Treason

[HughBeaumont]

24. Well, hey, it's not like they didn't try before . . .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Business_Plot

Learning their lessons that deliberate takeover doesn't work, the financiers then relied on working a glacial inside game of Washington . . . and then purchasing the media. Starting with these two jokers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powell_memo#Powell_Memorandum

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Weyrich

And then instituting THIS asshole as Treasury Secretary and Chief of Staff to start the Wealth Tax Slash:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Regan

Oh, and did I mention THIS little bill, which relaxed thrift limits and allowed financial piracy to run rampant in the 1980s (When Reagan signed it, he infamously said "all in all, I think we hit the jackpot&quot ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garn_-_St_Germain_Depository_Institutions_Act

Of course, Don Regan's "ahem" . . . "Boss", didn't help matters much with this previous action:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PATCO_strike#August_1981_strike

Michael Moore said that Reagan's firing of the PATCO strikers was the beginning of "America's downward slide", and the end of comfortable union jobs, with a middle-class salary, raises, and pensions. Moore stated that wages have remained stagnant for 30 years. He also blamed the AFL-CIO for telling their members to cross the PATCO picket lines.[12]

President Reagan's director of the United States Office of Personnel Management at the time, Donald J. Devine, argued:

"When the president said no...American business leaders were given a lesson in managerial leadership that they could not and did not ignore. Many private sector executives have told me that they were able to cut the fat from their organizations and adopt more competitive work practices because of what the government did in those days. I would not be surprised if these unseen effects of this private sector shakeout under the inspiration of the president were as profound in influencing the recovery that occurred as the formal economic and fiscal programs."

In a review of Joseph McCartin's book 2011, Collision Course: Ronald Reagan, The Air Traffic Controllers, and the Strike that Changed America in Review 31, Richard Sharpe claimed Reagan was "laying down a marker" for his presidency: "The strikers were often working class men and women who had achieved suburban middle class lives as air traffic controllers without having gone to college. Many were veterans of the US armed forces where they had learned their skills; their union had backed Reagan in his election campaign. Nevertheless, Reagan refused to back down. Several strikers were jailed; the union was fined and eventually made bankrupt. Only about 800 got their jobs back when Clinton lifted the ban on rehiring those who had struck. Many of the strikers were forced into poverty as a result of being blacklisted for employment."