rich vs poor

Why is it "morally" ok to let lazy un-employed people lose their homes or their jobs or their health care, people who are too lazy to work and make their mortgage payments and are losing their homes that were really too fancy and too expensive for them to buy in the fist place

Why are we so horrified or annoyed by giving free money (ie. Welfare, un-employment payments, food-stamps, mortgage bailouts) to lazy un-employed people, people who we believe have only lost their homes because they're too lazy to work and make their payments or were greedy and tried to buy a house that was too fancy for them. Why are we so opposed to giving them anything, and why do we believe that they're only getting what they deserve.

But yet we believe its ok to give bailouts (ie. Free money) to corporate executive and big financial institutions?

The same people and institutions who got us into this mess? I guess they aren't lazy, they certainly work hard at stealing from the rest of us.

On one hand we are repelled by and refuse to help people we deem lazy and greedy, but then we turn around and are ok with giving help to other lazy greedy people.

Some would argue that its because the big fancy executives will spread that money out and we'll all get a little bit of it, even though all evidence is to the contrary, and everything indicates that those greedy fancy executives will either hoard their money, or gamble it on fancy new "investment mechanisms dealing with unique financial instruments" (note that can be translated as either "cheating" or "rigging the game"), which you would think if they're cheating or rigging the game they'd be making lots of money and could keep out of trouble, but the truth of it is that they're not really very good at what they do, so they've had to resort to cheating to get ahead, but they're not even really very good at that, (note: how well things went in 2007 and 2008). They gamble, cheat, take wild risks, lose other peoples money while skimming off a profit for them selves, constantly shuttling the losses off onto someone else and the blame off on to someone else.

How could anyone who professes to be even the least be fiscally conservative continue to support a system like that?
How could any morally concious person think that is right?
Especially the right wing fundamentalist fanatical hard-working bible-quoting christians?
Where in the bible does it say: "Thou shalt help the rich, and thou shall not help the poor"?? I seem to have missed that passage. And the passage about the camel and the eye of a needle, is that one about a poor man not getting into heaven?

If this was some soap opera on tv, or a reality show, or even if some advertising campaign in magazines or newspapers I could understand it because rich people have money to control the message and spin things to make themselves look good.
But its not, many so-called normal middle class american believe this is ok. Even many lower class americans, the very ones who are being crushed under the boot heel of the rich are spewing out garbage about ending entitlements, and cutting welfare, food stamps, medicare, medicaid, npr.

Jan 13, 2011 Blame

Why are rush limbaugh and sarah palin being targeted for blame for the arizona tragedy?
Of course they can't be blamed for this tragedy, even the angry vicious rhetoric they spew can't be blamed for this tragedy.
We can't blame them for the actions of one mentally ill individual.
We may blame them for being stupid, or callous, or insensitive, or selfish, or inconsiderate, or insincere, or foolish, or dishonest; but they or their words or actions should not be blamed for these tragic events.

Our entire political and cultural system has failed us.
It failed 20 people in Tuscon, it failed the shooter, it failed his family; but it also failed us all. Our system is to be blamed. Our political system that has become a giant media circus driven only by money and power, a political system that is totally focused on defeating its adversaries, and enriching its masters, and could care less about the lives of the American people, much less the lives of 21 people in Tucson Arizona.
Our financial system that has become so focused on maximizing corporate profit and executive salaries, that it has lurched our ecomonic system to the brink of disaster, and it has sacrificed our state and local services to protect the profits of the financial giants. Our news media which has become nothing but an entertainment network, and no longer reports news or facts but just spins everything to create "stories" where none exist but to fan the flames of public opinion, and excite and agitate their audience to increase ratings and profits; or news media doesn't care about truth, or honesty, or facts, they only care about profit.
Many if not all of our religious systems have failed us, they have become so driven with legalistic arguments about who's right and who's wrong, who's good and who's evil, whats allowed and whats not; and like our political system they have become focused on attacking anyone who opposes them or even thinks differently; and in the process they have moved away from the teachings of their faiths.
Our systems have failed us so badly, that we have become obsessed with freedom from government, small government, less government, lower taxes; to the point that many basic human services are becoming non-existent or non-functional; failed us so badly that our health care system is obsessed and driven by corporate profits rather than making people healthier, or curing the sick.
It wasn't Sarah Palin or Rush Limbaugh who drove Laughner to do what he did, but it is all of our systems and all of those who drive and control and influence our systems, and all of us who are part of our systems who are to be blamed for the tragedy last Saturday.
But most critically is was a failure of our health care system, failures to detect Laughner's problems, failures to provide his schools or family resources to detect and address his problems, but most of all a failure by each and everyone of us to remove the stigma that is still attached to mental illness.

