Ronald Reagan is the Best American President Since World War 2

The charismatic Ronald Wilson Reagan( February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004), the 40th President of the United States has been rated as the best American President since World War Two and the second best in history after Abraham Lincoln and followed by George Washington according to the Harris Poll released today ahead of this year's Presidents' Day on February 21, 2012.

Guess who is rated the worst President?
George W. Bush!

The following is the complete report of the poll.

NEW YORK, Feb. 15, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- As the nation prepares to celebrate Presidents' Day, it is always interesting to see what people think about some of the past presidents. Looking at all the presidents since World War II, one-quarter of Americans (25%) say Ronald Reagan is the best president, one in five (19%) say Franklin Roosevelt while 15% say it is John Kennedy and 12% say Bill Clinton. The nine other presidents, including Barack Obama, are at 4% or less.

Looking at the flip side, just over one-quarter of U.S. adults (27%) say that George W. Bush was the worst president while just under one-quarter (22%) say Barack Obama is the worst; one in ten (12%) say the worst was Richard Nixon. The ten other presidents are at 5% or less.

These are some of the results of The Harris Poll of 2,016 adults surveyed online between January 16 and 23, 2012 by Harris Interactive.

Partisan differences
Presidents are elected bearing a party label, so it's not surprising that partisans have different opinions about who the best and worst presidents are. For Republicans, over half (55%) say Ronald Reagan was the best president and almost half (47%) say Barack Obama is the worst president. Among Democrats, there are three presidents bunched near the top for best – Franklin Roosevelt (25%), Bill Clinton (22%) and John Kennedy (18%). It's an easier choice for worst president for Democrats as almost half (48%) say George W. Bush was the worst.

For Independents, there isn't a clear answer for either category. One-quarter of Independents (24%) say Franklin Roosevelt was the best, one in five (21%) say Ronald Reagan was the best and 17% say the best was John Kennedy. Looking at the other side, one-quarter (24%) say George W. Bush was the worst president while one in five Independents (19%) say Barack Obama is the worst.

Best presidents in history
If the list of presidents is expanded to include some of the founding fathers, such as Washington, Jefferson and Adams, as well as other presidents including Lincoln, Wilson and Jackson, the results of who is best change slightly. If we look at a combined best or second best, one-third of Americans (32%) say Abraham Lincoln was the best president, one-quarter (26%) say Ronald Reagan was the best and one in five say George Washington (21%), John Kennedy (21%) and Bill Clinton (19%) were the best presidents.

So What?
History has shown us that a president is best judged years after he has left office. Decisions made while sitting in the Oval Office may be seen as the wrong decision by many Americans at that point in time, but as time passes, the wisdom of some of these hard choices becomes clear. And, the reverse is also true.

Click here for the rest of the report.

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Newt Gingrich: Bankruptcy, Not Bailout

Bankruptcy, Not Bailout
by Newt Gingrich (more by this author)
Posted 03/18/2009 ET

"Outrage" is the word on everyone’s lips to describe the fat bonuses being paid with taxpayer funds to the failed executives at AIG -- and it is an outrage.

It’s an outrage that the American people are being asked to pay for the bad behavior of people who should have known better, be they reckless traders on Wall Street or reckless borrowers on Main Street.

But the cure for our outrage is not merely, as President Obama is demanding, that AIG be prevented from paying its executives. The $165 million in planned bonuses -- as manifestly undeserved as it is -- is chicken feed compared to the $170 billion in taxpayer funds AIG has received so far. Nor is it acceptable to ask Americans to keep throwing their tax dollars at failed companies and their leaders.

The answer is an old fashioned one: AIG should choose between receivership or bankruptcy.

It should not be allowed to choose more bailouts from the taxpayer.

Restore the Rule of Law:

Allow Failing Corporations to go Bankrupt Under U.S. law, Chapter 11 bankruptcy allows a company to reorganize. Chapter 7 allows a company to dissolve itself.

The choices for AIG, as both an insurance and non-insurance company, are more complicated, but ultimately boil down to the same options. And for other companies either receiving or looking to receive a bailout from the taxpayers, the option should instead be bankruptcy.

Bankruptcy would send a needed message to U.S. investors: Don’t assume the government will bail you out when you do something stupid.

And most importantly, bankruptcy would replace the rule of politicians over U.S. financial institutions with the rule of law.

Geithner Didn’t Inherit the Policy of Throwing Billions at Failing Companies -- He Helped Create It. Because when it comes to Washington’s handling of the financial crisis, so far we’ve had the rule of politicians, not the rule of law.

Most prominent among the politicians in question is Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.As Americans’ level of outraged has risen, so has the level of finger pointing by Geithner and others for the mess we’re in. But Treasury Secretary Geithner is disingenuous at best and untruthful at worst when he says that he “inherited the worst fiscal situation in American history.”

