Was Reagan’s visit to the Bitburg Cemetery in 1985 an example of a brilliant mistake?

I think his biggest specific negative was that he made it socially acceptable for corporations to wage war against unions, by his own example of his dealings with the air traffic controllers union.

On August 3, 1981, PATCO went on strike for better pay, improved working conditions(better computers). PATCO also made noise about Striking under Carter, who had made plans on what to do if that Union did Strike, and a 32-hour work week. The union wanted an across the board $10,000 pay raise and fully funded retirement after 20 years. It was an audacious set of demands that would have cost taxpayers $770 million. The government came back with significantly less, but still a shorter work week and a 10% pay increase for a few workers. 95% of the membership rejected the deal and authorized a strike.

But it was illegal for government workers to go out on strike. Congress passed a law in 1955 that made strikes government workers punishable by a year in prison, which the Supreme Court upheld in 1971


So there wasn't much sympathy for these guys. It was an easy Union to break.

You know why PATCO supported Reagan? They thought Carter was a sellout, in not supporting the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Bill, and expending no effort to repeal Taft-Hartley. A Strike was seen so likely, Carter Administration made plans on what to do if(when) a Wildcat Strike occurred.
Reagan just used those plans
 
. . . So there wasn't much sympathy for these guys. It was an easy Union to break. . . .
And that might be one of the major times we get the biggest bad example effect, when the first time is a good idea or the best among a limited menu of choices.

As always, I’d like a reference or two. And I’ll dive in and try to do the same.
 
https://books.google.com/books?id=p...rom forty-to thirty-two hours a week"&f=false


" . . . PATCO [Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization] . . . and working hours cut back from forty-to thirty-two hours a week. . . "

*and eventually wanted to be paid the same as pilots! [well, it is a similar level of professional responsibility, but good luck trying to sell it]
And just the hours by themselves would be likely to cause jealousy and resentment.

Regardless of whether it might be rational for a high-stress job.
 
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And just the hours by themselves would be likely to cause jealousy and resentment.

Regardless of whether it might be rational for a high-stress job.

That and around a decade before, after the equally unpopular Postal Strike,SCOTUS upheld that the laws making Strikes illegal against the Federal Government, were legal.
United Federation of Postal Clerks v. Blount, 325 F. Supp. 879, 882 (D.D.C. 1971), af'd,404 U.S. 802 (1971) "At common law no employee, whether public or private, had a constitutional right to strike in concert with his fellow workers"
with the Union being fined a whopping $100,000 an hour that the Strike was ongoing.

The $10k pay increase was massive.

For 1980, the average car price was $7,574, $10K would buy you a big Chrysler New Yorker outright, or Two Datsun B210, if you wanted fuel economy.

And a Pension in 20 years? Retire at 40?
 
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Reagan Defends Cemetery Visit : Says German Dead Are Also Victims of Nazis
Los Angeles Times, Don Shannon, April 19, 1985.

http://articles.latimes.com/1985-04-19/news/mn-14900_1_concentration-camp

'President Reagan, under attack from Jewish and veterans groups and members of both houses of Congress, Thursday defended his plans to visit a German military cemetery, saying the soldiers buried there were "victims of Nazism just as surely as the victims of the concentration camps." . . . '

' . . . Reagan said that almost 2,000 others are buried at the site and that "most of those--the average age is about 18--these are the young teen-agers that were conscripted, forced into military service in the closing days of the Third Reich." . . . '
Another stunning statement from President Reagan. He's focusing on most of the soldiers buried in the cemetery who were not SS members, whereas his critics are focusing on the 49 soldiers buried there who were members of the Waffen-SS.

================

But, the fact that Reagan got it so wrong actually played to strength, and kept the conversation going in a useful way.

And when Reagan visited first the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and then the Bitburg Cemetery on Sunday, May 5, 1985, in a heartfelt and understated way, I think he actually did a good job at it.
 