Campaign Limits

Part of the problem with our political system is that with the rapid growth and proliferation of media our political campaign season which used to be a few weeks before the primary and then a couple months before the general, and then our elected officials went back to work; has turned into a constant never ending campaign.
Not only is it all year long during election years, but now it has even expanded into non-election years. Parties and/or candidates that lose an election often immediately start campaigning to discredit the victors and position for the next election.
This inflicts a media storm onto the consumers, but it also greatly impacts the work that our elected officials can do, and greatly impacts any cooperation between individuals and the parties. The constant campaigning makes any true bi-partisan cooperation almost impossible. The first two years of the Obama administration are perfect examples. Republican congressmen who previously supported legislation are now opposed to it, not for any good reason, but just because they're hoping that they can prevent their "opponents" from actually accomplishing anything, or doing anything that might work. Our representatives no longer do whats best for the country, they do what they think is most likely to make their opponents look bad.

The constant campaigning causes both parties and all elected representatives to be much more concerned with seeing their opponents fail or look bad, than cooperating. They would prefer to have something bad happen to the country that can be blamed on their opponent, than cooperate with an opponent and have something good happen for the country. We must end this. We need harsh limits on the duration of political ads, the amount of money spent on campaigns. Maybe political ads should be limited to printed media? TV and radio are too invasive and too addictive and we can't or won't turn them off even when we know we should. Print only political ads would take some of the emotion and showmanship out of political advertising. Its more difficult to trick someone into believing something, or to convince someone of a factless theory on paper, than it is with actors and deceitful or fraudulent images.

Why do we lie so much?

Everyone lies.

Politicians, media, government officials, corporate officials, entertainers, radio people, tv people, authors, friends, neighbors, relatives; they/we all lie a lot.

People like to talk, but are very poor at listening.

People will believe almost anything if it supports their point of view, or if it attacks an opposing point of view, even if there are no facts or any supporting evidence for the thing they want to believe. So we not only lie to each other but we lie to ourselves.

People will ignore the truth, ignore facts, will ignore plain obvious information right in front of them if it detracts or discounts or disputes a belief they have.

What we really need to do is instead of believing everything we hear, or everything we want to believe, we should assume everything is a lie. Then you need to look at what is motivating the liar to lie, and then decide if you want to follow that course or not.

Why? What is it about humans that makes us so inherently dishonest? We spread rumors that aren't true, we tell stories that aren't true, be trick people, scam people, we believe things that aren't true. We have entire industries that seem to be built on lieing to people, tricking them or getting them to believe someting that isn't true (the advertising industry).

Why?

Ceasefire in the war on Terror?

Is it time for a ceasefire in the war on terror? Are our military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan really accomplishing what we want? Are we really any safer now? Are the Iraqi or Afghan people safer now? Are they better off now?
Has the progress been significant enough to justify the loss in life required to achieve it? Or the dollar expense? Are our military actions reducing the number of terrorist, or are we just motivating terrorism and creating more terrorists with every military action, with every death or injury? Do we understand what motivates terrorism, or what is pushing them to such extreme actions? Would we be more effective taking actions to address the things that motivate terrorists?
Would doing something about hunger, unemployment, poverty, inadequate health care (physical, dental, AND mental), education, economic injustice, social and cultural prejiduce be more effective than military offensives? Would building roads, or schools, or health clinics be more effective than dropping bombs?
Instead of just trying to kill everyone who hates us, maybe we should ask ourselves why they hate us, and see if there is something we can do to change that, other than simply killing them.


