[autokad]

"Reaganism made authorities fundamentally powerless"

This topic is being abused by the most liberal companies in the most liberal cities. i get the feeling its mostly ignored and not prosecuted (like illegal immigration) is because they feel its better for everyone. I am not taking a stance on whether that is correct, but don't for one second blame that on Reaganism.

[toyg]

Reagan dismantled any ideological supremacy of the public good over private money, basically creating the "socially liberal but fiscally conservative" mantra that is now so popular. This creates a natural imbalance where money trumps everything else; at that point, big money is fundamentally unassailable by regulation, and all efforts to the contrary are little more than cosmetic - be it in immigration, finance or anything else. The Clintons are fundamentally Reagan Democrats, for example. This goes well beyond immigration (a topic that, at the time, wasn't really mainstream), it's an issue with the fundamental impossibility of public regulation of private companies' affairs when the money involved is beyond certain thresholds.