It is odd that the best way to make money in this country is to work and/or invest in companies related to the war machine, technologies (mostly consumer) or energy (mostly exploitation). There are no funds for those who promote health, especially mental, in individuals and families. You only make money if you have a drug or procedure for disease. And forget education because that is now a business whose funding is dictated by the government and not the needs of the population. Those without a conscience seem to make the most money wherever they are. It seems to me that this will all collapse in time because of the absence of humanity within both government and corporations.

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Until we figure out how to educate effectively kids from poor backgrounds who have reading difficulties and little understanding of the world beyond their video game or drug dealer model neighborhood, incomes will not go up for poorer people. Real income gains are not going to happen by raising the minimum wage by a dollar or two. (which I support). People who are basically not in the workforce where new kinds of jobs at higher salaries and who are not equity owners of stocks or real estate or both basically have little or not chance to succeed. That is neither moral nor immoral. It is a fact. Education is the solution and the current education system is still teaching a curriculum and is on a 12 grade schedule unrelated to technology or developmental changes in modern youth. This is not a partisan problem. Perhaps the whole system should be handed off to Microsoft. They can't screw it up more than the unqualified politicians and ineffective multibillion dollar education programs we now have.

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Ivins is a major booster of more illegal immigration. In fact, her last column castigated the GOP for their illegal immigration enforcement tough talk, even though the GOP is really just making lip-service motions. But apparently even that is too much for Ivins.

By being a mouthpiece for pro-immigration, she is helping the rich investors drive down American wages. That is making the American poor even poorer, and the American rich even richer.

So, yes, Molly, I agree with you. American poor are getting poorer and American rich (like Ivins herself) are laughing all the way to the bank.

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Republicans are peculiar people -- they want to pay their employees $1 a day but charge them $1000 a month rent. A time must be surely be coming when this disparity poses a problem -- and an effort to put the squeeze on employers to stop hiring illegal immigrants will bring them to that moment of truth sooner rather than later. It costs a lot to live in the United States, and when the business owners, stockholders, and investors wake up and realize that the demise of workers' buying power is hurting them (less pay = less spending) they will go ahead and increase the minimum wage. For now, though, the mentality is to take the money and run (if Republicans like to call Democrats the "cut and run" party, then Democrats should call the Republicans the "take the money and run" party, which is much more truthful). It's very important for the Democrats to take back congressional power, then strengthen and reinforce the labor laws against businesses employing illegal immigrants, so the process of reversing the downward wage spiral can move forward.

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"For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil."

You know, along with that whole thing about respecting your 'bondservants', since they're people too and they're working for you. Oh, and that bit about being content with what you require to be healthy and comfortable, instead of striving to live in gross excess. There's a lot of other stuff there, too, gobs of it. All kinds of neat ideas and concepts about how being a greedy bastard kind of sucks, and other tidbits of advice including something to the effect of, "Don't be a dick."

Sometimes I can't help but laugh at the ruling party and the people who follow it. Yes, let's rework our party's foundation to one based largely if not almost entirely on faith, and go about boasting all kinds of 'faith based initiatives' and claim divine inspiration. Then we'll shoot ourselves in the foot by contradicting that same faith in a million different ways, day in, day out, even writing these contradictions into law. It's okay though, we're men of God. He's got our back, he's our homie. We don't have to walk the walk - we just have to talk the talk. That's all that matters.

Ah, but I digress. Let's not get ahead of ourselves - I'm not trying to start a religious debate, because then that'd make me a prick, and I'd really rather not be called a troll twice in the same week. The point is, we're under the boot of a band of hypocrites who don't given even a fraction of a fuck about America or it's people, and I agree that we little people have been put on the back burner. I don't even think you could consider it a burner, more like a hot plate with a nasty short that makes it toss sparks and shit whenever you try to cook something. One so screwed up it can't even do instant noodles right. That's a really screwed up hot plate you've got there, if it can't even cook instant noodles.

Anyway, yeah, shit sucks, etc. Neat article, good points, most of my hometown is still poor, and there's no end in sight. Kind of makes you wonder why democratic socialism never really caught on, but that's a whole other kettle of fish right there. As for me, I'm hungry for some ramen.

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First, there are ideologues supporting wealth condensation as a matter of principle, as per Bush Sr.'s "tighter, righter hands." Various neo-monarchist religious types are in on this AIUI (Ahmanson, Rushdoony while living, etc.).

Second, there are ideologues attempting to cause a fiscal crisis so that they can eliminate social programs without the possibility of a later administration resurrecting them. These are the "starve the beast" proponents such as Grover Norquist.

