November 1981: Cats Out Of Bags

A few bits of business during one month in the first Reagan administration, from Paul Slansky's The Clothes Have No Emperor—

11/10 President Reagan elicits hoots of laughter at his fifth press conference when he says of his constantly feuding aides, "There is no bickering or backstabbing going on. We're a very happy group."

As he leaves, Lesley Stahl holds up a copy of the just-out Atlantic Monthly featuring William Greider's article "The Education of David Stockman," in which the chatty Budget Director:

• Admits, "None of us really understands what's going on with all these numbers"
• Acknowledges that supply-side economics "was always a Trojan horse to bring down the top rate"
• Says of the Reagan tax bill, "Do you realize the greed that came to the forefront? The hogs were really feeding."

Is the President aware of this article? He is not.

11/12 "My visit to the Oval Office for lunch with the President was more in the nature of a visit to the woodshed after supper.... He was not happy about the way this has developed—and properly so."
—David Stockman describing his crow-eating lunch with President Reagan, who blames the whole flap on the media

11/13 "This house belongs to all Americans, and I want it to be something of which they can be proud."
—Nancy Reagan showing off her $1 million White House redecoration—funded by tax-deductible donations—to Architectural Digest, which is then forbidden to release any of its photos to the general news media

11/18 President Reagan receives the annual White House turkey, which upstages him by squawking and flapping its wings madly. Not to be outdone , the President recalls a Thanksgiving long ago: he was carving a turkey, noticed what seemed to be blood oozing from it, assumed the bird was undercooked then realized he had sliced open his thumb. Everyone laughs.

11/23 President Reagan vetoes a stopgap spending bill, thus forcing the federal government—for the first time in history—to temporarily shut down. Says House Speaker Tip O'Neill, "He knows less about the budget than any president in my lifetime. He can't even carry on a conversation about the budget. It's an absolute and utter disgrace."

Class-War Zones

Then—Washington, DC, 1932: Bonus Army marchers' shacks burn after attack by military.

October 25, 2011: violent pre-dawn police raid on Occupy Oakland camp.
photo: Jay Finneburgh/Reuters
caption: Occupy Oakland protester Scott Olsen, a former U.S. Marine and Iraq war veteran, is carried away after being injured during a demonstration in Oakland, California October 25, 2011.
Bag News Notes

This was a vet who had survived two tours in Iraq that sustained head injury from a police projectile. (Scott Olsen's condition has since been upgraded, from "critical" to "fair.")

A Majority Report listener called the 26th, to share her own experience—

"Woman arrested in OccupyOakland: tear gas came first, cop withheld medicine."

Medicine to treat her MS, that is.

Interesting that a major rationale for breaking up the encampment was concern over "sanitation": this slide show reveals the debris created by police on the site, which occupiers had been maintaining by their own organizational effort.

New arrests around the country, this weekend.

And weather happens: NYC occupiers camp out in snow, after having their power generators confiscated.

No matter how things play out with occupations themselves, the movement has been brilliant in forcing attention—and in highlighting the 99 Percent theme.

Majority Report has been invaluable at covering events, with Sam Seder's trips to Zuccotti Park, reports from listeners, and daily interviews. Weeks ago Sam's take was that this is a real turning point: a movement where participants' sense of having nothing to lose is so strong that they would commit to living outdoors, without basics of survival.

And the ingenuity with which the movement has developed strategies outside the official media is something Sam continues to cover extensively. And spotlighting the creativity of responses to the occupations' themes, have been interviews like one with "Fake Fox News Guy," artist Chris Cobb.

The word has been getting out, to more and more of the 99 Percent.

And there was a stunning performance in Congress.

Not by Congress—or it's execrable Super Committee.

But hearings before the latter were interrupted by a citizen, calmly and brilliantly speaking truth.

1983—October; Surprise?

Quotes from Paul Slansky, The Clothes Have No Emperor—

10/19 [press conference question] ... what about the safety of the US Marines in Beirut?

"We're looking at everything that can be done to try and make their position safer," [Reagan] says. "We're not sitting idly by."

