That's good stuff.

Uh, AndyH? That wasn't a joke. That's basically the financial news this month.

Very funny

While I have no love for the republican crooks any hypppocrites who created this screwed up situation with washed up retread notions from the past like "trickle down economics" and tax cuts for those least in need while collaborating in the deindustrialization of America and impoverishing us all, I have also fallen completely out of love with Obama, especially after he banned my clove cigarettes (he didn't ban his own damn smokes, why did he have to mess with mine). I wanted to see all those liars who took us to war under false pretenses brought to justice but now it seems he's been bought off or sumpthin, cause he is acting just like the twit we just voted out of office. I may never vote for either part again, they are both ridden with self interested hyppocrites without a gram of foresight. It is likely the Greens or nothing for me now, although I understand the Greens somehow lost their party designation here in Mass. I may have to wind up running for office myself just out of general disgust with everyone presently out there politicing!

Bella
I have to say that after reading your posting you probably shouldn't vote for anyone ever again.

Sure, It makes no sense to cut taxes for the rich, they are the persons who benefit the most from having a stable society and have the most to loose in situations of social unrest. Most of the wealthy people in America did not get to be so by hard work, but by taking unfair advantage of their fellow men or by being so fortunate as to have inherited their wealth and social position. I say unfair because we are in a situation that the pay for the working person has stagnated and lost ground in the past 20 years, exacerbated by the fact that industry (formerly the engine of our national prosperity) has largely been dismantled in America and moved to places where they can pay a worker $1 and hour without benefits or any sort of healthcare. The industrial magnates therefore can pay themselves even more while the working family has to accept employment in the so called "service economy" for far less wages and no benefits. Corporate executives pay themselves obscene amounts of money and blame unions for spoiling the economy, when it is corporate greed that got us into this state in the first place.
Many individuals find themselves into a sort of wage slavery where they wind up doing work they dislike for low pay that doesn't cover expenses, but they can't jump off the treadmill for fear of loosing what little ground they have. Thousands of Americans have had the floor drop out from under them, with no job, no money and no longer any home to call their own but a flimsy tent under an overpass. Haven't you noticed the tent cities growing? There are now millions of desperate people victims of our culture that somehow wound up granting more rights to nonhuman corporations than actual human beings. The empoverished and disenfranchised are legion, they are our brothers and sisters and cousins. There is a tendancy to blame the loosers in our culture, as if they are all individually responsible for their ignominious fates, but the truth is most are just whipsawed by a system commandeered by a tiny percentage of greedheads who hold no responsibility for the commonweal yet reap the greatest benefits and continue to manipulate the system to keep themselves in power.
So how would trickle up work? Look to FDR and the New Deal. If we are the "greatest Nation" that we say we are we ought to be able to take care of our own. Most of the people in the tent cities (who retain any sense of hope)want very much to work and rebuild their fortunes and again have homes to call your own. Meanwhile note that our infrastructure, much of it dating from half a century ago, is crumbling and needs repair. Trickle up would assist those who have fallen to the bottom to bootstrap themselves back up. We need to re-establish industry and upgrade the powergrid before it shorts out and fails as well. Most persons do not realize how we in modern times live on the very knife edge, dependant on technology that is not that well supported. We need to rework our society but not to something more repressive or something that enables an "upper class" that already holds most of the cards, but something that stems from the principles of equality and justice so often lauded as core American principles.
Trickle up should be considered more like the planting of a seed, where a small living thing is given a little fertilizer and water as well as some encouragement then allowed to grow naturally. However for small things to grow they cannot be deprived of sunlight by the biggest things. For too long, the wealthiest have been able to buy justice whenever it suited them, buy legislation and divert taxpayer funds into their own accounts by devious means. Help those who have been hit by economic disaster and take the means from those who have enriched themselves by playing the system!
I do know of wealthy men and women who made their money by innovation and invention, I have the greatest respect for Dean Kamen and Burt Rutan for instance,and they earned their money the hard way. However why should any corporate head make more money in a year than the POTUS? People go on about "socialized medicine" as if our present system that required participation in a private extortion scheme where a corporation gets to make a profit on human pain and suffering. At least in a Government administered system my health insurance premiums would not be underwriting a lavish lifestyle for HMO executives.
I would say at present our system is close to collapse, largely because infrastructure work and upgrades have been neglected by the private corporations in favor of profit taking and suborning the regulatory agencies responsible for keeping their toes to the line. As I stated before, a lot of good people have lost everything and are desperate. if nothing is done to ameliorate their situations and still more people fall through the cracks there will be major social unrest and that will interfere with getting the neccesary work done to upgrade the infrastructure and adapt systems to handle extreme climatic events come due to planetary changes (don't claim you haven't noticed any planetary changes). In Short just help those who need help and don't fatten the parasites any more while fixing what has been broken and neglected from years of neglect by the very folks who were supposed to maintain it. Nobody likes to change, but it is better to have foresight and make change happen yourself than have it forced upon you. A problem is that many Americans do not see themselves as contributing members of a community anymore and think others should be the ones to make changes and sacrifices. Their attitude is F- you, I got mine. Well as Franklin said "if we do not hang together, we shall all hang separately". If we have a Nation and that Nation means anything, it has to be for the benefit of all citizens and not be rigged to empower a few to the detriment of everyone else. Instead of letting the top one percent of the wealthy have all the gravy with none for the rest of us, the system must work to protect the weak and the downtrodden, helping those in need rather than stripping them of the rest of their assets.
The powerful forget, that there is no man so dangerous as a man who has lost everything, for he has nothing to loose and revenge on his mind. If you take that desperate man and you give him a little something, plus some hope, it is that much less likely he will burn your house down when the starving and hopeless riot in the streets.

