Ronald Reagan's famous line delivered at the close of his one and only debate with President Jimmy Carter in the 1980 election was "Are you better off than you were four years ago?"

While it was Reagan's presidential predecessor Carter who de-regulated the airline industry, this was a page taken from the playbook of the suave former actor with the well-modulated voice.  Reagan declared that it was time to "get the government off people's backs" and let it be known that this was a major goal of his administration.  Neither friend nor foe would deny that this goal was steadily accomplished.

Carter did no more than get the motor running with airline de-regulation.  Reagan, operating in a manner that brought broad smiles to the face of his economic guru Milton Friedman, believed that all we needed to make America the "city on the hill" of his dreams was to remove the dreaded shackles of big government and let the free market take over.

Friedman, a controversial Nobel Prize winner in economics who had been an adviser to the presidential regime of General Augusto Pinochet in Chile, was the economic world's most ebullient advocate of privatization, extending all the way to police and fire protection.

In what amounts to a tragic sea of corporate packaged trivia featuring the likes of various "Survivor" format programs and entertainment gossip shows featuring whatever Paris Hilton has done lately, "60 Minutes" continues as a gem of informative magazine format programming.

What marks "60 Minutes" apart from the aforementioned commercial offerings is an unrelenting determination to tackle the big issues facing America and the world.  If these issues happen to be controversial and hard-hitting, so much the better.  

It was "60 Minutes" that provided Seymour Hersh with an opportunity to cut through Cheney-Bush spin control and provide facts on what is really happening in Iraq and how that tragedy occurred.  

We also saw Leslie Stahl interview the bombastic Ahmad Chalibi and give him the opportunity to reveal himself as the charlatan he is, the highly paid huckster who sold the "weapons of mass destruction" argument to the O'Reillys and Hannitys of the world.

by Jason Miller

[I dedicate this essay to the untold millions who suffered as a result of Milton Friedman's creation of an intellectual bulwark for economic brutality. On 11/16/06, Friedman died of heart failure, an ironic cause of death for a heartless individual.]

"We have reached the deplorable circumstance where in large measure a very powerful few are in possession of the earth's resources, the land and its riches and all the franchises and other privileges that yield a return. These positions are maintained virtually without taxation; they are immune to the demands made on others. The very poor, who have nothing, are the object of compulsory charity. And the rest -- the workers, the middle-class, the backbone of the country -- are made to support the lot by their labor."

----Agnes George de Mille (granddaughter of Henry George), New York, 1979