when ronald reagan busted patco in one thousand nine hundred one he didn't just kick off a three decade assault on labor unions he also kicked off a three decade assault once progressive democratic party this is solid is now reaching its peak as republicans and president obama prepared a car of up the crown jewel of the new deal social security insurance until a new counterbalance is stronger than the creep toward the political right as reflected our current fiscal cliff debate is going to continue relentlessly president obama has given in to republicans over and over again during his first four years in office we need to remind him that he's the president he's armed with the bully pulpit and he's no longer facing reelection he's free to be true to his progressive community organizing roots there's still hope f.d.r. didn't campaign on bringing revolutionary change to america in one nine hundred thirty two he was forced to do it by a nation suffering through a great depression and radicalized by the damage done to them by millionaires and banks. the new deal was in part a response to occ

america's small and medium size businesses and when he kicked off the modern war on unions by firing the patco union strikers you can see the result most clearly at any shopping mall or any downtown in america what before reagan were all locally owned businesses are now big chains from food to jewelry to clothing. here also used to be the c.e.o. share the pain. lee iacocca famously took a dollar a year as pay when he was working to turn around chrysler steve jobs did the same when apple was in trouble pretty much everybody who's ever started a small business knows what it's like to make payroll for workers while taking little to nothing for themselves during the early years of the company but in today's post reagan bain model american capitalism there's never any risk for the c.e.o. class instead all the risk is carried by the workers you know karl marx famously wrote in das capitale his analysis of capitals that capitalism contains within itself or at least unregulated capitalism be contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction if marx was right that the young green shoots of that d

crashed after reagan moved into the white house and promptly busted up the air traffic controllers union patco in one thousand nine hundred one a third of the american workforce was unionize. forty years ago today it's just about a tenth and if you're looking at strictly a private sector unions fewer than seven percent of workers are members of unions smelling blood corporatists and conservatives have put the last remaining strongholds of organized labor into their crosshairs collective bargaining rights for public employee unions are a favorite target conservative lawmakers nowadays as we saw in wisconsin and ohio unionized cops and firefighters are losing their jobs things to conservative austerity policies at the state level in camden new jersey for example the most dangerous city in america the entire unionized police force is getting pink slips and will be replaced by non-unionized law enforcement scams teachers' unions are under assault by non-unionized private charter schools so one of the primary issues motivating the chicago teachers union strike and then the situation is grim and wor

stuart: it's shades of ronald reagan firing workers in the 1980's patco. >> exactly. stuart: president obama is not in a position to fire port workers and the people who run the ports, they're not going to fire them, they'll just let them walk out, that's what's going on. >> well, look, this didn't work out well for the hostess company and for twinkies, so i feel like somebody has a to take a hard stand here, if we keep letting it happen over and over again, it's a situation. whether it be with congress or strikes, there need to be consequences for people's actions, stuart. stuart: you're right. here we are at the end of the year, we've run out of money and a fiscal cliff crisis on our hands, dock workers are probably going to go on strike. it's coming to a head and we thought everything would be resolved by the election we had a couple of months ago, it's just not working, is it. >> no, it's not. we thought it would be a slow news cycle and certainly that's not happening. stuart: no, no, no, it's not happening. of course in the news business, that's kind of good news