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If you're implying that Iran-Contra was the only major mistake Reagan made, then I disagree here. Reagan's domestic agenda was broadly a failure; ironically it was by compromising with the Democratic Congress (raising taxes in 1982, saving Social Security in 1983) that Reagan managed to really accomplish progress on the economy and America's welfare state. Otherwise, his Reaganomics ballooned the deficit and transformed America from the world's leading creditor nation to it's leading debtor in only four years. Reagan's fiscal irresponsibility put America on a dangerous course and set the stage for the financial problems we are still dealing with today.

And on top of all that, Reagan took the party of fiscal prudence and individual freedoms and turned it into the party of religious fundamentalism, red ink budgets, and an almost violent hatred of the Federal government that has served to polarize our society and gridlock the political process. Definitely not a good record, although not the worst ever either.

Prior to Reaganomics, and even with Reagan prior to adopting supply side, the Republican fiscal belief was a balanced budget which involved both cutting government spending and raising taxes as needed.
 
Prior to Reaganomics, and even with Reagan prior to adopting supply side, . . .
President Reagan was a big Keynesian. With the Aug. ‘81 tax cut and planned increases in military spending, I’m not at all sure how we had a 1982 recession.

And before we say Paul Volcker, he was not a one-trick pony at the beginning and I don’t think he became one.

I’m just going to go with the conclusion that a modern economy is almost biologically complex.
 
...
I’m just going to go with the conclusion that a modern economy is almost biologically complex.

Amen. In another Century or two folks will equate our economic knowledge at the same level as 16th or 17th Century medicine. Economists of today maybe viewed as dangerously ignorant as the surgeons of 1818.
 
Amen. In another Century or two folks will equate our economic knowledge at the same level as 16th or 17th Century medicine. . .
I'm not so sure. In a similar vein, Richard Dawkins said it's almost the case that evolution has created human brains which have a hard time understanding evolution! For example, we keep wanting to inject purpose or meaning or intention into it.

So with economics . . . we as humans are all geared up to understand fairness in the micro, and are much less geared up to understand or even focus on whether the overall system is delivering the goods.

For example, in my next post I'm going to pull a quote from economist Alan Blinder that most people just don't understand Keynesian economics. But I'm afraid it's even worse than that. Most people don't even understand when a recession is going on! (which might in part be a positive thing leading to continued trying)

My first job after graduating high school was working for a department store from Oct. 1981 to March 1982. And since I was only hired for the Christmas season, I thought it was a success staying on until March. I struggled with finding another job, and my Dad blamed me for not trying hard enough. My best friend graduated one year after me in early June 1982. Around August '82, he joined the U.S. Navy in part motivated because of job difficulties and not liking only working in a stupid restaurant. Yes, he served honorably, but I would have liked for him to have more real choices. In late Aug. I started college (one year break after high school), I took micro-economics the first semester, macro-economics the second semester. There was a small amount of dorm political talk since Nov. '82 was a mid-term election. I remember a biology grad student who led our study session was concerned with environmental issues. My first two years I also took accounting, sociology, and an English class which focused on the last 30 years or so of American culture.

And no one said jack shit about the 1982 recession.

I even had a commission sales job the Summer of '83 in which we attempted to sell outdoor signs to businesses. It was a rip-off sales jobs, as about half of sales jobs are. But they could have at least used the fact that we were coming out of recession for purposes of hucksterism. But nope, no mention of it there either. And my friend who joined the Navy, his Dad was our scoutmaster and did better than average as someone who treated young persons as people worthy of easy and matter-of-fact respect. But nope, he never said, hey guys, we're living through the worse economic downturn since the Great Depression, don't get down on yourself if it's hard to find a job, never said anything of the sort.