Third, there are plain old profiteers strip-mining the economy for profit. Likely aware of the other two groups of economy-wreckers, they're cashing out of the US and moving their assets overseas (as has been happening with numerous US companies "going global").

A theme common to all three positions is that the sorts of wealth distribution common in Third World countries are the proponents' visions of the ideal structure of society. There we would be entitled to nothing whatsoever, not even not to starve to death. There our places are perpetual self-abasement as their servants or stunbelted in a prison assembly line. Otherwise we're to be so mired in the filth of slums as to be routinely decimated by cholera. If they could replace all "commoners" with robots, they would kill us all because they despise us so.

Kissinger gives true insight into the upper class' views: we are "slaves" and "useless eaters."

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I don't believe our main problem is the greed of Republicans. I think that the problem is that corporations are out of control. Even worse I believe that they control both political parties with campaign funds and powerful lobbies. In fact, they control our government regardless of the party in power.

True, greed keeps the rich from seeing this problem. They think that the corporations are doing fine and they're opposed to controlling them. So we the people must take control of our government and force it to put human rights above corporate privileges.

We can take control of both parties before the next election with a grassroots movement and a winning strategy.

Consider these facts:
1. The corporate establishment controls both parties with campaign funds.
2. The political parties want campaign funds to get our votes.
3. If we the people, individually, tell both parties that we'll cast a write-in protest vote if neither supports our favorite issue the campaign funds lose value. The parties will compete for our votes. The election will be to choose the party with the best platform.

Join The Lincoln Initiative make "government of the people, by the people, and for the people" a reality. Click on Join Today

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There is no doubt that Molly is one of my favorite fellow Austin writers, and the biggest issue in America is that the word JOB has become dirtier than the word F**K. Americans should have revolted against the CEO salary packages decades ago, and politicians who do not support a substantial increase in the minimum wage should have already been thrown out of office. Molly does have one big blind spot, though: she is supporting and agreeing with our most heinous leaders when she supports illegal immigration. Has it not occured to anyone that Rove and his gang of bandits have stirred up the immigration issue in the first place just so they can supply the corporations with exploitable cheap labor indefinitely? No matter how you slice up America, the right wing neocons may be the evil side, but the left wing refuses to put the race card away forever. In all the media hoopla over immigration, has a single talking head ever mentioned Mexico and rubbers in the same sentence? No matter what you might think of the neocons, the immigration hawks are right. The exploitation of people for cheap labor is not a good thing for either the people being exploited or for America in general. If Molly despises Bush so much, why is she supporting him on the immigration issue? We must increase, not decrease, the individual value of all Americans, and exploding the population of an uneducated, exploitable workforce devalues us all.

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Think about it, for $5.15 per hour you can choose to buy one gallon of milk or one of gas, you can't have both. So, you have to keep working. As long as you have to keep working more and more to buy essentials you shoulod always have a job as you try to feed your family and figure out a shorter route to get to work so you don't have to buy more gas. Pr, maybe take a bus whcih would be good for the envoironment because people who make low wages probably use big old gas guzzlers and older cars that pollute more. $5.15 is good because you will always have a job at a lowere wage. Your employer won't have the burden of paying out more money to people who would waste it on things like gas, which causes pollution, or beer, whcih leads to sickness and crime and higher health insurance cost to taxpayers because we all know the damn low-wage workers have no insurances and that they use free-care at the ED whcih WE pay for.
And if employers had to pay more in wages and insurances and taxes guess who foots the bill? WE DO! You see, employers won't be able to buy more capital goods like expensive cars and boats and the taxes they pay on those things don't get rerouted back into the economy. Low wages are good for America, that's why so many illegal aliens are flocking to live in the US. If wages were hight hey wouldn't be coming becasue Americans would be using up all of the good paying jobs and they would demand even more wages and benefits and probsbly want to unioize, and we all know that unions leads to communism.

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While all of the other evidence of the income disparity persists, insurance executives, owners of an industry worth 7 trillion dollars per year, are keeping more and more of the income, but paying less and less to the people who lose life, limb or property. That's becuase insurance profits can be set by the insurance companies, without anti-trust regulation; and because state legislatures and Congress have taken away the civil justice system as the equalizer between large insurance companies and people who are hurt by their insureds. Michael Townes Watson, author of America's Tunnel Vision--How Insurance Companies' Propaganda Is Corrupting Medicine and Law. www.StopMedicalError.com

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The Bushies have been tasked by their chief corporate sponsors to accomplish their prime mission which is to increase poverty in the USA and in the entire world. They are doing a heck of a good job at doing just that thanks to Ken Lay and other corporate crooks. It is government of the crooks, by the crooks and for the crooks. PATHETIC.

