36th anniversary of Ronald Reagan firing all the air traffic controllers

God bless Ronald Reagan.

Reagan is the greatest President since Coolidge. It's unbelievable how dominant he was electorally.

He destroyed an incumbent president by 485+ electoral votes and 44 states, destroyed his reelection opponent even worse with 525 electoral votes and 49 out 50 states and was so great and awesome as POTUS that his VP got elected on his coattails with 426 electoral votes and 40 states. And this is when public information like news reports on TV, talk radio and newspapers were finding more ways to be accessible.

We will never see someone so electorally dominant like Ronald Reagan ever again as this country is way too polarized for his success to happen again so he's the forever GOAT as far as elections go.

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I went to church with a guy who was fired. He was in complete denial for a while, blaming everyone but himself. He finally came to grips with it and accepted his own responsibility for his blind allegiance to his union.

It was the right call by Reagan, but the people he fired were generally good, hard-working people devoted to their jobs who eere misled by their union.

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Here he is threatening to fire them 2 days before, and boy did he go through with it. Balls of steel

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8 reasons why Ronald Reagan was the worst president of our lifetime

1. Reagan cut taxes for the Rich, increased taxes on the Middle Class -
Ronald Reagan is loved by conservatives and was loved by big business throughout his presidency and there's a reason for it. When Reagan came into office in January of 1981, the top tax rate was 70%, but when he left office in 1989 the top tax rate was down to only 28%. As Reagan gave the breaks to all his rich friends, there was a lack of revenue coming into the federal government. In order to bring money back into the government, Reagan was forced to raise taxes eleven times throughout his time in office. One example was when he signed into law the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982. Reagan raised taxes seven of the eight years he was in office and the tax increases were felt hardest by the lower and middle class.

2. Tripling the National Debt -
As Reagan cut taxes for the wealthy, the government was left with less money to spend. When Reagan came into office the national debt was $900 billion, by the time he left the national debt had tripled to $2.8 trillion.

3. Iran/Contra -
In 1986, a group of Americans were being held hostage by a terrorist group with ties to Iran. In an attempt to free the hostages, Ronald Reagan secretly sold arms and money to Iran. Much of the money that was received from the trade went to fund the Nicaragua Contra rebels who were in a war with the Sandinista government of Nicaragua. When the scandal broke in the Untied States it became the biggest story in the country, Reagan tried to down play what happened, but never fully recovered...

8. His attack on Unions and the Middle Class - The Republican war on unions and the middle class has been heating up in states like Wisconsin and Ohio, but it has been going on for a long time. Unions are formed to give a united voice to the workers in an attempt to create fairness between the corporations and their employees. On August 3rd, 1981, PATCO (Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization) went on strike in an effort to get better pay and safer working conditions. Two days later, taking the side of business, Ronald Reagan fired 11,345 workers for not returning to work."

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It took a decade to fully retrain the air traffic controller force.

-Unions- are the tide that raises all boats.

"All but forgotten is the fact that our nation's extraordinary prosperity from the end of World War II to the 1970s was in significant part the result of union contracts that, in words the right wing hated Barack Obama for saying in 2008, "spread the wealth around." A broad middle class with spending power to keep the economy moving created a virtuous cycle of low joblessness and high wages.

Between 1966 and 1970, as Gerald Seib pointed out last week in the Wall Street Journal, the United States enjoyed an astonishing 48 straight months in which the unemployment rate was at or below 4 percent. No, the unions didn't do all this by themselves. But they were important co-authors of a social contract that made our country fairer, richer and more productive.

There are many complicated reasons why these arrangements broke down, but I do not see things getting substantially better unless we find ways of increasing the bargaining power of wage-earners -- precisely what Reuther and his fellowship dedicated their lives to doing.

Beth Shulman, a writer, lawyer and union leader who died of cancer this year at the age of 60, called our indifference to those who labor for low wages "The Betrayal of Work," the title of her classic 2003 social portrait of our time. Whatever else they achieve, the unions remind us of the dignity of all who toil, whatever their social position, color or educational attainments. We should miss labor's influence more than we do."

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It is simply amazing how many people are willing to work against their own best interests.

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Ronald Reagan firing all the air traffic controllers

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The day Left/Labor proved to be pussies. If they'd had any balls, they'd have called a general strike and shut down the country.

It doesn't really get much more "Deep State" than Ronald Reagan.

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good, hard-working people devoted to their jobs who eere misled by their union.

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Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

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increased taxes on the Middle Class -

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One example was when he signed into law the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982. Reagan raised taxes seven of the eight years he was in office and the tax increases were felt hardest by the lower and middle class.

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This is a complete throwaway. It doesn't tell you at all how TEFRA raised taxes on the middle class, nor does it tell us how any tax increases were felt hardest by the lower and middle classes.

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His attack on Unions and the Middle Class

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I guess I have to assume that unions are synonymous with the middle class. Yet, I don't see why attacking unions is bad. Unions create inefficiencie, so removing an inefficiency would be a good thing.

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is simply amazing how many people are willing to work against their own best interests.

Its amazing how you think you know what's everyone's best interest.

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The earning power of American workers has been stagnant since 1980. Who won the presidency in 1980?

Reagan was a bum. Besides hooking up all his elitist buddies, he never made a tough decision. He always lied and prevaricated and avoided tough action. Despite the lies people bought off on the time he was fully briefed on what became Iran-Contra. In fact it was his idea to disobey the Arms Export Control Act.

"At least three laws--the Arms Export Control Act, the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act and the 1947 National Security Act--govern U.S. arms sales abroad. The committee said all three may have been violated.

The first two of those laws require that recipients of U.S. weapons may not transfer them to other countries without prior approval of the U.S. government and notification of Congress. The Iran-Contra committees found that President Reagan signed a "finding" authorizing two 1985 shipments of weapons from Israel to Iran only after the fact, in December, 1985.

The Arms Export Control Act was amended in 1977 to forbid arms sales to terrorist nations--a category that included Iran during the 1985 and 1986 arms sales. The act permits the President to waive that requirement if he signs a finding and notifies Congress; the committees said he did neither.

The National Security Act requires a presidential finding and congressional notification when the United States sells arms abroad. Reagan signed a finding in January, 1986, before a series of direct U.S. arms sales to Iran, the committees found, but he did not notify Congress."

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Five of Reagan's operatives including the Secretary of Defense were pardoned by Bush 41 in 1992 to keep them from coming to trial.