And the biology lecture leader, and please understand I'm also concerned with the environment, well, if I had had the knowledge and confidence that I have today, I would have raised my hand and said, Steve, you have your head ten feet up your ass. Now, you know why you have your head ten feet up your ass, you curious? Well, I'm going to tell you. Because we are living through the worse economic downturn since the Great Depression -- right now -- and we're not going to get any of the things which you want, and which I want, until we turn that around. (And yes, I think some PG profanity can often be great as an attention getter, sometimes, if it's about the situation and not the person, but then sometimes not. And I would have preached on the importance of economics because it needs to be preached on)

And yes, the 2008-2009 Great Recession has eclipsed 1982 as the biggest downturn since the thirties, and maybe it was high-texture enough to get people's attention. But since a fair number of people focused on the danger of "socialism" with government health care, and on "government spending," I really don't know to what extent this really, actually registers with people.

Maybe the next bar conversation on politics, ask people if they can name the three biggest downturns since the Great Depression. Or, find a better way, people don't like acknowledging that there's something important which they really don't know about.
 
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And yes, the 2008-2009 Great Recession has eclipsed 1982 as the biggest downturn since the thirties, and maybe it was high-texture enough to get people's attention. But since a fair number of people focused on the danger of "socialism" with government health care, and on "government spending," I really don't know to what extent this really, actually registers with people.

Maybe the next bar conversation on politics, ask people if they can name the three biggest downturns since the Great Depression.

No one seems to want to talk about 1957-58, that was worse than '81-82 by a good margin
 
And that turned out to not exactly be the case.

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800px-Visit_by_U.S._President_Ronald_Reagan_to_Bitburg_military_cemetery_1985%2C_protester_with_transparent_-0005.jpg


Still, it can be argued that Reagan made the best of a bad situation, and some good came of it.
I'm pretty sure the Secret Service initially surveyed the cemetery when the gravestones were covered by snow, so they didn't realize that Reagan would be visiting a cemetery where SS members were buried. This scandal over Germany's Yasukuni Shrine analogue was the proximate cause that led to the Holocaust memorial being constructed in Berlin. At the time the memorial was planned reunification seemed like a distant or impossible prospect, so building it in the distant no man's land of West Berlin seems like a way of distancing West Germany from its predecessor and blaming a united Germany that no longer existed.
 
No one seems to want to talk about 1957-58, that was worse than '81-82 by a good margin
upload_2018-12-27_15-30-51.png

GDP growth rate

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A191RO1Q156NBEA

I've read multiple sources that 1982 was the worse post-WWII economic downturn until we got to 2008 & 2009.

Yes, just by eyeballing it, I see that 1958 was deeper but shorter lasting. The width of the gray lines show the duration of each recession.

And by going to the link and hoovering the arrow, I can see that 1958 1st quarter had negative GDP growth of 2.9% (that's bad!), whereas 1982 3rd quarter had negative GDP growth of 2.6%, still bad, but not as bad.

Also, with 1982 being longer, it stands to reason that it had worse job losses, right? I strongly suspect so, but don't know for sure, and would to like to have as definite answers as we can get, if you, me, or anyone else wishes to dive in.

'82 was also part of the 1980 & '82 double-dip recession.
 
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What Did We Learn from the Financial Crisis, the Great Recession [2008 & 2009], and the Pathetic Recovery?

Alan S. Blinder, Princeton University, November 2014

https://www.princeton.edu/ceps/workingpapers/243blinder.pdf

.

.


3. Some lessons for teaching economics


Lesson # 1: We need to teach basic Keynesian economics better.


' . . . I mean very basic notions such as that the government spending multiplier is positive, at least when there is high unemployment. . . '

' . . . For not very good reasons, the label "Keynesian" has gotten associated with liberalism in modern America, leading many conservatives to shun the doctrine—and the stabilizing fiscal policy that goes with it. This misconception is something we should be able to "teach out" of our students. Using fiscal stimulus to make recessions shorter and shallower is not something Democrats should embrace and Republicans oppose. First, stimulus does not require larger government. Congress can use tax cuts instead—or the Fed can chip in with monetary policy. Indeed, both Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush were big Keynesians—in deeds, if not in words. Second, you can argue against many forms of government spending, as conservatives are wont to do, without adopting the nonsense claim that more public spending kills jobs. If you are not teaching your students that "Keynesianism" is neither conservative nor liberal, you should be. . . '
Yes, Reagan was a Keynesian. :)

He thought the top tax rate was too high for good economic growth. This was a big issue for him. And maybe he further believed that more economic growth would eventually catch up with bigger deficits, in keeping with his general optimism that a rising tide would eventually lift all boats. And maybe that part is even kind of true.

