the cold war, he exacerbated it with heavy defense spending. The USSR before Reagan came to office was hurt by the Afghan war THAT JIMMY CARTER DID TO AID THE MUHAJJADIN.
HE DIDN’T REDUCE THE DEFICIT HE RAISED IT BY HIS TAXES FOR THE RICH.
The U.S. Congress passed the Tax Reform Act of 1986 (TRA) (Pub.L. 99-514, 100 Stat. 2085, enacted October 22, 1986) to simplify the income tax code, broaden the tax base and eliminate many tax shelters and other preferences. Referred to as the second of the two "Reagan tax cuts" (the Kemp-Roth Tax Cut of 1981 being the first), the bill was also officially sponsored by Democrats, Richard Gephardt of Missouri in the House of Representatives and Bill Bradley of New Jersey in the Senate. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 was designed to be tax revenue neutral, because individual taxes were decreased while corporate taxes were increased. As of 2011, the Tax Reform Act of 1986 was the most recent major simplification of the tax code, drastically reducing the number of deductions and the number of tax brackets.
The top tax rate was lowered from 50% to 28% while the bottom rate was raised from 11% to 15%. Many lower level tax brackets were consolidated, and the upper income level of the bottom rate (married filing jointly) was increased from $5,720/year to $29,750/year. This package ultimately consolidated tax brackets from fifteen levels of income to four levels of income. [1] This would be the only time in the history of the U.S. income tax (which dates back to the passage of the Revenue Act of 1862) that the top rate was reduced and the bottom rate increased concomitantly. In addition, capital gains faced the same tax rate as ordinary income. The rate structure also maintained a novel "bubble rate." The rates were not 15%/28%, as widely reported. Rather, the rates were 15%/28%/33%/28%. The "bubble rate" of 33% simply elevated the 15% rate to 28% for higher-income taxpayers. As a result, for taxpayers after a certain income level, TRA86 provided a flat tax of 28%. This was jettisoned in the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990, otherwise known as the "Bush tax increase", which violated his Taxpayer Protection Pledge.
In 1981, Reagan significantly reduced the maximum tax rate, which affected the highest income earners, and lowered the top marginal tax rate from 70% to 50%; in 1986 he further reduced the rate to 28%.[15] As a result of all this, the budget deficit and federal debt increased considerably: debt grew from 33.3% of GDP in 1980 to 51.9% at the end of 1988 [16] and the deficit increased from 2.7% in 1980 to more than double in 1983, when it reached 6%; in 1984, 1985 and 1986 it was around 5%.[17] In order to cover new federal budget deficits, the United States borrowed heavily both domestically and abroad, raising the national debt from $997 billion to $2.85 trillion,[18] and the United States moved from being the world's largest international creditor to the world's largest debtor nation.[19] Reagan described the new debt as the "greatest disappointment" of his presidency.[20]
The number of Americans below the poverty level increased from 29.272 million in 1980 to 31.745 million in 1988,
Reagan's tax policies pushed both the international transactions current account and the federal budget into deficit and led to a significant increase in public debt.
deficit increased from 2.7% in 1980 to more than double in 1983, when it reached 6%; in 1984, 1985 and 1986 it was around 5%.
The conservatives Tea Party Republicans are on the side of the tyrants, the greedy rich, the fundamentalist, the right wing wackos of Fox News and other evil stuff.