Reagan laid the poultice down to cure the body-politic of its penchant for paying for services rendered.

Remember, after WWII, the rich virtually volunteered to have their incomes taxed (94% over $400,000.) in order to pay for the debt we incurred from the war.

I might add, the ratio of CEO and factory worker, or any worker, was far less than what it became after Reagan got through with us.

Compare the willingness to bear the cost of the war to the tax breaks our Commander-in-Chief gave to the rich so as to not pay for Iraq and Afghanistan. Who owns most of the assets in the US? Whose assets are being protected from terrorists? And it isn't just the costs of wars overseas; look what we're spending on Homeland Security we're borrowing money to pay for.

After Reagan, the poison piss, if I understand you, began to be poured into the poultice. The media, who incidentally the No Label people are taking to task, from Limbaugh, Fox, to MSNBC, perhaps to get the "poison piss" poured out of the poultice, began to shirk their responsibility (cliche), and now almost turn their noses up at any investigative attempt to give us news except the pap released by "sources" they've jealously wined and dined at Washington's elite elbow-rubbing cocktail parties, who "leak" tomorrow's headlines. Headlines designed to keeps us comforted while politicians and bankers rob us blind with legislation such as Clinton's freeing up the GLASS-Steagle bound bankers.

It's almost as if the wisdom that ran the world from the aforementioned actors in our history books, got thrown aside in the 1980's, and citizens who previously felt some responsibility to provide for the dregs unfettered capitalism leaves in its wake, to pay for wars unfettered capitalism leaves in its wake, (plundering natural sources wherever they exist), and to see that our kids are educated as well as they were, became hypnotized by the metronome of stock market opportunities that they found they could control to their financial advantage.

Don't remind me of prior Gilded Ages as comparable to what we have today. Those bankers, those inventors, those capitalists who brought us into the age of industry kept one part of their brain lodged in and soaking up and acting by the wisdom in the pages of the history books we speak of.

Witness today, their heirs, men like Bill Gates and Ted turner and Warren Buffet.