Ronald Reagan in American Conspiracies
On Government Reform:
OpEd: Reagan staff made a deal for 1981 Iran hostage release
The Incident:
On the same day that Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as president, January 20, 1981, Iran released the American hostages it had been holding in our embassy there for 444 days.
The Official Word:
The timing was coincidental.
My Take:
Reagan's people had cut a deal with Iran to keep the hostages beyond the presidential election, to ensure that President Carter's negotiations with Iran failed and that he lost to Reagan.
Source: American Conspiracies, by Jesse Ventura, p.104
Mar 9, 2010
On Budget & Economy:
OpEd: Initiated bankers' free-for-all, at bankers' request
The new era of deregulation resulted in a boom time for the rich getting richer. Reagan opened wide the door for companies to gamble with taxpayers' money. In 1999, the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed, and a real free-for-all began. It was passed in
1993 to keep separate the low-risk commercial banks where we put our deposits, and the brokerage banks that engage in high-risk speculative investments. This worked just fine for more than 50 years. During the Reagan years, the lobbyists for the finance,
insurance, and real estate outfits started pushing to dump the law; then the rules of the game changed totally. Mergers and commercial/investment partnerships skyrocketed. Now banks could start taking multiple home mortgage loans and turning them
into securities to trade on Wall Street. They could all gamble like crazy, and with very little regulation.How insane was it to destroy one of the main protection devices created out of the pain of the Great Depression.
Source: American Conspiracies, by Jesse Ventura, p.169
Mar 8, 2010
On Drugs:
OpEd: supporting Contras supported drug-trade profits
The 1979 Sandinista revolution that overthrew Anastasio Somoza, one of our favorite Latin Dictators, was not looked upon fondly by Ronnie and his friends. He called the counterrevolutionary Contras "freedom fighters," and compared them to
America's founding fathers. In his attempt to get Congress to approve aid for the Contras, Reagan accused the Sandinista government of drug trafficking. After his administration tried to mine the Nicaraguan harbors and got a hand-slap from
Congress, it turned to secretly selling missiles to Iran and using the payments--along with profits from running drugs--to keep right on funding the Contras. 50,000 lost lives later, the World Court would order the U.S. to "cease and to refrain" from
unlawful use of force against Nicaragua and pay reparations. (We refused to comply.)The fact is, with most of the cocaine that flooded the country in the Eighties, almost every major drug network was using the Contras operations in some fashion.
Source: American Conspiracies, by Jesse Ventura, p.115
Mar 8, 2010
Page last updated: Dec 12, 2018