Democrats want to take all our money and return to us one dime out of each dollar.
Republicans want to take all our money and give it to corporations and the wealthy.
Neither is acceptable!
Campaign 2010
Countdown to Congressional Elections
The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations.
Noam Chomsky, M.I.T. emeritus Professor of Linguistics
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August 1, 2010
Well, well, well! Here we go again — opposition to the new health care bill is still dropping. Within 4 weeks of signing the new health care reform bill polls were showing the public was warming to it. Now a new poll is showing yet another increase in those who think the new laws will benefit the average commoner. Over the past month those who hold a favorable view has increased to 50 percent from 46 percent in April, with 14 percent saying they had no opinion. If you add to that a new analysis out this week that says 29.5 million women will benefit from the new bill, the “in-favor” group will probably go up. WOW! Who would’ve thought that once the lies died down and the truth started coming out, things wouldn’t look so horrible? However, Republicans are still solidly against it. But that’s not surprising. If Democrats suddenly found a way to solve all our problems overnight with no negative side effects, the Republicans would argue “now’s just not the time to do it”.
There’s been much ado about the recent $550 million fine the Securities and Exchange Commission imposed on Goldman Sachs for lies and omissions about the ABACUS 2007-AC1 subprime mortgage derivatives. Goldman cost investors more than $1 billion while making a very tidy profit themselves, but not as much as the man who designed the derivatives package for Goldman. John Paulson made $1 billion off the scam. Goldman called the fine “a major victory” for them. And rightly so. First, everyone, including Goldman, was expecting a $1 billion fine (God bless the SEC). Second, the actual fine still leaves Goldman with profits from the scam. Third, $550 million is what Goldman makes in about three days. And finally Goldman got off without any fraud charges being filed against them. I have no doubt Lloyd Blankfein and his cronies had a huge Champaign party Wednesday night celebrating their biggest victory since they ripped off taxpayers in 2008. It’s great to have friends in high places.
Certainly you recall all the “outrage” over middle-class home owners walking away from their mortgages when they could no longer afford them. You couldn’t have possibly missed it. Most of Wall Street and their public relations networks talked about it often. Each time a status report was released on the subject, the “wealthy world” made sure it got top billing for at least a week: “They have a contractual obligation and shouldn’t be allowed to simply walk away from it”. But now that wealthy folks are walking away from their mortgages “at a rate that greatly exceeds the rest of the population”, not a peep from anyone!
Have you ever seen this “cartoon” defining Congressional insanity? OK, so depending upon your political ideology, your argument would be for or against its validity. However, the cartoon’s subject matter is not the Old Man’s point — at least not for today. For today’s point, it only serves as an analogy, which is to define insanity relative to another subject.
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