Saturday, July 29, 2017

Friend Ron Marshall's 1982 Letter-to-Editor still relevant in Trump Era 2017

'right to suffer' among the poor

View Article
Providence Journal (RI) - June 29, 1982
Letters,

During the Eisenhower years, then Presidential Assistant Howard Pyle stated: "The right to suffer is one of the joys of a free economy."

This would serve as merely an absurd historical anecdote were it not that it seems to reflect perfectly a reactionary sentiment being carried on into the present by Ronald Reagan and his so-called "cowboy cabinet."

The "cowboy" (or kitchen) cabinet is, as reported by Robert Magnuson of the Los Angeles Times in his article in the May 30 Providence Sunday Journal, "a coterie of mostly rich businessmen who have helped shape Mr. Reagan's political career and have offered him advice from time to time on how to manage the economy, foreign policy and other affairs of state."

While a record number of small businesses have been ruined by a depressed (free?) economy and millions of Americans are reduced to begging for something as basic as jobs, "cowboys" like Earle M. Jergensen are virtually unaffected by the recession and are making profits hand over fist. You see, it pays to be in the "right"class.

Today few Americans suffer under the delusion that Reagan and his government represent the interests of working people. We are becoming increasingly aware that this is indeed a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich. And for the rich it means that the sacred right to make a profit is preeminent and secure and for the poor who have no security - the right to suffer]

Ronald F. Marshall

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