
The Cost of Defying the President - LaSombra
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-cost-of-defying-the-president?mbid=synd_digg
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morsch
Here's some background for the strike:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Air_Traffic_Contr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Air_Traffic_Controllers_Organization_\(1968\))

 _The Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization or PATCO was a United
States trade union that operated from 1968 until its decertification in 1981
following an illegal strike that was broken by the Reagan Administration.
According to labor historian Joseph A. McCartin, the 1981 strike and defeat of
PATCO was "one of the most important events in late twentieth century U.S.
labor history"._

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hu3
tldr:

"The moment the strike was called, the President, armed with several
contingency plans, replaced striking controllers with a skeleton crew of
military personnel, F.A.A. brass, new hires ushered through training, and, of
course, controllers who had chosen not to strike. Rumors abounded that the
skies were plagued with near-misses and flights rerouted to alternative
airports, but no deaths were ever reported. (It was ruled that the crash of
Air Florida Flight 90 into the frozen Potomac, on January 13, 1982, which
killed seventy-eight, was due to errors by the pilot and crew.) The public
suffered an inconvenience on the magnitude of a gas shortage or a natural
disaster, and for that inconvenience, by and large, the public blamed patco.
Although diehards continued to picket for weeks, the strike officially ended
on its third day, August 5, 1981, the day that striking controllers were
terminated. The Reagan Administration won an order decertifying patco
altogether on October 22, 1981, and rewarded scabs handsomely for their
loyalty. Many of their rewards mirrored patco’s original demands."

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hueving
Tldr. Long article about the wonders of unions and how Reagan was mean to the
federal employee unions.

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dang
Please don't post unsubstantive comments.

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inanutshellus
The wording hints at bias against the article's own, but I found it to be an
accurate, succinct comment nonetheless.

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dang
I wonder whether accuracy and succinctness are sufficient for substantive
discussion.

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inanutshellus
Is substantive discussion the only measure of value on an HN board post?
Personally, I find the lack of a synopsis ("why you should click this link")
frustrating in HN. It leads to claims of "click bait" because, frankly, if you
don't make a click-bait-y title, I'm not as likely to ... click. "Wait, what
IS the secret to happiness in silicon valley?"

Point being, most HN discussions offer insight into what the link actually is,
since HN itself doesn't provide that with just a gimmicky title. Does a
summarizing comment unfairly boil down a long read? Yes. Does it still provide
value to those that want it? Yes.

Both are reasonable assessments of value.

