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(The Wolf at the front door is starting to look like the family pet)

The never ending story of the Economy, and the ever perplexing world of Reaganomics of the 1980s. Probably not a revelatory view, but one given by Donald C. Platten, who was in 1983 Chairman and CEO of Chemical Bank. The interview via CBS News Face The Nation on August 14, 1983 gives some indication where things were heading.

Donald Platten (Chemical Bank): “The feeling I personally go to bed with every night is that the economy will shortly stop being in a recovery mode, in other words we will have reached the former peak of the economy and that there will be a growth that we’ll be able to talk about as far as our economy in the months ahead. I think what is going on now in the economy is very healthy. I don’t think we have to worry about it being over exuberant. I think there will be a good economy going from now right straight through the year end into 1984. I think there will be pauses. I think in certain industries there’s going to be really no basic recovery in a significant way. I’m afraid that the problem of unemployment is going to continue with us for some time to come, and that really is the biggest thing in the country today. We’ve dispensed with the word Inflation, really. It’s a non-subject, why? Because it’s down to around 3 to 4 percent as against 14 percent a couple of years, so now the unemployment factor is the one that’s on most peoples minds. And that is going to continue down as the economy continues to grow, that it will not affect everybody as well as some other people, there’s no question about that.”

Hindsight and the reading of Tea Leaves. Twenty-six years ago they were doing it. Twenty-six years later, they still are.

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(Sen. John Tower . . . more or less)

The Reagan years saw Americas fair share of military excursions overseas. Between a disastrous stay in Lebanon, an invasion of the island of Grenada, the ongoing skirmishes with Libya, our clandestine involvement in Nicaragua and El Salvador - the list is pretty endless. All were done under the veil of the Cold War - the eternal "good fight" against Communist insurgency throughout the world. But more and more the real motives were being revealed and they had more to do with sources of raw materials (i.e. oil) than they did with Moscow. Russia was knee-deep in their own Afghanistan, and we were busy supplying arms to the Mujahadeen (i.e. Taliban) - but our "tinkering in internal affairs" was the subtext, while the Media attention was drawn to the splashier pictures - Mohammar Khadafi, Yuri Andropov and the Evil Empire. CBS News program Face The Nation had a panel featuring Senator John Tower (R-Texas), Chairman of The Senate Armed Services Committee discussing our latest set of situations and our Foreign Policy on August 7, 1983.

Sen. John Tower: “I think it should be understood that the United States is committed to the protection of its vital interests abroad . . . we don’t want to find ourselves more or less isolated in this world from important sources of raw materials.”

George Herman (CBS News): “Are you concerned at all about the issue of legitimacy, for example the side that we are supporting, that of President Hissene Habre` is a government which took over and forced out the previous President whose name was Goukouni Queddei, as I recall. So that we are really supporting rebels or insurgents ore revolutionaries against what was a legitimate government . . . .”

Tower: “The fact is, that is the recognized government of Chad. It is the government that is accredited to various capitals throughout the world. It is the government that is recognized by the Organization of African States.”

Herman: “But it’s a civil war, shouldn’t we . . . .?”

Tower: “I understand that . . but the point is, not involvement in the civil war, but . . trying to prevent the intrusion of others in the civil war and turning it to their own uses. Don’t think that Colonel Khadifi has any great philosophical notions about who should be in charge in Chad. Colonel Khadafi would like to be the dominant influence in Chad. And the implications for other African states and the implications for the United States and Western Europe and our interests there are very obvious to me . . . “

Eventually the lid would be blown off the Iran-Contra affair, but in 1983 it was Business As Usual.

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(Roddy Frame - Aztec Camera - made the 80s worth listening to)

Getting into a 1980s frame of mind tonight - Aztec Camera from their first album High Land, Hard Rain - the opening track, and a favorite, Oblivious. Strangely, Aztec Camera really never caught on in the States. Only doing modest sales and occasional airplay. The only reason I can think of is the flood of albums and new bands coming out of the UK at the time caused a lot of worthy music to get lost in the shuffle. The early 80s saw a gradual shift from Punk to New Wave with Indie coming in through the back door. Once again, radio stations were also going through the shift, with less independent stations on the air and the growth of the corporate mergers - loosely translated: less experimenting and breaking of new acts and more concentration on the tried and true and the highly commercial acts (i.e. Madonna). Not to mention the introduction of MTV nationwide.

It was an interesting period of transition for the music business. But as is often the case, a lot of good music went unnoticed and it was frustrating not only for the bands, but for the audience as well.

Seems to still be that way.

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(Union Busting in History - At least today they wear nice suits)

When the famous Patco strike unfolded and President Reagan promptly fired the strikers and crippled the union, it signaled open season on Unions and the beginning of busting, deregulation and a general dismantling of our labor laws and the subsequent fallout that's been reverberating all over our society ever since.

In 1983 we were in the midst of strikes at Continental Airlines and Greyhound Bus. Those strikes made it clear just how damaged our labor laws had become and how the face of Union Busting had changed.

