News, Etc.

With all of the talk about Ronald Reagan's presidency now that his centennial is this month, it might be important to look at the record:

As the media repackages history to serve the purposes of the ruling elite, no mention is made of the fact that the 1980s was the decade that witnessed the most bitter episodes of class struggle in the United States since the 1940s. The actions taken by the Reagan administration during its first year in office—the slashing of federal funding for vital social programs and the firing of nearly 12,000 air traffic controllers who went out on strike in August 1981—outraged millions of workers. The social philosophy of the new administration found its most poignant expression in the redefinition of ketchup as a vegetable in order to justify the cutting of federal funds for school lunch programs. In September 1981, nearly three quarters of a million workers demonstrated in Washington to protest budget cuts and the destruction of PATCO, the union of the air traffic controllers. An even larger demonstration took place in Washington in 1983. Virtually every industry was shaken by bitter and often violent strikes as workers fought back against the class-war policies of the Reagan administration.

But that history has no place in the ongoing eulogies to the dead president. These tributes to Reagan are, in essence, a celebration of the services he rendered to the rich. The overriding goal of his administration was the removal of all legal restraints on the accumulation of personal wealth. The motto of the Reagan administration, like that of the notoriously corrupt government of King Louis-Philippe in 19th century France, was “Enrich yourself.” The slashing of the tax rate for the wealthy—from 70 percent to 28 percent—earned for the president the boundless affection of the grateful rich. This massive cut in taxes laid the foundations for the environment of social debauchery and orgiastic celebration of wealth that characterized the 1980s. It was the decade of Michael Milken, Ivan Boesky, Donald Trump (who is now making a comeback), and, of course, the fictional Gordon Gekko, who so famously proclaimed, “Greed is good!”

Nobody writes obituaries quite like WSWS. You're really better off dead.
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The game itself was far, far better than the halftime show.

At least they didn't perform "My Humps."