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"Anyone who doesn't think this is a country where the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer needs to check the numbers..."

Yeah but anyone who thinks like this isn't going to check their numbers. They don't care about numbers, facts, evidence, etc

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Yeah, the GOP is run by people who imagine that they are in a jungle where only the worthy survive. It's OK to take from others, because that's the way the strong and fit can be identified. No wonder they don't believe in evolution. Their social darwinism would reveal their real self-justification.

At the same time, we need to realize that the US remains the world's banker because of the economic stability (think: low inflation) promoted by our central bank. The benefits of keeping the dollar as the world's currency are enormous. One of the requirements for keeping inflation low is to keep wages low. CEO salaries are a drop in the bucket compared to ordinary wages--which as I see have finally begun to rise slightly.

Uping the minimum wage would not threaten low inflation, but it might provoke demands for higher wages, and that could bust the back of inflation.

Yes, we are walking a tightrope. And it is the poor who have to work the hardest to keep the rope taught. I cannot see it getting easier--certainly not in the short term and the long term is even more threatening.

So long as we have more human beings than the economy requires, labor will be cheap. So long as labor is cheap (or unorganized or both, as currently), many will suffer.

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It is not about how much Bill Gates or others give to charity; it is about the culture of greed. It is about Walmart not paying living wages or full health benefits when they can afford. The Waltons are very rich...they could put huge amounts of money back into the company to promote social justice. And where would they be if they each put 10 billion into company health care and wages...they would be very rich still. Companies are moving jobs offshore, because eight percent profit is not enough. Profit must be ten or twelve percent to be "world class." These examples are not survival, they are greed.

The unfortunate thing is we are all afflicted--not just corporations and the super wealthy. We want stuff, more stuff all the time. We consume more and more. We are overloaded with clothes and trinkets and cars and stuff. We are getting fatter. We are leading ourselves to slaughter just so we can have more. Immigrants know survival, packing many into a small apartment, working for nothing, living on nothing, sending money home to their families. Theirs is survival, survival and hope...ours, including mine, is greed.

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Re: The Politics of American Greed

Would you vote for your boss? Does your boss want to pay you more?

It is a fact that a vote for a Republican is a vote for your employer/boss. Perhaps we should simply boycott corporations - go to work but do not purchase their products. They get tax cuts while we do not, we get the low wages while they live well and we are just surviving on low wages. This has gone on long enough. Those who are going along with this administration do not seem to know that they are not "players" we are all being used big-time.

I have cancelled our cable tv. Our tv is now our entertainment center. So we are one less family that does not see their commercials.

Aimee & Richard
www.dataoptions.com

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I was born on planet Earth
At a drastic time full of plastic mirth.
And every day I've seen increasing signs
And you would too, if you'd open your eyes.
You had a chance, you did not try.
So now it's time to watch it die.

--Bad Religion

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Seems Molly just can't help herself but engage in the old liberal standby of class warfare. I don't support the increases in the minimum wage structure because they are entry level positions that can lead to better skills and better paying jobs. Why would I as a business owner want to have imposed on me to hire and pay exorbitantly to keep unskilled and lately uneducated folk to work my store? Many of these folk aren't worth the $6.00 an hour that I pay them now. They don't work and they certainly don't do right by my reputation as a business owner. I replace about 50% of my work force every 2 months on average. If I could find people that have a decent work ethic and are reliable I'd spend the extra money as inducements to keep them on my payroll. In 2 years the majority of these decent workers would be making around $10.00 an hour. As it is these decent workers I do have are bettering their skills and education and leaving for much better paying positions...... which is the way it should be. Molly is doing nothing more in this article than playing the old standard liberal tactic of inciting class envy and liberal guilt. More of the same old.....same old from Molly.

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The whole minimum wage controversy is ridiculous. What is needed to eliminate poverty is a "guaranteed minimum standard of living" provided to all citizens without regard to merit. It is not just the only way to mitigate poverty, but also the most cost effective way to maintain social stability.

Attempting to remedy the momentous social problem of poverty by increasing the minimum wage is about as effective as applying a band aid to a hemorrahage. Even if the minimum wage were raised to the proposed level, it would still provide an income below the poverty line and do absolutely nothing for the millions of people who are living in poverty who are not in the labor in the labor market. Whether you want to regard these people as a social responsibility or a burden is irrelevant they are a reality that must be dealt with.

