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... $ 50 million for Paramount's pre - 1948 library of films and bought them for Mca got his money back in about two years, and now they own all those pictures (142 - 143). Older actors lost thousands and thousands of dollars when the pre- 1960 pictures were sacrificed. It explains why so many actors, many of them legendary stars, who had made so many film found themselves in such poverty in their later years. Now when we hear that well-known actors from the 20 s, 30 s, 40 s and 50 s are suffering financially or, in fact dying impoverished, we dont have to wonder any more about what they did with all the money that they earned. Reagan gave it away. As a result of the contract, charges of a conflict of interest in Reagan's double role as actor-producer became an issue.
Reagan resigned as president of SAG soon after the strike and became a partner in a joint production with MCA and their television production company Revue Productions. Many actors felt that Reagan was a conservative, management sweetheart union president who ran SAG like a country club instead of a labor union. Attorney General Robert Kennedy began a concentrated probe into MCAs business affairs. The government had evidence that MCA had engaged numerous civil and criminal violations and empanel led a federal grand jury to hear the specific charges, which included restraint of trade, conspiracy with SAG to monopolize talent and film program productions, extortion, discrimination, blacklisting, and the use of predatory business practices. When Reagan was called to testify, he had a loss of memory. Soon after, his federal income tax records were subpoenaed for the years following the MCA-SAG blanket waiver.
In the middle of the investigation, MCA purchased Universal Pictures and its parent company, Decca Records. Government anti-trust attorneys interceded and MCA was forced to choose either to be a talent agency or a production company. MCAs production business generated ten times more money than the talent agency so the decision was an easy one. MCA dissolved its talent agency. MCAs television lineup for the 1962 - 63 season included such shows as Wagon Train, Leave It To Beaver, Mc Hales Navy, Alcoa Theater, Its a Mans World, Laramie, The Jack Benny Show and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, and accounted for eleven hours of prime-time network programming.
As MCA Universal Studios it would go on to become one of the largest motion picture studios in the United States with offices in major cities all over the world. They also own book and music publishing companies, a major record company, transportation systems, home video marketing, recreation services, a savings and loan company, merchandising, cable television and theme parks in California and Florida. In 1962, MCAs Jules Stein and Taft Schreiber convinced Reagan to officially switch political parties. He increased his party activity and became the conservative hope for the future when he delivered his network television address in support of Goldwater in 1964.
In 1965, MCA hired Reagan to host U. S. Borax Companys Death Valley Days. That same year, MCAs Stein and Schreiber created the Friends of Reagan Committee and launched his career in electoral politics.
During this period, MCAs third wheel, Lew Wasserman made friends among the Democrats. He became a close friend of Lyndon Johnson and a key fundraiser for the Democratic Party. Published reports had President Johnson offering, and Wasserman rejecting, the cabinet position of Secretary of Commerce. Wasserman would go on to support Jimmy Carter in 1976, but not in 1980 against Reagan.
In 1966, Reagan challenged incumbent California Governor Pat Brown who was seeking a third term in office. Brown was forced to face Democratic primary opposition from Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty, a close friend of Conservative Republican Henry Salvatori. After losing the Democratic Party nomination, Yorty endorsed Reagan. Reagan defeated Brown and was elected Governor with 57 % of the vote by running on a tough law and order platform. He accused Brown and the Democrats of being soft on crime and focused on street crime and the student demonstrations at the University of California at Berkley.
The people of California had elected a man Governor who had been a B-Movie actor; a man without a single days experience in government had been placed in the highest office of the biggest state in the nation. In 1968, Governor Ronald Wilson Reagan, the conservative heir apparent challenged Richard Nixon for the Republican presidential nomination. Reagan lost when Nixon initiated his southern strategy by promising southern delegations that he would not run an administration that would not force federal will on the states, that he opposed school busing and the federal government intervening in local school board affairs, and further that he would appoint strict constitutionalists to the Supreme Court. Reagan returned to California and won re-election in 1970 by defeating the Democratic Speaker of the California Assembly, Jesse Unruh. Unruh, like former Governor Brown, had to defeat Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty in the Democratic primary. At the 1972 Republican Convention in Miami, Conservatives won adoption of new procedures for selecting national convention delegates that was especially beneficial to small southern and western states.
The reallocation formula adopted would expand the 1976 convention to more than 2, 000 delegates, compared with 1, 348 who came to the 1972 convention. Reagan and the right-wing conservatives responded to the changes in the United States by preaching that Americans had turned away from God. They offered as evidence the Supreme Court decisions to ban school prayer and legalize abortion, the rise of divorce, and the challenges to authority posed by civil rights, womens rights and anti-war protests. Reagan and the new conservative right would save America by returning her to a more patriotic style required of the Cold War era with a ban on abortion, a constitutional amendment to reinstate school prayer, a military build-up to recapture and ensure the nations strategic dominance. Through these reforms a Christian nation will re-emerge. The social movements by women, African-Americans, students and anti-war activists reached their height in the 1970 s.
Legislation and laws were passed that offered equal rights opportunities, abortion rights. In the America of the 1970 s it was shameful to be racists or anti-Semitic, but there was no shame attached to being sexist or homophobic. As a result, the campaign for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), abortion rights, and the second wave of feminism became the critical battleground for those who oppose the changing role and status of women. The ERA guarantees economic opportunities for women; abortion rights give her control over her body. The religious right and the secular right were and are opposed to these issues because they prefer a womans place to be in the family kitchen and it is best if she is bare foot and pregnant. They want a woman to be passively under her husbands domain and rule.