10/23 A truck bomb at the US barracks in Beirut kills 241 Marines.

10/25 Claiming that US medical students there are in grave danger, President Reagan diverts attention from the Beirut fiasco by launching an invasion of Grenada. Lest there be any doubt about presidential involvement in this decision, photographs are released showing a pajama-clad Reagan—up at 5:15 A.M.!—being briefed on the situation.

Curiously, reporters are prevented from covering the event.

10/26 American medical students from Grenada kiss the tarmac upon landing in South Carolina. Scoffs school bursar Gary Solin, "Our safety was never in danger. We were used by this government as an excuse to invade Grenada." President Reagan says US troops "got there just in time" to prevent a Cuban takeover.

A Testimonial

Well, well: in the news today, someone was honored for an anniversary.

Tony and the gang should have adjourned somewhere appropriate; for example, the Palermo Club—


—for a fitting testimonial.

A Promise

Occupying Wall Street: not only for hippies, and only just beginning—

New York MTA worker; more photos here.

Sales Job

In Rebooting the American Dream Thom Hartmann has a chapter about our lack of universal health, examined in the context of Medicare's creation in 1965.

Based on this 1995 account by Robert M. Ball, Social Security commissioner and a principal in writing the legislation thirty years earlier, the Johnson administration had expected Medicare would be only the first step in creating a health insurance program for all Americans. Ball writes that—

... all of us who developed Medicare and fought for it... had been advocates for universal national health insurance. We saw insurance for the elderly as a fallback position, which we advocated solely because it seemed to have the best chance politically. Although the public record contains some explicit denials, we expected Medicare to be a first step toward universal national health insurance, perhaps with "Kiddicare" as another step.

Ball notes of the opponents—

The AMA's opposition approached hysteria. Members were assessed dues for the first time to create a $3.5 million war chest-very big money for the times-with which the association conducted an unparalleled campaign of vituperation against the advocates of national health insurance. The AMA also exerted strict discipline over the few of its members who took an "unethical" position favoring the government program. This was a warm-up for the later campaign against Medicare.

Hartmann adds—

The AMA was so vehemently opposed to government-offered health insurance that it even hired Hollywood actor and tobacco industry spokesman Ronald Reagan to produce an LP record... which would be played at coffee klatches held by doctors' wives nationwide to generate letters to Congress against the Medicare plan.

Dollars and Percents

The bottom tier is not going away.Photo: Scott Lynch, Scoboco's flickr set

Despite the usual media neglect or mockery, here's the latest update from digby. Reliable as ever, she has been covering the neglect and mockery throughout the protest, noting—

I can't help but recollect the slightly different coverage of our most recent protest movement when it first burst forth on "tax day" in 2009. Of course, it was corporate sponsored, so I guess that makes it much more serious.

Digby's ongoing coverage of the protests has included this, on photojournalist Alan Chin's images, and his observation that—

Many pundits have thus noted that the lack of greater protest is an interesting, if not surprising, aspect of our current moment. They would be well served by visiting the encampment in Lower Manhattan. The park is kept spotlessly clean, the disparate demonstrators field skeptical inquiries from hecklers and passerby with humor and patience, and their low numbers are steadily supplemented by people that join them for an hour or two at a time.

Since the impressive job done by Occupy Wall Street's organizers, unions are beginning to join the protestors; as it happens, soon after this was reported.

Also in the past week or so, this—from an interview with "the last honest man on Wall Street"—

"For most traders...we don't really care that much about how they're going to fix the economy, how they're going to fix the whole situation," Rastani said. "Our job is to make money from it."

Finding optimism in a grim situation, Rastani said he's been "dreaming" of this moment for years.

"I go to bed every night, I dream of another recession," he said.

Then, there are the other 99% of the country.

The faces and stories are full of heartbreakers: the disabled scrimping on medication and food to send the kids to college; returning vets, in debt and out of work. With so many here in their 20s, there's a lot of focus on heavy school loan debt and dismal job prospects.

As things stand now, so many face futures that can be predicted to be grim; what's unpredictable are the details of the potential "rewards" that lie ahead.