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It is no surprise that the gap between rich and poor has grown wider during the biggest phase of mass migration - legal and illegal - in US (and western countries) history. We are seeing on mass a diminution of wages and employment conditions under the guise of 'Americans (or British or Canadians) won't do these jobs, or won't do them for this salary'.

There is a deliberate wage deflation agenda going on here. It is masked as help for the third world, or as an anti-racism agenda (though how displacing low-paid black workers from jobs is anti-racist I have never worked out).

Another myth here is the link between immigration and economic growth, technological innovation, social stability etc. There are many countries in the world who don't use immigration to fuel growth, innovation or prosperity. They are in Asia and Northern Europe. The Japanese only today have invented a device to capture odours. Not the work of a lazy, mono-racial population there.

If immigration is really about social justice for the migrants, then the government needs to make it legal and properly funded and organised. It must not off-load all the costs on to poor neighbourhoods and on to the prisons and social services.

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Look for the next American Revolution to resemble the French Revolution of 200+ years ago. Our "Investor class," along with its lackeys working in Congress, will assume the role of French royalty and our "worker class" will man the guillotines. Given the rate at which American jobs are being "outsourced," guillotine operators, head retrievers, and device deblooders might be the only positions available when the "revolting development" begins.

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The Immigration issue is comparable, I believe, to the abortion and gay marriage issues of past election cycles. If the powers that be really wanted a solution, Corporate America would be paying huge fines. We live in a police state, why can Wallmart employ illegals at night to clean the store ??? BUT to argue over this issue is to not be wide awake to the real issues of rich vs poor.
Big Brother will indoctrinate minds with constant "so called NEWS" to the extent everyone believes whatever the propaganda for the week happens to be.

We really do have to listen very carefully to the propaganda experts on our side. One way to remain in power is to get the poor fighting the poor. By poor I mean people that are not in the 1% of the rich who rule. Poor people that the rich tolerate, like media personalities, are just being USED, and they are selling their own childrens futures.

Repubs and Dems have been corrupted by their Power, and some people who want to be near that power have also been duped by their greed for the taste of power,ever so small, a crumb.

Reality is hard, and some do not want to do the hard work to discern propaganda and reality. "You know those poor ignorant people don't really want to get ahead." Maybe today those are not your children they are talking about but in the very near future they will be, if we don't all get together and VOTE them All out, and try to take back some sort of control. This election year is very very important. The chance for some change may not come again !!!!!!

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Life in the U.S.A. is almost like seeing a movie: All the economic zaniness we see transpiring around us is a cruel gag about people struggling to make ends meet and living beyond our means if you're a minimum-wage worker. How do we do it without going deeper into debt?
Pick up a newspaper or watch TV news and what do we hear/see? The rich are getting richer and the poor are becoming more poor.
You don't have to read the stock market page or read the Wall Street Journal to find this out. Just take a walk-or drive-through your city and see who is "making it" Or who has "made it."
In our zeal for the so-called "good life", we're working harder (and sometimes working longer hours) to become a member of the affluent class. To me there's no more "middle."
I live in Los Angeles where there life is at the extremes between who has "it" and those who don't. This city is a ployglot of haves, the wannabe haves who live on credit cards, live in homes or condos where the rent is over $3,000 and work two jobs (yes, YOU need to work two jobs to get by in L.A.), become involved in the many get-rich quick schemes here, where a person could lose all their money in a scenario; and spend a lot of time shuffling from one location to another.
Add to this list the growing immigration population and hours-long traffic jams on the streets and freeways.
Los Angeles thinks itself as an affluent city where anything is possible (yes, the IMpossible happens) but beyond the surface lots of folk work at jobs which pay slightly more than the minimum. We have no shortage of retail and service jobs which will not put any commas into your bank account.
It's not easier to be admitted into USC or UCLA since the tuition can sap a family's purchasing power, so the next choice is to attend a state university or a junior college which may take a student longer to graduate, therefore taking longer to enter the workforce.
All this ties into making the grade in our country. Let's not overlook outsourcing of some jobs, too. The financial hardships we're enduring puts a strain on other aspects of life as well. This is not something we could have imagined in the theatres of our minds.
Are we at the end of affluenza? Is this the end of capitalism? Is it time for the United States to embark on a new system?
Oh, while we're at it, we also spent billions on the latest crusade in the Middle East.

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We are most definately seeing the most serious gap between the "haves" and "have nots" in recent history. The biggest booster of our all ready very wealthy elite is our government.