On December 4, 1983 Face The Nation ran a panel that consisted of William Wimpersinger of the International Association of Machinists, Frank Navjot of Greyhound, Studs Terkel, John Nesbitt and Stephen Cabot discussing the state of labor in the midst of Reagan.

Leslie Stahl: “Do you think there is a national management conspiracy to bust or break the unions?”

Studs Terkel: “There doesn’t have to be a conspiracy, I wish it were as simple as that. No, the climate is set and the climate of course is set by the most outrageous anti-labor administration within memory. So we have not, Apple Blossom Time but certainly Union Busting Time”.

Stahl: “Yeah but the public seems to be behind . . .not just the administration . . . .

Terkel: “That’s precisely the point. I think there’s been a lobotomy performed down through the years as Unions and labor are concerned. Ever since World War 2 . .and it’s changed. Big business has become more sophisticated in the person of Mister Cabot say, in contrast to a guy Henry Ford hired in the 30s to fight UAW, Harry Bennett, who would hire thugs and ex-cons with baseball bats to bust the heads of picketers. Today you have smiling three-piece suit guys doing the same job. So much more sophisticated and the result the young members of the workforce have no idea how the minimum wage came to be. They think it came as an apple from the hand of Eve in the garden of Eden. It was bloodied heads that did it, and guys were blacklisted and so minimum wage came to be – that’s under attack today. There’s definitely a union busting climate, no doubt in my mind."

Considering it's 26 years later - the situation hasn't changed. It has only gotten worse, thanks to the Bush Administration. The systematic dismantling of those laws which protected workers from unfair and unethical practices have only become more prevalent with time - and the affects of greed and contempt have only become more entrenched.

It's not going to go away overnight - remember that.

(Note: The broadcast begins with breaking news of U.S. raids on Syrian positions in Lebanon and then goes to the original program)

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(The Joys Of Travel)

When the deregulation of the Commercial Airline industry came into full bloom by 1983 (the bill was signed into law in 1978), everything was bordering on chaos. Granted, the major airlines had something of a monopoly for years and abuse was rife. But the pendulum swung the other way and cost cutting measures, layoffs and threatened bankruptcies of airlines like Continental created an uneasy and in many ways, an unsafe environment for air travel. There was talk about considering the airlines a public utility. But as was evidenced by the breakup of AT&T (which was considered a public utility) that alternative wasn't viable either. The trouble was, things were getting worse and no one was willing to offer an alternative. Strangely, they still aren't.

As a reaction to the worsening conditions, The Airline Pilots Union went on strike against Continental Airlines (one of many during the 80's).

The strike was the subject of a "Face The Nation" episode from October 2, 1983 featuring Leslie Stahl and a panel consisting of Sen. Mark Andrews (R-North Dakota), Dan McKinnon (Civil Aeoronautics Board), Phil Bakes (CEO, Continental airlines) and Capt. Henry Duffy (Airline Pilots Association).

Bakes: “It’s interesting that unions will charge us with union busting and not being fair to the employees – the one group of our employees who’s not a member of a union, which are our agents and number over 50 percent of our employees were allowed to vote on the pay cuts that we’ve instituted. Ninety percent of them voted for it. But yet the unionized employees were never allowed to vote. Now they’re voting with their feet and so are the consumers.”

Duffy: "What makes it a union busting maneuver is that, his employees had come to him and told him that they would do whatever was necessary to make that company profitable before they filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Instead, they chose the course of action of going Chapter 11 in order to do away with the union contracts and seniority and all of that’s been done in these emergency work rules that they published, and that tells us what they’re up to.”

Although it didn't dissolve into name-calling, it did cast light on just what a serious mess the Commercial Airline industry had become.

One which we're still living through today.

(single mom and children roughing it for real in a spacious Econoline Van - 1983)

In the deep, dark recesses of the 1980's, I stumbled across a "Saturday Radio Talk" by President Reagan From February 5, 1983 in which he goes at length to define the term "Reaganomics". Sometimes referred to as "Voodoo Economics", but nonetheles an interesting explanation coming from the "Horse's Mouth" as it were.

In retrospect, it's an interesting view of what was a bad situation then, painted in bright rhetorical colors and catchy phrases, but ultimately leaving more questions than answers as far as history is concerned.

For example, I was completely unaware our Armed Forces were considered part of the work force and figured into what was determined to be an uptick in the unemployment figure of the time, which the Reagan administration took credit for dropping from 10.8% to 10.4%. Could the administration surmise that, because of an upsurge in enlistments as the result of the Beirut Bombings of 1982, the unemployment rate was lower? Strange logic.

But with the blizzard of upbeat proclamations and winning phrases, who could tell?

Perhaps the ones who simply vanished from the unemployment rolls when the benefits ran out.

Welcome to 1983:

(President Reagan, Saturday Radio Talk - February 5, 1983)