Ronald Reagan, Enemy of the American Worker

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.truth-out.org/ronald-reagan-enemy-american-worker67348

The 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan's birth is coming up in February, and before the inevitable gushing over what a wonderful leader he was begins, let me get in a few words about what sort of a leader he really was.

Ronald Reagan was, above all, one of the most viciously anti-labor presidents in American history, one of the worst enemies the country's working people ever faced.

Republican presidents never have had much regard for unions, but until Reagan, no Republican president had dared challenge the firm legal standing labor gained through Democratic president Franklin D. Roosevelt in the mid-1930's.

Reagan's Republican predecessors treated union leaders much as they treated Democratic members of Congress - at times, as adversaries to be fought with, and, at others, as people to be bargained with. Reagan, however, engaged in precious little bargaining. He waged almost continuous war against organized labor and the country's workers from the time he assumed office in 1980 until leaving the presidency in 1988.

More at the link --

[bvar22]

1. K&R

Every president since Reagan has been an enemy to the American Worker.

[Brickbat]

2. I've seen very little won for American workers through politics in recent years.

Labor is going to need to stand up for itself and not rely on others for awhile, I think.

[FreakinDJ]

3. The Drooling at the Mouth Alzheimer's President

that didn't have a clue of what was going on in this country

[pampango]

4. Breaking unions and gutting progressive taxes that supported the safety net.

"In April 1942, just a few months after Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt asked Congress to enact a 100 percent top federal income tax rate, in effect a "maximum wage." No individual, FDR told lawmakers, should be taking home, after taxes, over $25,000 - the equivalent of about $335,000 today."

"Not until 1964 did that top rate start dipping, down to 70 percent. In 1981, the newly elected President Ronald Reagan would make gutting that 70 percent rate his first major White House priority. By 1986, after two Reagan tax cuts, the top rate on the top income bracket had shrunk to a mere 28 percent."

"In the middle decades of the 20th century, the steeply graduated progressive income tax that actor Ronald Reagan so detested operated marvelously well as just that sort of check. America's super rich - our top tenth of 1 percent - saw their share of the nation's income drop precipitously in those years, from nearly 12 percent before the Great Depression to under 3 percent by the 1970s. The top 0.1 percent share in 2007, right before the Great Recession? Over 12 percent. The rich, in other words, have come all the way back - and more."

http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=8864

[Dawson Leery]

5. K/R

[no_hypocrisy]

6. That's bad enough. What's worse is he was the president of a powerful union,

The Screen Actors' Guild, in the Forties into the Fifties. He represented workers and their rights against management.

I can't stand a sell-out and a whore for money and power.

[Enthusiast]

7. K&R

Reagan was actually the enemy of all America, but especially the worker. His policies set into motion the horrible economy we face now.