The truth is that Secretary Geithner didn’t inherit the policy of throwing billions of taxpayer dollars at failing companies -- he helped create it.

Even before he was Treasury Secretary -- when he was still head of the New York Federal Reserve -- Geithner was so deeply involved in the government’s bail out of Bear Stearns, its take over of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and its bailout of AIG that this was the Washington Post’s headline from September 19, 2008:

“In the Crucible of Crisis, Paulson, Bernanke and Geithner Forge a Committee of Three.”

The first meeting of the first bailout -- of Bear Sterns -- was held in Geithner’s office. And the first meeting of what has become a $170 billion bailout of AIG was held -- where else? In Geithner’s New York Fed office.

Why Not Bankruptcy for AIG? Because Wall Street Wouldn’t Have Done As Well.

From the outset, Geithner was central to the developing policy of having the taxpayers bail out ailing financial institutions like AIG rather then allow them to go bankrupt. And for months now, we’ve been told that these bailouts were necessary to avoid a wider, cataclysmic, financial meltdown.

But now it’s clear that other, less noble, considerations were at play.As the Wall Street Journal editorialized yesterday, the real outrage over the AIG bailout isn’t executive bonuses, it’s that billions in taxpayer funds intended for AIG have been passed through to benefit foreign banks and Wall Street behemoths like Goldman Sachs. And as former AIG CEO Hank Greenburg testified last October, these financial institutions wouldn’t have faired as well if AIG had filed for bankruptcy protection rather than do what it did, which was to negotiate a bailout with Timothy Geithner’s New York Federal Reserve.

Here’s how Greenburg put it:

“Although AIG stockholders could have fared better if the company had filed for bankruptcy protection, other stakeholders -- like AIG’s Wall Street counterparties in swaps and other transactions -- would have fared worse.”

For the Cost of Bailing Out AIG, Every American Household Could Have Free Electricity For a YearSo now everyone is outraged, and rightly so. But the lavish executive bonuses being paid with taxpayer funds are just the beginning of the story.

So far, the American taxpayers are on the hook for $170 billion to AIG -- that’s an astounding $1,224 per taxpayer.What else could we have done with all this money?$170 billion would pay for more than doubling the Navy’s fleet of aircraft carriers.

$170 billion would pay for a four-year education at a public university for more then two million Americans.

$170 billion would cover the electricity bill of every household in America for an entire year.

When You Reward Failure, All You Get is More Failure

What Washington should learn from all this outrage is to return to the common sense that should have guided it all along:

When you reward failure, all you get it more failure.

A company that needs a $170 billion taxpayer bailout is a failed company. The executives that led that company are failed executives. But instead of having to face the consequences of their failure responsibly through bankruptcy or receivership, AIG and its Wall Street “counterparties” are being rewarded for their recklessness -- with our money.

Thanks to the Bush-Obama-Geithner policy of bailing out failing companies, we now have the worst of all possible scenarios: A taxpayer subsidized, government supervised private company; an unsustainable public/private hybrid that is too public to make its own decisions and too private to be responsible to the taxpayers that are keeping it alive.

Outrages like the fat cat bonuses currently dominating the headlines will only continue as long as the rule of politicians supplants the rule of law on Wall Street.

Congress should rethink this entire process. The dangers of a domino-like financial meltdown are real. But so, too, is the danger that the outrage of the American people will reach the point that we no longer trust the dire warnings -- or the righteous indignation -- coming from Washington.

Your friend,

Newt Gingrich

P.S. Historian William Forstchen and I have collaborated on many different works of historical fiction. I’m proud to announce that Bill has a new novel out, called One Second After. It’s a fascinating and disturbing account of what America would be like in the aftermath of an electro magnetic pulse (EMP) attack. Like everything Bill does, One Second After expertly combines human drama and geopolitical reality for a fictional look at what could be an all-too-real future. See it for yourself here.

Mr. Gingrich is the former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and author of "Winning the Future" (published by Regnery, a HUMAN EVENTS sister company). Click here to get his free Winning the Future e-mail newsletter.

Bush Administration Policy Cost Small Businesses Over a Trillion Dollars in Federal Contracts

21 Jan 2009 14:00 Africa/Lagos

Bush Administration Policy Cost Small Businesses Over a Trillion Dollars in Federal Contracts

PETALUMA, Calif., Jan. 21 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- There is no way to know exactly how many billions of dollars in federal contracts American small businesses lost during the eight years of the Bush Administration. During President Bush's tenure, administration officials went to extreme lengths to make it difficult, if not impossible to obtain the government's records on small business contracting.


Under Bush, the United States Department of Justice went to federal court on several occasions to fight Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for the specific names of firms that had received federal small business contracts.


