100 Comments

Your all-male college sounds like it was part of the UK royal family with the puritanical rules & denial that young people are humans.

Same applies with the horrifying story of neighbors visiting only to tell your family to move on.

I remember reading a story, it was from years ago, about a Jewish family who moved in to a neighborhood of christians. They put their menorah in the window for Hanukkah and went out that evening. When they returned, someone had thrown a brick through their window.

A couple of days later as they returned home from an errand, the entire block had purchased menorahs and candles to put in their windows to repudiate what happened.

Now that’s a story to love and that’s what should always happen in response.

No one should be made to feel that they are not part of society when they have done nothing wrong.

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Thanks for reminding us of that story, and yes, “that’s what should always happen in response”.

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So everyone should have gone to the Nam

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founding

Plenty of folks put their life & limb at risk to protest their own government (is that not solidarity?)...

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Beautifully stated.

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What a lovely story of acceptence and love! That'll help me sleep tonight.

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Any embarrassing item?

Sen. Durenberger: "State whether or not you had a date with Hilary?"

Sen. Kassebaum: "How far did you get?"

https://www.c-span.org/video/?36876-1/secretary-labor-confirmation-hearings

Would you have been willing to volunteer IQ, MMPI and lie detector results? Take a subject matter test on DOL policy?

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Wow Daniel..good find. Reich and John Kerry with dark hair! 😄

It is sad to see the savageness and incivility the MAGA GOP brought in. Compare the competence then with the dumber-than-a-box-of-rocks GOP candidates of today.

Seating seditionists and terrorists in Congress is an international embarrassment of the highest order!

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founding

They were in the way then, they're in the way now (it's democracy with American characteristics, e.g. of chattel slavery & gerrymandering that results from the legacy thereof)...

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Whoa, very cool. Thanks!

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The tree incident should have immediately disqualified you. Good thing Tucker wasn't around then. And those grumpy old guys who came to your house to kick you out of the neighborhood would probably have swiftboated you in another time.

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founding

You laugh... but Kerry didn't win that election...

= /

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That was exactly my point.

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founding

Before anyone even had a chance to comment, no less...

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And your point is?

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founding

"How to survive a Senate confirmation (Part I)"

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Sir I love your sense of humor. 😂 I also appreciate the confessional nature of the Vietnam incident. Yikes.

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With your progressive views, I’m quite amazed you were chosen by Clinton and then approved by the Senate. I would think the right wing would have labelled you a Communist and not cared a bit about any embarrassing or illegal actions you might have committed in your past!

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today's gop'd label the Professor

a Marxist Kkkommunist! burn

all his books, demand he

take it all back & deny

any of it Ever even

happened.

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never got the KKK and communist at same time but hey stranger things happen. Oh, burning books contributes to global warming so we have to keep stoking that fire till there is no food to eat saying it is just weather.

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Dec 26, 2022·edited Dec 26, 2022

Agreed re: the right wing 😤

I think it's very much to the President's credit and an indication of his level of intelligence that he was a fan of the Professor's writings.

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It was 30 yrs. ago. Today, your comment would prob. prove to be accurate which is indicative of how far the right has gone off the rails.

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people do strange and stupid things when they feel threatened. It is tuff for a lot of people to realize that white is not an automatic pass to success and people of color are just as smart and talented. That is a huge horse pill.

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The right wasn’t nearly as extreme then as it is now.

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Yes - alarm bells need to be ringing very loudly now.

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founding

I enjoyed your report on what must have been an unpleasant experience . Several others have commented about how it's worse now, due to antics of Sen. Cruz and others.

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Dec 26, 2022·edited Dec 26, 2022

It's become a total disgrace with those clowns.

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Slick did a lot to help this country and his personnel life was known just like trump. We elected slick to fix the economy. To me his biggest failure was not mandating completion at the highest levels where as I always say there is only a couple oil companies, forest companies, defense companies, even universities controlling 80% or more of there market. That is the issue Bill could have done better on. Like no NAFTA. Is bedroom flaws are between him and Hiliary.

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Dec 26, 2022Liked by Robert Reich

I love when you mention your college days. My dad attended there, class of '68, and was one of the few married students. Dad remembered being in a first year econ class with you. I was born at the hospital there at the end of freshman year. Mom sometimes worked at Lou's, just a few blocks from our one bedroom apartment on W Wheelock.

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That title of the binder, "Critics of Reich, Vol. 1"

must have made your heart skip a beat. Most if us could use the kind of introspection such a volume could jumpstart. However, disagreeing with a person is not the same as the person doing something thing wrong. The "conservative" critics are always trying to gaslight people into thinking their selfishness is virtuous. I think you and your ideas have weathered time better than Bill Clinton has. I don't dislike Bill Clinton. His flaws got the better of him.

