Not from me. If your analysis into the mess we have found ourselves in goes no deeper than using Barney Frank as a whipping boy, (frank)ly you are not looking very hard. Yep, if us lazy, immoral liberals would just work for a living instead of sitting in front of the TV drinking cocktails, smoking dope, and finding new, illicit lifestyles to engage in (all possible because of our welfare check), then all would be right with the world. It is interesting to me to hear conservatives rail against the rise of state socialism (as they perceive it), yet in no way acknowledge that we in fact live in an era of oligopoly crony state capitalism, where the very largest corporations exert extraordinary influence over our congress through lobbying and campaign contributions (250 million dollars and counting directed towards congress in the last two years by the health insurance industry). The self correcting free market capitalism that conservatives speak of with such reverence does not exist because there is no level playing field. Teddy Roosevelt spoke out against the damage of monopolies over a hundred years ago and strongly urged their regulation. World wide oligopolies exert a similar stifling effect on competition, and create environments where working people are impoverished rather than empowered, no matter how hard they work. The net effect is that the very few have more and more, and everyone else has less. Before you accuse me of being a communist or worse, let me say that I am a capitalist, and still believe that is the best way to go is capitalism. But a capitalism that is skillfully regulated as needed. It is a fact that capitalist companies work to make money (that's fine). But sometimes how they choose to make that money conflicts with the larger interests of the societies they exist within. It is a proper function of government (who else could do it?) to regulate so that the larger interests of the society are served first when needed, to the greater and lasting benefit of the most people. If our government had regulated our lending institutions better, then sub-prime mortgages would never have been invented. The inflated real estate market would have self corrected much sooner, with far less damage to our economy than we see now. Barney Frank did not invent sub primes, nor did he force others to invent them. Or engage in free-for-all lending policies where lying was a norm, no consideration to the future impact of how mortages were written was given because the mortgage would be sold a few hours later and the house of cards would collapse on somebody else's head (or so they thought). Considering the desperate straits that most state governments are in right now, I don't think I'll wait in line very long for my welfare check. Then I'll look for a job. When that fails, I'll get in the Soup Kitchen line. Will Truitt I'm done. I'll say no more. From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of David Pritchard Sent: Sunday, November 22, 2009 9:33 AM To: pianotech at ptg.org Subject: Re: [pianotech] Gated communities William Truitt wrote: It is an indisputable statistical fact that the rich are getting richer, and everybody else is getting poorer - more and more wealth is concentrating in the hands of fewer and fewer people, and that has accelerated during this great economic crisis that we still find ourselves in. Who amongst us piano technicians does not feel assaulted by these economic changes? It is not to our benefit when fewer and fewer people feel they can afford our services. I agree 100%! If the liberals among us would stop promoting the welfare state for the purpose of growing their docile voting block, we could encourage more people to work hard and get themselves out of poverty. If Barney Frank and his cronies in congress hadn't forced mortgage companies to loan to people that couldn't afford the house they wanted, we wouldn't be in this economic crisis. The farther down the road we go towards socialism, the more the producers in society will not have a reason to work hard and the more the non-producers will expect more and more from the government. Can I hear an Amen? David -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20091122/b426166b/attachment.htm>
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