Just remember that we are 9 meals away from revolution....

Bella

Your points are well founded for the most part and while I do not agree 100%, I definitely hear what you are saying.

There is something fundamentally wrong with this country. Our kids are dumbed down in the public schools, do not learn about our history and heritage, embark daily on the me-me-me self centered journey through life, and buy into the victim and entitlement mentality. And who is responsible for that? WE ARE! We have allowed the government to take over raising our children in the way that they should go while we were too busy doing other things. What is wrong with that picture?

"We have met the enemy, and he is us."

Good storys. Real funny.

WAMthunter I appreciate the Walt Kelly Pogo reference, it seems we may be contemporaries. I am kinda waiting for the other shoe to drop, nothing really bad has happened on Obama's watch yet, when it does then we'll see what he'd made of and not before. And something really bad is gonna happen, I don't know what, but I've lived too long and seen too much. When I get a feeling...I'm not often wrong...We'll see...As I have said before I am a Pollyanna Pessimist...I seen the poop hit the air impeller more times than most yet I always muddled through; so I know bad things will happen again, so long as I can smell the wind and duck and cover in time, I'll muddle through again.

Ask Clinton what happened to the CIA. Ask him wht his response was for the bommings of the World Trade Center the first time. How about the Embassy bombings, Somalia? I just hope in 3 years america will start to wake up and ask questions about a candidate, before it is too late. And President Obama may have broken a major rule in the Constition. He may not have even been born here. He can end these debates real easy, unlock his records. When asked he just smiles, I do not think a smile is the best reaction. Just rumors but rumors that can easy be killed.

