Reply #13: I am sick and tired of worrying about how my comments on DU

[ikojo]

will play in Freeperville. I am not going to change a freeper's mind (assuming a freeper HAS a mind) and they are not going to change mine. I have NEVER supported a pug.

I shed no tears for the passing of an evil man who did much to exacerbate the disparity in wealth in the United States. He virtually destroyed the union movement in the US when he fired the PATCO workers.

http://www.geocities.com/kidhistory/reagan/rp68x79.htm

UNION FOLKS: Remember PATCO

By early summer, Reagan's media imagery had moved from "strong" to "cracking," months earlier than Carter's, and he had to admit at his June 16, 1981 press conference that "we are seeing the first beginning cracks"-ostensibly in the Soviet empire, but really in his own image. Something would have to be done soon to assure the people that he was, indeed, determined and ruthless enough to carry out the internal sacrifice. . . and, if necessary, the external sacrifice as well. This "something" took the form of two carefully-staged actions designed to convince the country that he could carry out sacrifices. These actions were (1) the destruction of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO), and (2) the shooting down of two Libyan jets.

The firing of the PATCO workers, termed "an ambush" by one neutral observer,(4) was set up by Reagan's letter of October 20, 1980 to Robert Poli, head of PATCO, promising him, in return for his election support, that he would back PAT-CO's demands and "will take whatever steps necessary . . . to adjust staff levels and work days commensurate with achieving a maximum degree of public safety." In the next six months, Reagan's negotiators encouraged PATCO to believe that they were open to union demands and that a strike could be part of the bargaining process, only then to have Reagan summarily dismiss the 12,000 PATCO members and bankrupt the union because they went out on strike.