In 1972, The Equal Employment Opportunity Act and Title IX of the Education Amendments Act outlawing sex discrimination in most educational institutions were passed. The U. S. Congress also passed the Equal Rights Amendment and sent it to the states for ratification In 1973, the U.
S. Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade and legalized abortion through the first trimester of pregnancy. In response, conservatives created Stop E.
R. A and the National Right to Life Committee. Conservatives also held the first Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D. C. , and established the Heritage Foundation think tank.
Howard Phillips, a Republican National Committee staff member founded the Conservative Caucus and visited all 435 congressional districts to get support. They seized on these issues and used them to organize and build political influence and power. They lied to people about the real meaning and intent of the issues. They organized around anti-feminism and they spread fear and hatred, and they raised a lot of money.
The ERA was used as the catalyst to build their organization. The new conservative right formed a calculated and unholy alliance with Phyllis Schlafly and tied abortion rights, womens rights, gay rights and the destruction of the family to the ERA ratification campaign. In 1975, California conservatives Holmes Tuttle, Henry Salvatori, William French Smith, Jules Stein and a few others created the Citizens for Reagan Committee. They wanted Reagan to challenge President Gerald Ford, a fellow Republican. They thought that Ford was the Eastern-wing candidate, typifying business as usual in Washington. Reagan lost the nomination to Ford on the first ballot at the 1976 convention.
In 1976 Georgia Governor and pro-ERA candidate Jimmy Carter won the Democratic nomination and defeated Ford in the general election. During the campaign Carter talked about the fact that he was a born again Christian and the support of the Christian and evangelical community was noted with great interest by Republican Conservatives, most notably Howard Phillips, Richard Viguerie and Paul Weyrich. During the two-year period from 1977 to 1979, at the height of the Womens Rights Movement and efforts to ratify the ERA, conservative Christian organization sprang up around the country to fight the gains being made by and for womens rights. James Dobson founded Focus on the Family, Weyrich created the Free Congress Foundation and launched the Moral Majority, and Beverly LaHaye formed Concern Women for America to fight ratification. The Conservative Caucus gave active support to Schlafly's Stop ERA campaign that included money and mass mailings to conservatives in unratified states. Schlafly addressed Caucus meetings and was told by Howard Phillips to stress the importance of joining together to win the big important battles.
As a result, lobbyists of state conservative organizations served as chief organizers of anti-ERA lobbying in the unratified states. In 1979, Ed Matter of the Religious Roundtable urged Paul Weyrich and Phillips to engineer the Moral Majority and to draft the Rev. Jerry Falwell to front what would be the first organization to build a mass following for conservative religious politics. In 1980 traditionally Democratic fundamentalists and religious right leaders met in Texas and agreed to support candidacy of Ronald Reagan, calling themselves Christians for Reagan. 42 % of the delegates to the Republican National Convention identified themselves as evangelicals or born-again Christians, mostly from the Moral Majority and the Christians for Reagan. Candidate Reagan renounced his previous support of the ERA and the Republican Platform Committee took out a plank supporting ratification and passed a pro-life platform plank. Reagan told the Religious Right, You do not have to support me because I support you and he called abortion murder.
Reagan campaigned throughout the country telling people, I believe this nation hungers for a spiritual revival; hungers once again to see honor placed about political expediency; to see government once again the protector of our liberties, not the distributor of gifts and privileges. Government should uphold and not undermine those institutions, which are custodians of the very values upon which civilization is founded religion, education, and above all, the family. Government cannot be clergyman, teacher, and parent. It is our servant, beholden to us I believe that you and I together can keep this rendezvous with destiny (Model 294). The energized base that Reagan brought into the campaign, coupled with foreign policy problems; especially the Iranian hostage situation and energy concerns served him well.
There has been a lot of speculation about the involvement of Reagan campaign operatives sabotaging President Carters efforts to gain release of the hostages but nothing provable in court surfaced. It all proved to be too much for the incumbent president. Reagan defeated Carter and won the presidency. Sixteen years after Goldwaters defeat, the people of the United States, like the people of California before them, elected a former B-movie actor to the highest office in the land. With Reagan's election, the right stepped up its efforts to defeat ERA and to try and turn back Roe v. Wade.
They were successful in preventing ratification of the Amendment in the last three states, but did not overturn Roe v. Wade. At the end of the Reagan presidency, in spite of all the presidential words of support, in spite of visits to the White House, in spite of all the demonstrations and violence, abortion rights were still legal. Reagan, in the end, had only been able to give lip service to the new religious right. A great many people continue to hold Ronald Reagan and his presidency in high regard. He is warmly referred to as the Gipper and his Alzheimers condition prevents serious scrutiny of his record.
For others of us, his presidency was a nightmare. We believe that under Reagan, our country was launched into a 12 -year state of civil war. There were no bombs or bullets, but rather a war for our minds, our freedoms and our future. It was waged by the radical religious and secular right conservatives and fronted by the President of the United States against all Americans. It was a war against equality and choice. It was a war about retreat, about intolerance, and about tearing down the wall between the church and state.
The war continues today without the Gipper. It is waged daily on the radio airwaves by right wing talk show hosts who spread distortions and hate. It is waged in our courts by those who would overturn hard-won protections and freedoms. It is waged in our neighborhoods, mostly in the school board elections by those who would teach our children their narrow and inflexible beliefs. This is truly a struggle for the soul of America and it is Reagan's lasting legacy for many of us.
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Research essay sample on Equal Rights Amendment Ronald Reagan