I think the old saw about thinking globally and acting locally has the remedy. I hear a lot of people bitching but everybody seems to want somebody else to make the change, so dammit people step up or quitcher bitchen. We home schooled our daughter, so she got civics as well as marksmanship and gun safety (the latter, with the Karate counted as phys ed). We are working towards sustainability, we grow stuff and make stuff. Unlike the little red hen in the previously quoted childrens story, the little red hen in my version bakes the 5 loaves without asking for help and shares them with the other critters because she recognizes that they are all stuck in the same barnyard! (then, being a hen she happily goes and pecks at the cow flops). I really wonder whenever anybody puts up the Republicans as examples of "morality". These days republican morals seem to be kinda self centered and more about homophobia than actual self control, generosity or honesty. When I read posts like that guy still stuck on Clinton I wonder what is being conserved by the "conservatives". Morality begins with the individual and the choices people make as they interact with one another, are you in it for every scrap you can get or are you inclined to share a resource with others. Do You feel part of a community? or are you distrustful of others to the point of isolation and paranoia?
Are you of the opinion that you need to get your way, all the time or else or can you work to find compromise with others on issues? Do you keep your word...always? Is any thing or any one worthy of lowering oneself to deceit? If there is work to be done, to you try your best to get 'er done or do you whine and settle back on the couch because the game is coming on? Are you open minded and flexible? Are you Good? Do you see any value in being "Good". Do you feel that because you are "Good" you should be allowed to "get away with stuff"?
Morality starts with one person, doing the right thing for the community. Morality isn't about condemning or blaming others for perceived cultural value violations, it is about building and caring for others in community. One person alone bitching about "those people over there" is never moral. It is by what you do that you will be judged, so always do. I feel it is the lack of this sort of attitude that got us into trouble in the first place. I notice a big issue for many is that they think their tax dollars are going to support others they consider lazy or unworthy or otherwise undeserving. They feel nothing in common with these hypothetical lazy undeserving bums. Somehow they think that everyone should root hog or die (often with the emphasis on the "die" so as to make room for more people they like better). Personally I get irritated by give aways to individuals who are already wealthy! I am angered by subsidies to corporations that pay fatcats to do no work whatsoever and even more so when Federal bailouts are used by recipients for lobbying for more bailouts (while the very guys who screwed up the most feather their nests with absurd bonuses). I think more money is wasted padding the pockets of the corporate class than is treating suffering and hunger. Putting money into putting roofs over the heads of homeless people seems proper to me (I been there a couple of times) while bailing out the already rich seems immoral and unjust. But morality starts with one person reaching out to the community so I step up.
If we each individually step up and do what needs doing, without neccesirally worrying about who is gonna pay us for it, we might make benificial changes in the world.

I'm a carpenter and a very good one. I'm very proud of the work that I do and I'm hired by only one group of people, wealthy people. Many of my wealthy clients pay 40% of their income every year in taxes. Because of their ability to pay a lot of good thing happen for a lot of people. Individuals who are not so well to do get tremendous tax breaks and are allowed to keep more of what they earn benefiting their families. They may be able, because of the taxes the wealthy pay, to put on that addition to their home or even to be able to make mortgage payments on a home. Because I work for wealthy clients I'm sometimes able to do a job for people with very little funds available to them, again a benefit from entrepreneurs being able to keep what they earn. When the government taxes way beyond the ability of the wealthy to pay, we are all going to suffer. My business will be done and the people that I employ will all be looking for work that doesn't exist. For all of you that believe that people with money have non-stop tax loopholes I would urge you to speak with attorneys that handle some of these types of financial issues. One of my clients, and a very decent absolutely hard working man, had to pay over one million dollars in taxes last year alone. This is a man who started with "o" and scratched his way to the top. He stills goes to work at 5am every day. Why would anyone feel that the government is better able to find a way to spend this mans money than the man who has done all the work to earn it? My friend would expand his business, my business and all of the surrounding businesses with the money that he is allowed to keep and to invest. His kept money would find it's way into 1/4 of the homes in our area through service and purchase. When the individual with the will to succeed in any business is taxed so excessively that he feels it better to sail to the far reaches of the world and no longer produce, every poor person will feel the effect.

Yah, you betcha those Swedes are picky about who they let in. They have to be what with living next door to all those Norwegians! LOL

Bella wrote:

"Most of the wealthy people in America did not get to be so by hard work, but by taking unfair advantage of their fellow men or by being so fortunate as to have inherited their wealth and social position."

I quit reading your thoughts after that.

teufelhunden

You say that you quit reading Bella's post after reading,

"Most of the wealthy people in America did not get to be so by hard work, but by taking unfair advantage of their fellow men or by being so fortunate as to have inherited their wealth and social position."

Did you quit because you disagree based on facts or just didn't like hearing it put quite that way? Just curious ??

