Reagan’s Legacy

While the so-called liberal press caps a week of servile eulogizing of former President Ronald Reagan, I thought it might be useful to point readers toward one of the few counterpoints in this orgy of Gipper nostalgia. New York Newsday ran the following op-ed piece yesterday: Urban suffering grew under Reagan

Reagan is often lauded as “the great communicator,” but he used his rhetorical skills to stigmatize poor people, which laid the groundwork for slashing the social safety net – despite the fact that Reagan’s own family had been rescued by New Deal anti-poverty programs during the Depression.
During his stump speeches, Reagan often told the story of a so-called welfare queen in Chicago who drove a Cadillac and had ripped off $150,000 from the government using 80 aliases, 30 addresses, a dozen Social Security cards and four fictional dead husbands. Reagan dutifully promised to roll back welfare. Journalists searched for this welfare cheat and discovered that she didn’t exist. Nevertheless, he kept using the anecdote.

The full article by Peter Dreier, director of the urban and environmental policy program at Occidental College, is well worth reading.