Instead of paying the american military industrial corporations billions of dollars to build huge nuclear submarines that our navy doesn't want, or fleets of cargo planes that our air force says it doesn't need, instead of paying them to build stockpiles of nuclear and chemical weapons, or build fleets of fighter jets designed to fight a war against the huge air forces of Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union; instead why don't we pay the american military industrial complex to bomb Iraq and Afghanistan with food, medical supplies, tools, and books?
Instead of building gigantic nuclear submarines with missiles carrying dozens of nuclear warheads, why don't we build schools, health clinics, hospitals, libraries, community centers, wells, housing?
The problem is that corporate america likes making money building things that kill people, they can hide behind "security", and if they build a bomb that kills 100's of people everyone's happy, if the bomb doesn't work no one cares, they don't get in trouble, if the bomb misses its target and kills innocent people they still don't get in trouble, they can hide behind "security", or "its classified", or "its top-secret". But if they have to build a school or a library or a bridge that won't collapse and kill innocent people they have nothing to hide behind. Its also easy to hide outrageous expenses and excessive profits behind "security", or by giving it the "top-secret" label, but its not so easy to justify or hide huge cost over-runs when you're building a two-room school house.
This is why our country has come to be a war machine. This is why our country thrives on military action rather than humanitary aid or political negotiations or compromises; because corporate america can't make obscene truckloads of money that way.
Is this how we want our country to be? IF this were truly a democracy would a majority of our people really want to live like this?

Greed as the American way of Life

Greed is the central factor in most if not all our problems.

Greed is pushing business to increase profits, to increase executive compensation, to increase stockholder value.
That in turn is pushing business to cut wages for the majority of employees, to spend money to influence government, to try to avoid rules and regulations that might impact profits,

Some greed can be written off as basic self interest or self preservation. But in the larger scheme of things there are more and more situations where greed should not be a factor or where it is not in the best interest of the parties involved, but more and more greed is creeping into those situations as an influencing factor.

Why?

There is a huge brain drain at the highest levels in our corporate and government world.
What has happened is that more and more government and business is being driven at the highest levels by people who are high on motivation but low on skills and intelligence, they are lacking in foresight and long range planning, and in some cases are lacking in morals and ethics. They are mainly driven by greed, so since they lack the skill and creativity to come up with new or innovative or stable or sustainable or ethical ways to make money, the resort to the easiest ways to make money. Rather than make a new mousetrap, just keep making the same old mousetrap but try to charge more for it, or cut the wages of the workers making it, or cut the pensions or health care, or out source the jobs to somewhere else, or try to sidestep health, safety, or environmental rules to allow you to cut the cost of making the mousetrap, or try to influence government to give you a tax break or impose tax burdens or import restrictions on your competitors.

Current american business and government is operating with this kind of an approach, and is ignoring more feasible, stable long term approaches.; and ignoring major problems with their current approach.
1) Influencing government to get assistance or tax breaks. This is a classic house or cards. Its kind of like the classic blackjack strategy of doubling your bet everytime you lose, in theory it will work, as long as you have an infinite supply of money to cover any long losing streaks. Trying to survive by goverment favors for your business is the same, the well is only so deep, IF every business, industry, or special interest group got all the breaks and benefits from government that they want where would it end? Who will pay the bill? It has to stop somewhere. american business in every industry whether its wall street financial companies or the iowa corn syrup lobby, or logging, or mining, or automakers, or drug companies, or insurance, or whatever; they need to stop relying on favors or special deals from government to help them. Will they? Probably not? Why? Any sensible person looking at the situation can quickly and easily see that its an unsustainable model, eventually the government is going to run out of money, 2 years, 5 years, 10, 20,or 50. It doesn't matter when, it will happen, and any intelligent business will see that and realize that they should not operate their business to rely on that.

2) Outsourcing, cutting wages, etc
These are different situations but really cause the same problem. Most businesses relying on selling some product or providing a service that in large part is bought and paid for with money that came from wages they have paid out to their employees. It the mousetrap factory cuts the wages of its employees, then they're going to have less money to buy mousetraps, or if jobs are outsourced to a foreign country then their will be more local people out of work, with less money to buy mousetraps.
Outsourcing has the added short-sighted problem in that outsourcing to a less developed country is attractive because wages are lower in that country. BUT eventually wages will increase to the point where its no longer beneficial, 2 years, 5 years, 10,20, 50?? Again it doesn't matter, a business with foresight will understand that eventually it will be a big problem for them, and that they are better off to keep the makers or their mousetraps and the consumers of their mousetrap more closely aligned.

2) Sidestepping rules and regulations
Love Canal, Bhopal India, W.R Grace mines in Libby Montana, West Virginia coal mines. Are short term profit increases really worth the risks?