There is a certain amount of money a person can earn by working for it. Most of us in our entire lifetimes will make a million, (or so if we are highly skilled and well paid) Why then should a guy who pushes numbers around on a computer in Italian shoes think he deserves hundreds of thousands of dollars to do his unessential work. Plumbing, now that is important work, you have to have lived without plumbing in order to really appreciate it. Plumbers get paid well, usually $60-80 per hour. This is good and just. I think the plumber deserves any tax breaks he can get, however the plumber isn't the problem, the commodities broker in the afore mentioned Italian shoes is the problem, because by manipulating commodities futures to make money on the margin, he drives the price of the pipe the plumber needs up as well as the price of the gas for the plumbers truck. We have seen dramatic seesaw variations in the price of both copper and the price of gasoline in just the last year. Copper was up to $4 a pound and co-incidentally gas was up to $4 a gallon. Both spikes were entirely artificial and engendered by our Italian shoe shod Commodities Broker buisily getting his, and facilitated by the dismissal of financial regulations enacted the Last time this collective stupidity happened in 1929!
Andy H was thoughtful enough to state his meager income in an earlier posting, and I would agree, he makes far too little for him to suffer any taxation whatsoever. I just want to tax the socks off those who parasite of those of us who do work and siphon off billions in the process. The problem is that there is "corporate class" has rigged the system so that they can live without having to work like the rest of us drones. they invent financial scams like "life insurance, mortgage insurance, health insurance" and use raw fear to sell it to those they wish to exploit. Some forms of "insurance" have even become a sort of manditory extortion, especially in the case of health insurance here in Massachustts. Manditory health insurance, we were told would bring costs down by requiring universal participation. Sheerest Bulldada! The extortionists have jacked the rates obscenely and they still refuse to cover injuries and ailiments for specious reasons. and the Jerks who came up with this farce wear Italian shoes and drive Lexuses or Benzes (Mitt the Sh-t Romney that cultist swine had a lot to do with this treachery on the public). To tell the truth money can buy happyness, but only if you have none and receive some, and thereby can make your needs for that day. If you have lots of money, more will not make you happier (even if you think it will). It is far cheaper to succor the poor than succor the rich, as the appetites of the rich are so much greater. I know a wealthy woman who's inheritance brought her great happiness, she gave it all away and made many more people happy, which made her even happier.
Greed is never a positive social value, Sharing is the positive value. Like the old phrase suggests, everything about getting along with people you (should) learn in kindergarden. However if the Headstart program doesn't get funded you get some kids who get to go to kindergarden (and learn proper social behavior and more's) and some kids (poor kids maybe) don't. When the kids grow up (as they usually do)Some of the kids are going to know how to behave and some wouln't have a clue. In a Civil Society shouldn't everyone be civil to one another?
Right now the burden of taxation is on the middle and working classes who wind up supporting things like bank bailouts, "farm subsidies" to huge agribuisness concerns actively driving family farms off the soil and ruining aquifers as well as tilth with monocropping and biocides. Limit subsidies to farmers who improve their tilth and grow non toxic foods and a lot of money will be saved for helping poor working mothers and old handicapped vets. Simply reworking the system so that beurocracy does the jobs it is created for, rather than wasting so much on self perpetuating bloat would save millions. And we have to find a way to do it or the lampreys will suck the sturgeon dry. Still whatever happens we cannot afford to neglect either children or old vets who spilt their blood and came home wrecked for politics. And that means somebody has to put up with some taxes. I say only this, tax those who can afford it and retrieve ill gotten gains. If a church participates in politics (like the Mormons for instance) they should loose tax exempt status. If a company relocates off shore they should loose access to government contracts. Companies that ship their manufacturing overseas (loosing opportunities for American Workers) they should be penalized for the harm they cause the persons they once employed. All I have been saying is that the corporate class has rigged the system for their own benifit too long and it has to stop. Teddy Roosevelt was known as a "Trust Buster" because he curtailed the power of the "Robber Barons". He did it in response to very similar situations in his time and it worked. He was a Republican (at first), later he started his own party "the Bull Moose Party" because he didn't think he was going to get a nomination and he felt he wanted to run again, but that is a different story. Still if you don't like what one Roosevelt did, look at the other!

Its a strawman used to incite class warfare. Used mostly by Hugo Chavez type tinpot dictators to control the poor, both financially and intellectually.