Since 2003, 15 federal investigations have found that Bush Administration officials have diverted billions of dollars in federal small business contracts to Fortune 500 firms and thousands of other large businesses in the U.S. and Europe. (http://www.asbl.com/documentlibrary.html)


In 2005, the Small Business Administration (SBA) Office of Inspector General released Report 5-15, which stated, "One of the most important challenges facing the Small Business Administration and the entire Federal government today is that large businesses are receiving small business procurement awards and agencies are receiving credit for these awards." (http://www.sba.gov/IG/05-15.pdf)


Based on an evaluation of all available federal contracting data, the American Small Business League (ASBL) estimates that the Bush Administration diverted over $100 billion a year in federal small business contracts to large businesses.


In addition to diverting more than $800 billion in federal small business contracts to corporate giants, President Bush has attempted to systematically dismantle every federal program designed to assist small businesses including those firms owned by women, minorities and veterans.


For eight years, Bush Administration officials refused to implement a federal law establishing a 5 percent federal contracting goal for woman-owned firms. Bush officials at the SBA closed the office to assist veteran-owned firms and laid off the vast majority of staff designated to assist minority-owned firms.


Additionally, Bush cut the SBA's budget and staffing to the point that the agency could barely function. During the eight years of the Bush Administration, hundreds of the SBA's most experienced staff were laid off.


Considering the volume of federal small business contracts that have been diverted to large businesses, and the lost contracting opportunities for small businesses and firms owned by women, minorities and veterans, small businesses may have lost over $1 trillion in federal contracts during the Bush Administration.


Small businesses may not fair much better under President Obama. To date, President Obama has not proposed a single policy to stop the flow of federal small business contracts to corporate giants. Even worse, President Obama appears to favor a change in federal law that will divert federal small business contracts to firms controlled by some of the nation's wealthiest venture capitalists.


If President Obama does follow in George Bush's footsteps and enact legislation and policies that will divert even more government small business contracts to large businesses and wealthy investors, he will most likely do just what President Bush did and talk about what a valuable resource small businesses are to our nation's economy while he is doing it.


Source: American Small Business League

CONTACT: Christopher Gunn Communications Director of American Small
Business League, +1-707-789-9575, or cgunn@asbl.com


Web Site: http://www.asbl.com/documentlibrary.html
http://www.sba.gov/IG/05-15.pdf

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Agreement on Missile Defense Between Russia and the United States Is on the Horizon

5 Apr 2008 02:04 Africa/Lagos


Agreement on Missile Defense Between Russia and the United States Is on the Horizon

WASHINGTON, April 4, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ --

Riki Ellison, President of the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, (www.missiledfenseadvocacy.org), went on record today with his MDAA membership discussing what an agreement on missile defense between Russia and the United States would mean in terms of stability and meeting the threat posed by Iran. His comments include the following:


"On the eve of Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President George W. Bush's retreat on the coast of the Black Sea at Sochi in Southern Russia this Sunday, we as a nation and a world wait with great anticipation for a collective endorsement of the proposed Missile Defense system to be placed in Europe and a mutual recognition of the threat from Iran by these two Presidents and the nations that they represent.


"This potential announcement of making our world safer would follow a string of international endorsements and acceptance for missile defense and add to the momentum of what has been achieved politically, technically and practically with Missile Defense. The significance of yesterday's 26 nations of NATO's endorsement of the European third site and recognition of the threat is monumental. The unilateral movement yesterday of the Czech Republic to agree to the deployment of a U.S. Missile Defense Radar adds great merit to the commitment and responsibility to help safeguard NATO and Europe from ballistic missile threats. The success of the U.S. Navy and the Missile Defense Agency in February of this year, destroying a toxic satellite from space that posed a risk to human life globally, if not intercepted added to the credibility and usability of missile defense.


"The demonstrated United States testing successes of the various missile defense systems and intercepts including the Japanese this past December propels the international acceptance of missile defense. Iran's continued quest for nuclear technology and proliferation of ballistic missiles to go beyond 1,300 kilometers remains the most ominous driver for the collective international action of missile defense."


"The displayed international resolve on missile defense provides another option than what is available today to confront Iran and those in the future that may choose to use ballistic missiles to threaten human life. To have missile defense in place along with economic sanctions, and diplomatic tools adds to the stability and safety to NATO as well as prevents the use of preemptive military force and war."


Note to media: Riki Ellison is available this weekend to discuss the significance of an agreement on missile defense between Presidents Putin and Bush. He recently visited both Poland and the Czech Republic and has seen where the ground-based interceptors and the radar to support them are located. This is an opportunity to get information prior to a potential announcement that will be heard around the world. Call Mike Terrill at 602 885-1955 to arrange.


Source: MDAA

CONTACT: Mike Terrill of MDAA, +1-602-885-1955


Web site: http://www.missiledefenseadvocacy.org/