I Do Hereby Proclaim Ronald Reagan, Public Enemy #1

I cringe every year when Earth Day rolls around.  It isn't because I don't like Earth Day, in fact, I revel in it.  No, I cringe because I was there for the first one.  The promise of a new day.  A new horizon of enlightenment.  Wrong!

A new PBS program featuring the founders of Earth Day on its 40th anniversary once again drove home to me the immense damage done to our country by Ronald Reagan and his head-up-your-ass neo-con cronies.  Punch's post on "Just Say No" reminded me just how regressively stupid that administration and most of its policies were.

Richard Nixon was the first president to aggressively pursue an alternative energy policy, followed by Jimmy Carter who declared "war" on energy.  The result was the formation of an Energy Department and a bevy of programs and tax credits for alternative energy research and development.

For the first time, through your own efforts, you could make your electric meter run backwards and be credited for sending energy back to the grid.

As Michelle Obama's garden symbolizes healthy eating, Carter placed solar water heaters on the roof of the White House to encourage all of us to seek new ways to conserve and reduce our energy footprint.

Less than half a decade later, with much fanfare and media attention, Reagan had the solar cells removed.  I guess his ding-bat wife's astrologer said it wasn't in the stars.  But that wasn't all he had removed.  He also removed all of the energy tax-credit programs and reduced the Energy Department's budget by 80%, leaving only a shell of staff in place.

Altogether, by the end of this eight-year disaster, our nation's energy and environmental progress had been set back by 30-years or more.

The recent health care debacle again highlighted just how far we've regressed.  To those who claim that Obama is trying to do to much, I offer the following, legislation passed or spawned during Lyndon Johnson's 6-year presidency:

The Civil Rights Act of 1964, banning job discrimination and segregation in public places.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965, outlawed literacy and other voter qualification tests designed to disqualify African-Americans.

The Civil Rights Act of 1968, banning housing discrimination and extending constitutional protections to native Americans.

The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, creating the Office of Economic Opportunity which spawned the Job Corps, Volunteers of Service to America, Neighborhood Youth Corps, Model Cities Program, Food Stamps, and Community Action Agencies.

Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, providing federal funding to education.

Head Start, a significant pre-school education program.

Higher Education Act of 1965, federal funding for higher education, created the Pell Grant program.

Social Security Act of 1965, created Medicare and Medicaid.

The National Endowment for the Arts

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts

The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden of the Smithsonian Institution.

The Department of Transportation

The Clean Air, Water Quality and Clean Water Restoration Acts which included: 

The Wilderness Act 1964
Endangered Species Act 1966
Land and Water Conservation Act 1965
Solid Waste Disposal Act 1965
Motor Vehicle Pollution Control Act 1965
National Historic Preservation Act 1965

Presidents Nixon, Carter, and Ford each thought these programs important enough to not only fund them, but even expand them.  Ronald Reagan did everything he could to cut funding and even eliminate them altogether.

The Reagan administration gave birth to the mean-tempered, mean-spirited political modus-operandi that doesn't answer a question but attacks the person who raises it.  His administration gave birth to the immoral greed and gluttony brought to the tipping point by the looters of the Bush administration.

Therefore, on this 40th Anniversary of Earth Day, I, Mr. Charleston, do hereby proclaim Ronald Reagan public enemy #1 and do hereby issue a posthumus citizen's arrest for the president who did more damage to my country than any other politician in my lifetime.