Opinion of Lyndon B. Johnson

[AggregateDemand]

Racist
War-Mongering
Socially-conservative
Machiavellian

If that wasn't bad enough, he killed JFK's New Frontier, and he attempted to buy minority voters for the Democratic Party with Great Society programs that were fated to fail from the outset. The United States still hasn't eliminated the socio-economic cancer he left in his wake.

[AggregateDemand]

Too bad thre isn't a tape to prove he actuall said hat and tat that quote isn't just someone claiming h said that to discredit him after he was dead.

Also, he wasn't socially conservative. He was very much in favor of birth control. Also, he wasn't a war monger, he felt going to Vietnam was the only option.

He was against the War in Vietnam by giving bad intelligence about the Gulf of Tonkin incident, and then expanding the US war effort?

[AggregateDemand]

I believe that black people should have equal rights and olds/poors should have medical care. I know that's a controversial set of opinions these days, but they are the reason why I vote FF.

You don't know that LBJ blocked comprehensive civil rights, and only voted for the watered down 1957 bill because he knew he needed to switch sides to become president?

Democrats withheld comprehensive reform until they had acquired the White House. Republicans were the driving force from the beginning.

[AggregateDemand]

"These Negroes, they're getting pretty uppity these days and that's a problem for us since they've got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we've got to do something about this, we've got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference. For if we don't move at all, then their allies will line up against us and there'll be no way of stopping them, we'll lose the filibuster and there'll be no way of putting a brake on all sorts of wild legislation. It'll be Reconstruction all over again."

[AggregateDemand]

Also, if LBJ was a racist, why did he use precious political capital in spearheading not one, but THREE civil rights laws--1964, 1965, and 1968? Why would he have wasted his time as a lame duck in 1968 to the cause of a fair housing bill? Would a committed racist have wasted his energy?

"These Negroes, they're getting pretty uppity these days and that's a problem for us since they've got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we've got to do something about this, we've got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference. For if we don't move at all, then their allies will line up against us and there'll be no way of stopping them, we'll lose the filibuster and there'll be no way of putting a brake on all sorts of wild legislation. It'll be Reconstruction all over again."

LBJ was racist to the core, and he was against Civil Rights 100% until he realized he never be president if he didn't change his tune.

[AggregateDemand]

Yawn.

Again, if this is what makes LBJ a HP, then why is every single president preceding him not a HP?

Those quotes undermine his "accomplishments". Most of his HP status is derived from the Gulf of Tonkin incident he embellished to expand the US war effort, and his ill-conceived social policies that jeopardized the economic security of the middle class by exposing them to global competition.

[AggregateDemand]

Why would you just judge a president on his belief instead of his actions? Even if he was personally a virulent racist (which is debatable), he did more to advance the position of black Americans than arguably any non-Abraham Lincoln president.

He was the Senate majority leader during the 1957 Civil Rights Act. He gutted Eisenhower's bill for the reasons he listed in his quote. Then he claimed Eisenhower's reforms as his own in 1964 because he thought it would expand his political power. He helped black Americans by delaying Civil Rights by 7 years?

The Great Society "welfare" policies were born of paternalistic racism. He believed black Americans couldn't take care of themselves; therefore, the government would keep them out of the system by putting them on a government allowance and government healthcare plan. He was pro-abortion because he knew it was a form of backdoor eugenics, and Democrats basically teamed up with Alan Guttmacher to make sure that contraceptives and abortions were readily available to "low-income" (read: black) Americans. In LBJ's defense, it was soulless Nixon who put Title X through.

Johnson's vision for a Great Society was nothing we would support today, yet people defend his legislation as if it were religious canon. I just wonder how many more years it will take before people come to their senses.

[AggregateDemand]

It's amazing that Nixon and GW Bush will probably get a higher rating than LBJ

It's more amazing that LBJ is probably higher rated than Hoover

[AggregateDemand]

HP on foreign policy
FF on domestic policy

Net FF, but Johnson really doesn't lend himself to this question format.  Also, I always find it amusing how some of the people who hate Johnson the most for Vietnam are quick to rush to Kennedy's defense whenever the subject comes up.

Kennedy didn't lie about the Gulf of Tonkin, and Kennedy didn't undermine the middle class with the Great Society.

The lack of understanding about the Great Society is quite stunning. It essentially took middle class spending, and transferred it to voting demographics that LBJ thought he could buy. LBJ was right, and our country has never recovered from his Machiavellian brinksmanship. We are $17T in debt, trying to bolster the middle class he gutted. Unconscionable.

[AggregateDemand]

By the way, the quote AggDem keeps posting comes from an Air Force One steward who supposedly heard LBJ said it and only reported it thirty years later. No one else has corroborated the quote. It's likely made up.

