I was giving a speech in Manistee and one of the members of the audience asked, “Why do you blame the Republicans?” I said, “Because they did it.”
In the early 1970’s, Richard Nixon did a favor for one of his wealthy donors, the head of Kaiser Permanente, and he changed medical care from being not-for-profit to for-profit. I remember hearing some of the doctors and dentists I knew complaining about all of the paperwork this created. Since 1984, healthcare costs in America have skyrocketed while outcomes have not improved. We still have very high infant and maternal mortality. This is especially true among marginalized communities.
In the early 1980’s, Ronald Reagan (whose administration had more felony convictions than any other administration in history. Of course, we are still counting the Trump administration) eliminated the Fairness Doctrine which required news communication to be unbiased. He also fast-tracked Rupert Murdock’s U.S. citizenship so Murdock could start the Fox organization. Murdock had already purchased a number of newspapers around the world and turned them into instruments for the right-wing agenda.
Reagan changed the law to allow corporations to buy back stock. This started the concentration of wealth at the top and stood in the way of proper governance for corporations. Reagan’s notion of “Trickle Down” economics empowered many corporations to eliminate middle management jobs. This meant that those who were graduating from college during that time (like me) had to compete for entry-level jobs with people with 10+ years of experience.
Reagan told us not to trust government, but to trust corporations. The economist Milton Friedman told corporations that their only responsibility was to their stockholders. We went from trusting an institution that was created to serve and protect to trusting institutions that were created to greedily maximize profits with little consideration to communities or workers.
We had Newt Gingrich who started the habit of treating people who disagreed with him harshly. Then Rush Limbaugh went on the radio and starting taking about “Femi-Nazis” and the like. As a note, in an interview, Rush Limbaugh stated that he did not believe what he said on the radio. He did it for ratings.
Democrats are not perfect. Don’t get me wrong. NAFTA and other economic decisions made by Clinton and Allen Greenspan did more harm than good.
This is how we got here. Let’s fight to work our way out.