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Dec 26, 2022·edited Dec 26, 2022

Relieved to note you have matured in your views and treatment of women since your college days. So many men never do, including so-called progressive ones. I admire the President a great deal, but I sure wish he had practiced what he preached a lot sooner, although he was judged by a court of very hypocritical men.

.

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I've often said I could not run for any public office due to my history since the 1970s. (smoked dope AND INHALED, dropped acid, nude swimming at a rock concert, fornicated with most girls I knew in the free luv days and a few guys). Oh, and I don't hide or deny any of it and am quite candid and honest.

When I joined the Air Force at 18, in 1963 right out of high school & put in the USAF Security Service requiring a Top Secret clearance, I was an unblemished slate and got one. Years later, in 1968, trying to get on at the New Orleans Police Dept. I needed to pass scrutiny again. Passed the entrance exam and interview with a psychologist & psychiatrist and then a Polygraf (Lie Detector) test. Just like the other Robert's minor mischievous transgressions, I was still passable as far as stealing a little but never arrested or convicted of crime. However, while hooked to the machine he asked "Are you a homosexual?" I got worried because he asked that twice. I had yet to discover or act on my bisexuality but I was bi-curious at the time and the machine picked that up. Nevertheless, I passed that test, (who knows what insignificant secrets the tester had?) but being so personally scrutinized to be accepted is unnerving.

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Rob, your story reminded me of my entry into the US Navy,. and the need for a very high security clearance to work on cryptographic equipment. One of the things handed to me was a 4-5 page list of "organizations" in alphabetical order -- and I was to look through the list and identify any I had contact with.

There on the later pages was the "Polish Falcons." Around 4th grade or so, my parents sent me to a Polish Falcons summer camp -- being that my grandparents immigrated from Poland, and they thought it would be a good way to keep up with the language and culture of the "old country." Other than singing the Polish national anthem and raising the flags of both countries, there wasn't anything political about it.

So I noted it down and described my connection -- and then started to reexamine the list -- specifically looking for the Ku Klux Klan. It was NOT on the list. (Nor was the American Nazi Party.) I recall having the chills over that.

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Was the ACLU on that list? I have been a Card Carrying Member of the ACLU since 1986, 2 years before Bush tried to denigrate the org.

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Sir, to the best of my recollection, the ACLU was also NOT on the list.

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Hoo boy, did this one hit home, Robert! These are the things we worry about, regret, feel shame for- long after we're grown. And these real things shape our values, our actions all through life.

I'll always read you,but I admire you more, Kid. Respect.

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Everybody keeps this up everyone will think this is a Catholic group. Before you all jump on me I am Catholic and part of that is making you feel guilty. Thought that was only a Catholic thing but now I find out it is universal. Learned something new.

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Reading your personal, anecdotal writing gives the one an interesting perspective into recent history.

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Bobby-

I read your piece bug-eyed at the memories of old Truesdale and that you named names.

Folks, this stuff is real!

My sisters went to Miss Bouton’s.

Got into trouble with Mrs Sinapi (Mrs Snappy) for slamming a door in her face.

Had a crush on a girl and left her a bracelet in her desk. I told another kid and was ratted out and shamed.

Sneering pompadoured bully Richard Merrick, our neighborhood Elvis impersonator, deserved chopping.

I remember yelling obscenities out the back door at Ronnie Elliot - until my mother stopped me. Of course, I didn’t know what I was saying - just that the words were powerful.

I always liked going to your house and seeing your island? nation-state? proto-Sim City? that you had created and pinned to the wall. Your career was set at an early age.

After a few years away at private boys schools, I flamed out and came home to John Jay HS when you were a senior and destined for great things, but not promising to bus girls since they were already there!

-Bill Kaupe

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I would recommend reading Maria Ressa book How to stand up to a dictator. The book links your experience to today, it lays out some strategy to combat misinformation, and organize people in todays electronic media.

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Heavy duty what happened to that college kid who broke the “fornication” rule. Seeing as how your election to be class pres and serve on the “court” seems to have partly resulted from your campaign promise to deliver busloads of girls (which it sounds like you delivered on), you indirectly bore some responsibility. That really would be something to feel bad about - and to have recused yourself from his trial, or abstained from voting to expel him.

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Just to give some perspective on the time and place: There were a number of single-sex colleges in the area, within two hours' drive of each other. It was common for the colleges to hold what were called mixers, social events to which students from opposite-sex colleges were invited.

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I worked for OSHA during the time you were Secretary of Labor. I always liked you and thought you did a great job! One of the best Secretary of Laborers we ever had. Of course I’m bias😊

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times have changed.

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