He gutted 1957 Civil Rights as Senate Majority Leader. The quote is widely circulated and printed in books by respected authors because it seems to offer an explanation, in his unique vernacular, for why he did it.

[AggregateDemand]

The quote originates in the book called "Inside the White House" by Robert Kessler, published in the 90s. It's basically just a collection of gossip and hearsay from staffers (drivers, secretaries, secret service, plane stewards, etc.). There's no other evidence that LBJ ever said that.

Okay, assume the quote is fabricated. LBJ fought Republicans on Civil Rights in 1957 because.......he was interested in racial equality?

The man was racist in his sentiments, political means, political ends, and in apocryphal rumor. Denial by modern day Democrats will never vindicate him.

[AggregateDemand]

The Middle Class destruction is LBJ fault? Give me a brake of baloney!

You can blame Nixon, too, if it makes you happy

[AggregateDemand]

Now, regarding to this baloney, I cannot say that about Nixon but the existence of a Middle Class and a strong Middle Class is, in many ways, a result of government action towards social justice and the reduction of inequalities.

No. The American middle class was created by military spending during WWII, not liberal social justice. Throughout the 50s 60s and 70s, military spending averaged roughly 10% of GDP (compared to 4.5% today) and roughly 55% of all government expenditures (compared to 20% today). Since the military provided education, healthcare, pension, and other benefits; as well as a disciplinary structure, military built the strongest middle class in the world by taxing just 19% of GDP. No middle class has ever reproduced that achievement, besides a brief moment during the dot com bubble.

Eisenhower complained bitterly about the military industrial complex, which isn't necessary bad by itself, but it wasn't until LBJ that DC established a framework for slashing military spending, and transferring the funds into non-investment handouts. LBJ had to dismantle JFK's New Frontier policies to make it happen. Nixon saw the potential of LBJ's new vote buying arrangement so he made expansions. As soon as the Tet Offensive was contained, military spending tumbled. Military spending received a temporary boost during the Reagan admin, but it quickly plummeted to 4% GDP during Clinton's presidency.

Liberal social policy could be responsible for building the most powerful middle class on earth, but politicians have figured out it's easier to make specious economic arguments and then buy votes with social programs. Conservative Republicans were not responsible for defunding the military and transferring the spending to economically ineffective programs. Conservatives and Libertarians are the result of bureaucratic malfeasance around the world.

[AggregateDemand]

If welfare programs are truly inefficient, what difference does it make if they're provided as military benefits, instead?

Because military expenditures for soldiers often make their way into the economy in some productive capacity, and we all benefit. When the military train medics and engineers, like they did for my grandmother and grandfather during WWII, those soldiers are eventually discharged, and the general economy benefits from well-trained civil engineers and medical workers. GI Bill education also improves economic productivity. Even during active duty, soldiers and equipment provide an economic benefit by contributing to global stability, though our Iraq operations have put that goal in jeopardy.

The welfare state does not have the same track record, neither does the FICA retirement state. The extraordinary tax rates inherent to the welfare system keep people trapped in poverty. Transfer payments, SNAP, Medicaid, etc often produce nothing other than prolonged poverty. Social Security payments and Medicare go to people who've dropped out of the labor force, though retirees still produce some imputed economic activity.

I'm not saying we should turn into heartless technocrats, but we are the opposite of heartless technocrats at the moment. We are killing ourselves with bad charity because the optics are good for politicians.....as long as you ignore the national debt.

[AggregateDemand]

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

Going by your posts, you seem to be under the impression - and, correct me if I'm wrong - that we are still living in the New Deal era.  This is certainly not the case.

While it is true that Social Security, welfare, etc. live on, the New Deal era came to an end around the mid-70s with the rise of corporate special interests.  (It was in 1975 that the SUN-PAC decision legalized corporate PACs, the lobbyist organizations that bribe Congress today.)  The number of PACs exploded ten years after that.  Ever since the Carter administration, lobbyists have enjoyed a number of victories on Capitol Hill from deregulation, capital gains tax cuts, Social Security tax increases, and they even persuaded Congress to impose a tax on unemployment benefits.

Keep in mind that much of our domestic spending goes to middle-class entitlement programs like student loans, school lunches, job training, and Medicaid.  Medicaid, by the way, is the largest item of those four, and most of Medicaid represents profits for hospitals and doctors.  It should not be described as an anti-poverty program.

If you want to discuss socio-economics, you need to make it less obvious that you've never read a federal budget. We spend $1.7T on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Keep in mind that 60% of present Medicaid outlays go to senior citizens for LTC and LTCI premiums. We spend another $400B on Welfare/Unemployment (includes SNAP) and $220B on interest to finance the explosion of entitlement spending. The budget is about 65% entitlement spending for the elderly and poor, and 35% on productivity spending for the middle class. In the 1960s, the formula was reversed.