You have been living in a "socialist"country since the late 30's (and likely longer than that) Do you like getting overtime if you work more than 40 hours and do you willingly accept unemployment checks when you get laid off? Socialism. Does your old granny get SSI? Does your developmentally disabled cousin Freddy get SSDI? Socialism, by the way are You willing to totally support your old grammie And Freddy (who is age 37, now weighs 375 and likes soap opera)? Socialism to the rescue! How about those Socialist community colleges and the very socialist interstate highway system. How about public water systems as well as sewage. Then there is all that extremely socialist public transportation. Ya wanna do without all this socialism? You wouln't believe the wailing that will result if even one of these Socialist notions gets dumped. Like it are not we live in a Socialist state and whatever label you like for your politics, unless you are an Anarchist, you are really a Socialist. But you can call it what you like, invent some new name if it pleases you but Handsome is as handsome does, and most of the Social programs on which so many depend are inspired by Socialism.
Government is supposed to be responsible to people and not neglectful, especially in a land supposedly by, for and of the people. So who should government assist? Naturally the People!
If you have a rich man and if he looses his money he becomes like everybody else,and has to find some work to make his daily bread. In other words, when the wealth goes away the rich man becomes normal. Take a poor persons income away and you have something different. You have a desperate person (unless some kind of help is delivered) and desperate people will do anything they can to survive and feed their children. Right now, theft is on the rise, breakins, bank robberies, and other crime is up (at least one could infer this from the police blotter). Crime is up because people are being pushed to the wall. We are approaching 10% unemployment already, all because the goons in the corporate class crashed the economy. Is it better to deny assistance to the hungry and jobless, then cluck your tongue (and load your gun) when presented with the inevitable crime wave that happens when people become too hungry to care about the law? Even the Romans felt the need to succor their vast indigent population with bread and circuses. This was because they could do the math, they could repress some (scapegoating christians) but they knew they hadn't the means to repress everyone. The "complacency of the government dole" (nice phrase that) is better than rioting in the streets and the breakdown of social order. Perhaps a few would rather that the government machinegun people in the streets as long as they didn't have to pay taxes, but it doesn't work that way because the guys with the guns WILL be paid (requiring taxation).
I have never said that making a profit is wrong. However price fixing and monopolies are wrong. When one corporation uses shareholder funds for a hostile takeover of an economic rival, which it then shuts down, putting people out of work is also wrong, especially if the corporation that survives then massively increases the prices of it's good or service due to having eliminated the competition. It is also wrong when a company acquires other companies, spends the workers pension plans, then lays off everybody (except management) and ships the manufacturing equipment overseas where they can pay a buck an hour, require 70 hour workweeks and pay employees a buck an hour. The independent hardworking society we all value is under threat by the magnates of the corporate class, remember my town used to have an independent hardware store, till Walmart drove em out of business. Big eats small, unless the small get teeth like paranah fish and band together in large numbers. Did Mitt Romney take a risk with all the companies he dismantled? I doubt it, (he wouldn't get his shoes dirty) but the workers whose jobs went overseas certainly had some risk put on them.
I offer as my final example Bernie Madoff. Anybody think he didn't deserve what he got and should have been left alone to enjoy the results of his Ponzie scheme? Well his wasn't the only Ponzie scheme out there, ya think?

Once again I cant get past the first paragraph of your diatribe. I can not believe that anyone would actually extol the virtues of a broken social security system as exhibit A in a push for socialism.

AndyH

You are as full of beans as a grande burrito! You bet I think all men are created equal, but the rest of your statement make no sense at all. What is it you are really trying to say? I'm not sure you even know yourself.

I seldom agree with Bella politically, but she has posted some interesting commentary that should wake some of you sedentary potatoes up and spur you to action. I think we went to different schools together that taught individual liberty and limited government. Our country has been steaming down the socialism tracks since FDR, with a few bumps along the way. Get a grip.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYEiwR2KklM

I await his response with baited breath.....

And no, Andy, I'm not a liberal.....LOL

I think that goose is the perfect avatar!

My family cares for our old and feeble. We don't ask for help and with the network that we have established we don't have to. No one in my family has money, we have something worth a lot more, we have pride. In my family if fat Freddy doesn't work, than to hell with him, he's made his choice. Let him die on the sofa. This country has all of the safe guards in place today simply because people have lost their desire to do anything but whine about how they can't make it and how somebody has more than they do. I'm glad that I won't be around for a whole lot longer to listen to the sniveling, worthless, lazy leeches carry on endlessly about what the government and rich people have to do for them! 40 hour weeks! Are you dreaming? We average 60!! Are we out there begging for scraps, are we groveling for our weekly pittance from the government? We do whatever it takes! My great grandfather did, my grandfather did, my father did, I do, and my son will too and I hope his offspring as well. Food stamps, unemployment benefits, relying on the government for my health care: ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!

