becoming socialist
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becoming socialist
| Fri, 10-03-2008 - 9:56pm |
Is there anything for the citizens who don't want to become socialists to do. What should I be doing? I don't want our country on that path and it seems it is.

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**By amending NAFTA he wants to increase barriers to free trade. Higher taxes, higher prices.
Reward companies that create good jobs with good benefits for American workers. The carrot will be some kind of government spending, and since these jobs are being done with more expensive labor, prices will increase.
Why doesn't he just cut the tax rate on corporations if he doesn't want them to ship jobs overseas? Taxes are cheaper over there. Can't do that, because that would not increase the size of government.**
You didn't provide any facts here - just your opimion. Again, how does amending NAFTA mean higher taxes?
So you don't want companies that create good jobs with good benefits? Would you prefer companies that ship jobs oversea? Or perhaps companies that create jobs with no benefits? Or companies that create only temporary jobs?
How do you know he wants to increase the size of government? Or that McCain wants to limit the size of government? Seems we have really gotten a larger government under W - so again - where are the facts that support your claims and what indicates that McCain's policies would not do the same thing - or worse?
"Did you note that Paulson was in on this?"
Yep! Skeptical doesn't even describe the lack of trust I have in this or any other scheme this admin. cooks-up. I was reading an article in the most recent issue of Time mag.
These things are cyclical. The pendulum swings too far one way, and so it is pushed back the other way. The left went too far in terms of where the mentality and outlook of this nation lies, and so things went the other way. Now the nation sees excess once again, and the pendulum heads left.
The answer lies in looking at the excess of the right, things that went too far... the war, the tax cuts, deregulation, messing with rights.
http://llhaesa.org/
Full length fiction: worlds undone
"You have no power over my body..." ~ Anne Hutchinson
Before you pin that on Carter, look closer.
American industry was wallowing in producing poor products, because it could get away with producing and selling poor products, even though they were capable of doing far better. Once competition came into play, problems began.
Add in decades of Republican *and* Democratic policy towards Iran as well as the middle east, you get the oil mess.
A huge part of the problems now actually has its genesis with Reagan's huge deficits - after he had excoriated
Full length fiction: worlds undone
"You have no power over my body..." ~ Anne Hutchinson
Remember Eliot Spitzer? He wrote this article before his fall from grace......
Predatory Lenders' Partner in Crime
How the Bush Administration Stopped the States From Stepping In to Help Consumers
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/13/AR2008021302783.html
By Eliot Spitzer
Thursday, February 14, 2008; A25
Several years ago, state attorneys general and others involved in consumer protection began to notice a marked increase in a range of predatory lending practices by mortgage lenders. Some were misrepresenting the terms of loans, making loans without regard to consumers' ability to repay, making loans with deceptive "teaser" rates that later ballooned astronomically, packing loans with undisclosed charges and fees, or even paying illegal kickbacks. These and other practices, we noticed, were having a devastating effect on home buyers. In addition, the widespread nature of these practices, if left unchecked, threatened our financial markets.
Even though predatory lending was becoming a national problem, the Bush administration looked the other way and did nothing to protect American homeowners. In fact, the government chose instead to align itself with the banks that were victimizing consumers.
Predatory lending was widely understood to present a looming national crisis. This threat was so clear that as New York attorney general, I joined with colleagues in the other 49 states in attempting to fill the void left by the federal government. Individually, and together, state attorneys general of both parties brought litigation or entered into settlements with many subprime lenders that were engaged in predatory lending practices. Several state legislatures, including New York's, enacted laws aimed at curbing such practices.
What did the Bush administration do in response? Did it reverse course and decide to take action to halt this burgeoning scourge? As Americans are now painfully aware, with hundreds of thousands of homeowners facing foreclosure and our markets reeling, the answer is a resounding no.
Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye.
Let me explain: The administration accomplished this feat through an obscure federal agency called the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). The OCC has been in existence since the Civil War. Its mission is to ensure the fiscal soundness of national banks. For 140 years, the OCC examined the books of national banks to make sure they were balanced, an important but uncontroversial function. But a few years ago, for the first time in its history, the OCC was used as a tool against consumers.
In 2003, during the height of the predatory lending crisis, the OCC invoked a clause from the 1863 National Bank Act to issue formal opinions preempting all state predatory lending laws, thereby rendering them inoperative. The OCC also promulgated new rules that prevented states from enforcing any of their own consumer protection laws against national banks. The federal government's actions were so egregious and so unprecedented that all 50 state attorneys general, and all 50 state banking superintendents, actively fought the new rules.
But the unanimous opposition of the 50 states did not deter, or even slow, the Bush administration in its goal of protecting the banks. In fact, when my office opened an investigation of possible discrimination in mortgage lending by a number of banks, the OCC filed a federal lawsuit to stop the investigation.
Throughout our battles with the OCC and the banks, the mantra of the banks and their defenders was that efforts to curb predatory lending would deny access to credit to the very consumers the states were trying to protect. But the curbs we sought on predatory and unfair lending would have in no way jeopardized access to the legitimate credit market for appropriately priced loans. Instead, they would have stopped the scourge of predatory lending practices that have resulted in countless thousands of consumers losing their homes and put our economy in a precarious position.
When history tells the story of the subprime lending crisis and recounts its devastating effects on the lives of so many innocent homeowners, the Bush administration will not be judged favorably. The tale is still unfolding, but when the dust settles, it will be judged as a willing accomplice to the lenders who went to any lengths in their quest for profits. So willing, in fact, that it used the power of the federal government in an unprecedented assault on state legislatures, as well as on state attorneys general and anyone else on the side of consumers.
The writer is governor of New York.
I posted a link not to long ago and will cut a snip from it about the SEC.
snip
<Bush v. Gore. President Bill Clinton and the Republican-controlled Congress were locked in a budget showdown. It was the perfect moment for a wily senator to game the system. As Congress and the White House were hurriedly hammering out a $384-billion omnibus spending bill, Gramm slipped in a 262-page measure called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. Written with the help of financial industry lobbyists and cosponsored by Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), the chairman of the agriculture committee, the measure had been considered dead—even by Gramm. Few lawmakers had either the opportunity or inclination to read the version of the bill Gramm inserted. "Nobody in either chamber had any knowledge of what was going on or what was in it," says a congressional aide familiar with the bill's history.
It's not exactly like Gramm hid his handiwork—far from it. The balding and bespectacled Texan strode onto the Senate floor to hail the act's inclusion into the must-pass budget package. But only an expert, or a lobbyist, could have followed what Gramm was saying. The act, he declared, would ensure that neither the sec nor the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (cftc) got into the business of regulating newfangled financial products called swaps—and would thus "protect financial institutions from overregulation" and "position our financial services industries to be world leaders into the new century.">>
Guild Member since 2009
Carter did not do so well.
A huge part of the mess now is due to Freddie and Fannie being allowed to back loans to severely unqualified people. A practice that the democrats vigorously defended, and the republicans wanted to stop.
I see... so Democrats are at fault for this, yet the right supports deregulation?
How do you support deregulation whilst also excoriating Democrats on
Full length fiction: worlds undone
"You have no power over my body..." ~ Anne Hutchinson
Uh....so....in answer to the question of where Obama has said or advocated anything like THIS:
"They would nationalize everything if they could and take 90% of your pay. Imagine a government that chooses your car, house, food, and cloths for you."
...your answer is (based upon the lack of any evidence in your post): he hasn't?
Got it. Thanks.
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