Education, by comparison, is a paltry $85B budget. Transportation is an anemic $90B, DOJ is around $30B, agricultural development is just $35B, and government administration is only about $30B.

Are our problems becoming more evident? We've turned the entire diet into calories from fat. We have heart disease.

[AggregateDemand]

Are you intentionally ignoring parts of my post?  That's been happening a lot to me today.

12% of the 2012 budget went toward safety net programs, which provide aid (other than health insurance or Social Security benefits) to families in poverty.  We spend a whopping 7% on federal retirees and veterans.  Stop confusing entitlements with anti-poverty programs.

"Entitlements" is just shorthand for social spending distributed directly to individual tax payers. Nothing has been confused on my end.

If you want me to address all of your post, I will. As appealing as it might be to think that the world revolves around PAC regulations, it doesn't. Macroeconomic policy plays a central role, and we learned that an economic model called the Phillips Curve functions differently than we anticipated, especially with fiat currency. Improper use of the Phillips Curve model led, in part, to stagflation. The rise of monetarism, neoliberalism, neoclassicism, and supply-side economics were the real driving force behind the Reagan Revolution (a revolution Goldwater strated 16 years earlier, to build on JFK's New Frontier). Despite much pomp and circumstance from Republicans and Democrats, the federal spending trends have not changed.

[AggregateDemand]

But you're misrepresenting the disparities between Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid/CHIP and safety net programs.  You cannot include middle-class entitlements in figures designed to discredit the War on Poverty.  I already described how our military expenditures are not being used to spur growth and linked you to a study proving that domestic spending creates more jobs, which is entirely contrary to your premise.

If I were trying to disparage the War on Poverty, I'd point out the high marginal tax rates on the poor, and the paternalistic futility of expanding non-cash benefits, other than healthcare perhaps. I'd point out that the feds have let senior citizens raid Medicaid. I wouldn't bother trying to misrepresent funding.

My post was about LBJ's Great Society, which started dismantling the military (the middle class entitlement of the day) to build Medicaid, Medicare, Welfare, Food Stamps, and HUD. Over time, Great Society programs have expanded so rapidly that they've crowded out proper investment and productivity spending for the middle class. The negative-feedback cycle created by the Great Society breeds poverty, and we've been deficit spending since the 80s to counteract the lack of middle class investment. Great Society has also eliminated class mobility for people born into poverty.

GS looks good on paper, and that's why Nixon tried to steal it for Republicans, which gave him a landslide victory in 1972. Unfortunately, the underlying economics behind the Great Society are quite grotesque. Most people don't understand how bad the problem really is.

[AggregateDemand]

What disgusting results. Half the forum is literally just fine with killing millions of people, so long as they get health care out of it when they turn 65.

Welcome to the US. Handouts and hand grenades.

[AggregateDemand]

Even worse, a large chunk of HP voters are probably more upset over the latter.

Usual caveats about reading the human soul aside, I think that everyone who has held the White House since Nixon and LBJ has, at some level, at least been attempting to do good. Not those two. They're terrifying.

Why? If a dietician puts you on a strict diet of birthday cake and liquor, he doesn't deserve to be canonized. If he had good intentions and he was pioneering something new, perhaps his incompetence could be forgiven, but LBJ was not without economic data nor did he have good intentions.

[AggregateDemand]

For God's sake man, is making sure the elderly and poor have health insurance such a terrible thing?

Is it terrible to feed your child so much cake that he becomes a morbidly-obese diabetic?

This is why Democrats cannot be trusted. They'll pat themselves on the back for placing tax burden on the middle class, putting them out of work, while simultaneously spending 50% more than any other nation to "help" seniors live 3-4 years less than in other developed nations.

Yes. It's genuinely terrible and an embarrassment to our nation. That's why Obama tried backdoor Medicare reform with the first ACA bill, which caused AARP to unleash the hell hounds to protect their pile of pork. More recently, Obama is trying to skirt Congress by changing the enforcement regulations for Social Security deferment. Our entitlements are genuinely terrible, and that's just FICA.

[AggregateDemand]

And what would you replace them with? How would we care for the elderly and poor?

Caring for the elderly and poor is a talking point for uninformed voters with a proclivity for existential crisis. We have plenty of tax revenue. The only way we could possibly endanger their pensions, healthcare, and income security is to do what we've been doing for the last 50 years--tax the middle class heavily, spend profligately on ineffective entitlements, and then stimulate the economy until housing, healthcare, and education become unaffordable. If the middle class falls apart, seniors and poor have no one to pay their bills.

We could see improvement by replacing our entitlements with just about anything, and that's practically what WTO, IMF, OECD, G20, etc are suggesting. Do something. Anything. Doesn't matter.