Perhaps the most approachable part of Keynesian economics is the importance of being counter-cyclical, rather than feeding into periods of boom and bust in a stupidly pro-cyclical way.
 
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I'm pretty sure the Secret Service initially surveyed the cemetery when the gravestones were covered by snow, so they didn't realize that Reagan would be visiting a cemetery where SS members were buried. . .
Whether it was the Secret Service, or Deputy Chief-of-Staff Michael Deaver, ro someone on Deaver's staff, it was really poor advance work, no question about it! :p

My mother, who followed the story more closely than I did even though I was 22 at the time, told me that they didn't want to get out of the car because it was cold and snowing. And yet Reagan felt committed to sticking with the plan. That's perhaps the most interesting part of all.
 
I'm pretty sure the Secret Service initially surveyed the cemetery when the gravestones were covered by snow, . . .
And to my surprise, Secret Service agent Joseph Petro was involved in surveying the site, perhaps more than he should have been.



Standing Next to History: An Agent's Life Inside the Secret Service
Joseph Petro (with Jeffrey Robinson), St. Martin's Press, 2005.

https://books.google.com/books?id=S...and Henkel, who visited the cemetery"&f=false

' . . . In February, I was part of the survey team, along with Deaver and [Bill] Henkel, who visited the cemetery. . . '

' . . . the tombstones in German war cemeteries are flush to the ground with iron crosses scattered among the graves. The place had the right security ingredients for us and the right atmospherics for the political part of the visit. . . '

' . . . we hadn't seen many of the tombstones because they'd been covered with snow. When it melted, someone discovered that there were SS graves here. . . '

' . . . It didn't help to explain that there isn't a World War II German military cemetery anywhere in that country that doesn't have some SS graves. . . '

' . . . [Later on] I walked around that cemetery looking for the SS graves. I'm not sure exactly how many there are. Some reports say around sixty; the White House eventually said forty-eight. This, in a cemetery that holds more than two thousand war dead. The stones marking the graves that I saw had the soldier's name, rank, date of birth, and date of death. And I didn't see a single SS grave of anybody over nineteen years old. Many were even younger. . . '
 
. . . This article explains it fairly well
Thank you for this article, and from a link within it, I find:
REDUX Versus High Three Military Retirement

https://www.thebalance.com/redux-ve...53.824895230.1546142658-1337509010.1546142658

‘ . . . When a member of the military reaches his 15th year of service, he has a choice to accept a one-time $30,000 bonus, which then requires him to enter the REDUX retirement plan. Under REDUX, the Department of Defense calculates a service member’s retirement at a reduced rate of 40% of his base pay instead of the traditional 50% for 20 years of service.


‘Other aspects of the REDUX retirement plan slowly erode a service member’s total retirement compensation. Unlike the traditional High Three retirement plan, REDUX also requires a reduction in the cost of living allowance adjustments. . . ’
And I like this second article even a little more. :)
 
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The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution, 1980-1989

Steven Hayward, 2009

https://books.google.com/books?id=A...rld’s best-known Holocaust survivors”&f=false

‘ . . . By a fluke of prior scheduling, Reagan had to host one of the world’s best-known Holocaust survivors, Elie Wiesel, at a White House award ceremony a week into the furor. In a live televised broadcast of the ceremony, Wiesel scolded Reagan, . . . ’
The entire Bitburg event has a lot of facets, like a Picasso painting.

And actually, I think Elie did a good job in the circumstances. It’s neither accurate nor fair to characterize it as ‘scolding.’
 
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