Reagan's biggest legacy

[ringmastery]

Of course the republican hack who wrote this thinks it's all great. We know better.

In 1981, when the nation's air-traffic controllers threatened to do what the law forbade them to do—strike—Reagan warned that if they did they would be fired. When they struck in August, Reagan announced that the strikers would be terminated in two days. By firing the controllers, Reagan, the only union man—he had been head of the Screen Actors Guild—ever to be president, destroyed a union, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO). This has often, and not incorrectly, been called a defining episode of the Reagan presidency because it notified foreign leaders, not least those of the Soviet Union, that he said what he meant and meant what he said.

But now, more than two astonishing decades on, it also is reasonable to conclude that Reagan's fracas with the controllers had huge economic consequences, domestic and foreign. It altered basic attitudes about relations between business and labor in ways that quickly redounded to the benefit of the nation, and not least the benefit of American workers. It produced a cultural shift, a new sense of what can be appropriate in business management: layoffs can be justifiable even when a company is profitable, if the layoffs will improve productivity and profitability. Within a few years, both AT&T and Procter Gamble, although quite profitable at the time, implemented large layoffs, without arousing significant protests.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5146340/site/newsweek/

[PROGRESSIVE1]

1. Newsweek = Newsmax

That's right, the two are no different.

:puke:

[pollock]

2. Reagan wanted to let unions know

that management could do anything to ruin the life of working America; most people in the country were now expendable.

[buycitgo]

3. Reagan's greatest legacy......Bush

via bringing the Bernays/Goebbels propaganda model into the 21st century

Deaver and his acolytes have brought us the current junta

read the book, after these snips:

"The whole thing was PR. This was a PR outfit that became President and took over the country. And to the degree then to which the Constitution forced them to do things like make a budget, run foreign policy and all that, they sort of did. But their first, last, and overarching activity was public relations."

Leslie Janka, a deputy White House press secretary under Reagan

......

James Baker, White House chief of staff during the first term and Secretary of the Treasury during the second, told me, "There were days and times and events we might have some complaint about, on balance and generally speaking, I don't think we had anything to complain about in terms of first-term press coverage. "

David Gergen, former White House director of communications, confirmed shortly after leaving the administration in January 1984 that President Reagan and most of his advisers had come to believe that the basic goal of their approach to the news media-"to correct the imbalance of power with the press so that the White House will once again achieve a 'margin of safety' "- had finally been attained.

Most expansive of all was Michael Deaver, the first-term deputy chief of staff and a virtual surrogate son to the Reagans. Deaver wrote in his memoirs that up until the Iran-contra scandal broke, "Ronald Reagan enjoyed the most generous treatment by the press of any President in the postwar era. He knew it, and liked the distinction."

wonder why Hertsgaard isn't on any of these hagio-circuses
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Ronald_Reagan/On_Bended_Knee.html

[Tuttle]

4. I've always thought it was trashing "Fairness in Broadcasting"

E.G.: it used to be the law of the land that the people owned the airwaves and any opinion could be expressed but equal time for differing opinions were required: Reagan ended that and opened the door for Bushbots like Hannity, Rush and O'Reilly.

Anyone agree with me?

Tut-tut

[wtmusic]

5. Out to lunch

PATCO's members were forbidden to strike, and they did anyway. They got fired. That the PATCO strike "altered basic attitudes about relations between business and labor" is a wholly fictitious invention of the writer.

Massive layoffs were common throughout the seventies.