Another example of short-sightedness, or the inability to be innovative is american industries reliance on the war machine approach to business. american industry did some amazing things during World War II, and our industrial effort may have had nearly as much to our victory as military tactics, BUT american industry became addicted to that business model, a large customer with a large checkbook, with a huge demand for products, and more concern for immediate delivery and not much concern for cost. That is a very nice situation to be in if your are a producer of one of those products, but again it is NOT sustainable and very short sighted to tailor your business to rely on that model, and most of american business is using that model. Maybe not all of american industry but there is a large part of american industry who benefits by the american military being involved all around the world using up bullets, bombs, MRE's, gasoline, tires, uniforms, helmets, etc., sadly a side-effect of using all those products is that people die.
Again the short-sightedness. Why hasn't the american industrial war-machine transitioned into a less lethal product line? The brain drain? Laziness? Lack of creativity or innovation? Greed? Ethics?

Ever since World War II, there have been very few times when the american military was not actively at war somewhere around the world. Its one thing to have a good defense and to protect our citizens, but many of the locations where our military is operating are not threats to our citizens, and many of the weapons and technology they are using are not protecting our citizens from any real threat.

There are a couple of conflicting or possibly compatible quotes that apply.
"Walk softly but carry a big stick",
And
"You can catch more flies with honey, than vinegar"

There are many bad people all around the world, and there are countries and dictatorships that do terrible things and treat their people badly, but are we really accomplishing the effect we want by stomping into a country and kill people, even if our weapons were 100% accurate and we only killed the "bad" people, it probably doesn't achieve the result we hope for, people are different, cultures, religions, geography, whatever, you can expect or force other people to think the same way you do.
Again the short-sightedness, and greed, maybe not greed in a monetary sense, but greed in control and power.
The short-sighted approach is "kill all the bad people that hate me"? Will that work? Maybe a better approach would be to
undertand how they think or feel, what it is that they hate about me, maybe its something I can change, maybe I could explain to them why I do it, but trying to kill them is not going to do any of those things.

In Iraq and Afghanistan carpet bombing those countries with money may have been a much better solution to the problems, but it would NOT have made nearly so much money for the american industrial war complex.

Are most americans for or against health care reform?

Why do politicians and commentators lie so much?
I keep hearing commentators and politicians so that "most americans", or that "an overwhelming majority of americans", or that a "significant majority of americans" are against or opposed to the health care reform legilations.
So I thought I'd try to find out if thats true, and hears a Gallup poll from January 12th
http://www.gallup.com/poll/125030/Healthcare-Bill-Support-Ticks-Up-Public-Divided.aspx
According to the Gallup poll 49% of Americans are FOR or Leaning For passing the current health care package, and 46% are Against or Leaning Against passage of the health care package.

I'm no math wizard, but it doesn't seem to me that 49% For and 46% Against is really an overwhelming, significant or any kind of a majority Against anything?

So I guess that whenever politicians and commentators say that an "overwhelming" majority of Americans support something, they really mean an overwhelming majority of "the people who think like I do", and no one else's opinion really matters.

Whats wrong with the American Justice system

Why do the republicans hate the American justice system so much? Why do they have no faith in a system that has served us since the beginnings of the republic, a system that is a foundation of our country? What are they afraid of? Are they afraid of truth, or honesty, or justice? Our forefathers didn't put a provision in our constitution that it applies to some people but not to others.
If an american citizen was arrested in a foreign country and was tried in a secret military tribunal the republicans would be outraged. Which is exactly what the republicans want to do with the terror suspects. Our bill of rights says that all people are created equal, it does not say that some people are created equal and others can be treated differently.

These terrorists are criminals, and they should be treated as criminals. Treating them as adversaries in a war gives them a degree of respect and legitimacy that they do not deserve. These criminals should be dealt with in our American justice system just like any other common criminal.

There is no good reason to judge them in a secret military court, unless the republicans are afraid, or are trying to hide something, or are afraid of the truth that might be revealed in an open court. I believe that these terrorist criminals will be judged honestly in an American court and will be found guilty, but I also believe that some of the heinous, barbaric, and ineffective tactics employed but some parts of our government in the name of "interrogation" will also be exposed; and in both instances the American people benefit.

The only rationale for hiding these trials from the American people is to hide the barbaric torturing that was done to some of these criminals and to protect the people who did the torturing.

As a people we can not be outraged when our citizens are tortured by a foreign country, and condone the torture of criminals that we have captured.