I was never a soldier. I always wanted to be, but they wouldn't take me-no branch would. Every year my family gives up portions of what we generate to provide for our vets. They gave up plenty for me, and I believe in paying my own way in every facet of life.

sorry that was realy off topic

Correction bella, Kim Jong Il is a turd with some well deserved Cancer, wearing sunglasses

I hope he dies from the clap tomorrow.

I fail to see how anyone can look at Social Security, VA hospitals, or any other government ran program and then have the nerve to say that we need more government programs.

Baffles me.

It is a very ignorant comment to make that no one gets rich by working hard. When did our society become crybabies? If you don't get enough money, get another job, not a welfare check. If you are disabled or unable to work then it is fine, but I see lots of people that get checks every month that have never had a job, or even tried to get one. Why reward these people when someone went from nothing, got a great idea and became rich? They take all the risk of going broke on their own and make it, then you want to take half their money. Then they let some of their employees go just so they can pay bills. Does not make sense. I Am 25 and look forward to trying to get rich by ranching. I DONT WANT SOMEONE TO GIVE ME ANYTHING. I want to live my dream and take care of my kids and family, I may never be rich, but I should get the chance. The direction we are going I won't.
My next thought of mine is why a persons decision to vote on someone would be for cigs? Not very informed if you vote for someone and then quit liking them within a few months of their Presidency. I was able to see he was the wrong person for the job long before the election without him banning cigs, or anything else that he has done or is about to do.
Last thought. I think it is a rediculous notion to think that someone should investigate the Bush administration for any reasons. He won the war, Made a new democracy in this world, thrwarted other attacks that were being planned by terrorists on The USA, and put terrorists in prison. Since when did being against an enemy of the USA and making hard decisions to protect us make you anything other than a hero?

This has been a very interesting Post!!!!!!!!

I knew I'd get you fired up, again! I believe that Al was in an office for eight years that could have helped him notice the impending attack. I think that he may have been too worried about how hot it gets in the summer though. As previously mentioned, W made plenty of mistakes, as did Clinton, as has Obama (not including the ones that he is about to make and not mentioning the ones that we don't know of yet). All presidents are going to make mistakes, as are all men, but if your mistake be lead with the intention of betterment of man kind then I think that your mistake is granted. As for me, I'd rather go out fighting then just simply allow others to attack me or support those who did. Bush didn't plan the attacks of 9/11, as you would have us to believe, but he did react and that is what this country needed at the time. As for me, if someone is planning an attack on me or my family, I'm going to do whatever it takes to find out what it is. And on my final day, God and God alone will be my judge!

Bella

I agree that the W bunch appeared to be asleep at the switch, but the Clintonista's were not much better. Billy Bob certainly failed to take decisive action following the 1993 attack on the WTC, bombing of USS Cole in 2000, and simultaneous attacks on U.S.embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. Big Al was too busy with his political agenda or re-inventing the internet or something to do squat, as well.

Al-Quaeda was plotting the 9-11 attacks long before the 'Bushies' were in the White House. The terrorists were given the rightful notion that America was unwilling, unable, or just too busy with self-indulgence to do anything about the terrorist threat. Al-Quaeda should have gotten the El-Kabong! long before 9-11! Bush should have read Sun Tzu's 'Art of War' instead.

I think we need to recognize that we have had a bunch of scoundrels running our government for the past half century nad it is high damn time that 'We the people' demand better!

I first became aware of Bin Laden in 1990 during intelligence briefings on deployment to the Persian Gulf region. His name kept popping up related to various activities until my departure from service in 1998. He and his group's intentions were well documented. I cannot divulge further, but there is tons of info out there on him. Need to put out a good smackdown!

If you don't agree with someone, say why. Don't just give out -1's to express your disagreement. Sound off if you got a pair! (sorry Bella)

Bella
I personally think that your as looney as some of the people you said that you took care of. I've never agreed with you about anything but I look for your posting every time out. It really is interesting that you see just about everything 180 degrees from my view. Keep throwing stuff out there, I respectfully enjoy reading what you write.