Since Bush has been in office and the Republicans the majority of the House and Senate, there have been more corporate favorable, anti-consumer laws passed than I can remember. We have the new bankruptcy laws passed last year that allow the carpet bagger bankers to rip consumers off even if they are completely broke and have been victims of identity theft. We have utilities that were deregulated, supposedly to save consumers money on utilities. Instead, the rates have skyrocketed. We have fuel prices that have tripled in the past 2-1/2 years. Insurance rates are way up. Groceries are increasing in price to offset the costs of transporting them to the market place. Medicaid and student loans have been cut. The richest of the rich get tax cuts while the rest of us struggle to get by from paycheck to paycheck. Jobs are either being outsourced or eliminated while CEO pay is the higest in history, regardless of company performance. Anti-trust laws are being nulified for corporations to merge into monopolistic super-corporations thus eliminating the price cutting principle of competition.

If this isn't blatent class war, that being the rich and powerful expoiting the middle and lower incme levels of our society, I don't know what is. We are being pissed on by the very people that are supposed to be working for us! The government officials that are supposed to be responsible for consumer protection, are instead protecting the profit margins of huge corporations at the expense of the majority of their constituents. In return, the mega corporations kick back some of their massive profits to our disgusting legislators and president so they can live the lifestlye of the rich and famous, and remain in that lifestyle amost indefinately.

It is high time this be stopped, before we all starve to death in the dark. We must get rid of the corporate money feeding these greedy skuzbags. It is high time to demand public only campaign financing and "gifts" from lobbyists. Further, a ban on "personal contributions" to politicians must be stopped by laws that have some serious teeth to back them up. Corruption of government officials should be a major felony with plenty of prison time for violating the law.

If we the people cannot force this issue through legislation, perhaps as a poster stated above, we need to have our own version of the French Revolution. If the elite cannot controlled by laws, maybe some of them need to simply be eliminated?

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Looking over Ivin's 3rd bullet point (about tax rebate differences between the rich and poor) made me think:

A progressive taxation system might include a flat rebate system to complement the staggered tax collection. If it was flattened (not to say completely flattened, just more than it is now), it would benefit the poor far more than the rich.

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I think the Republican argument for keeping the poor poor, the one that sits in the back of their minds, which they've been thinking of all these years since college but never really say out loud, goes something like this: "Evolution only works if the stupid, weak, retarded, crazy, infirm and incompetent people actually die, but if we keep them alive with this welfare state, we're actually helping make the human race weaker."

At least the Republicans who still believe in Evolution. I think there are a lot that actually do, but won't admit it because so many stupid people who vote for them don't believe in it. If the Republicans actually supported evolution education, more of the stupid people might wise up and realize that their politics are actually playing a kind of social Darwinism that's short sighted.

Personally, I believe that the real promise of the human race is how we make more than any individual is capable of through cooperation and compassion. On the other hand, it's hard to argue with the fact that we are creating supergerms and more diseases by keeping people alive through modern medicine and food production technology. The next thousand years will be very interesting.

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First: shaddap about the whole Corvair thing.

Second: shaddap and vote NADER.

"Those who opposed Nader and capitulated by calling for a vote for a candidate who opposed everything they claim to support reflect a hopelessness that there is no way to overcome the control of money over people."

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No troll here. I'm neither D nor R, although I'll vote for any candidate who stands apart from the mainstream if that's what it takes to change the inhuman course of events that the US has been on for too long. And I like Molly Ivins. I'm just tired of the either/or tone in the political debate that we've apparently descended to lately.

The Dems delight in pointing out the Manichean nature of the Bushistas' "fer us or agin' us" approach to government, and then shamelessly attack the Repubs for nixing a raise of the minimum wage while raising their own salaries and granting tax breaks that disproportionately benefit the rich. And yet the rich form the elite of both major parties, if "parties" is the correct term rather than "wings" or "factions" of the same party. Are we to believe that rich Dems are cut from some other cloth? Do they, upon receiving their windfalls, proceed to distribute them as alms to the poor, while Reps would never do that and enjoy being selfish and monstrous? Sounds like "four legs good, two legs bad" to me, too simplistic and convenient to be believable.

Dems also point out the "culture of corruption" that the Reps have propagated, all the while remaining curiously reticent about their own contributions to the same corrupt culture that led to the so-called Rep revolution of 1994, in which the GOP pledged to root out the corruption of the Dems and did that by implementing an even more corrupt system of their own. The political fortunes of both parties ebb and flow as members choose their own date upon which their official version of history starts. Once fixed, it is unchallengeable; there simply was no "before" from which to extrapolate anything. Again, this is expedient and therefore unbelievable to anyone outside the major parties who also presumably has some capacity for independent thought and action along with access to historical facts and documents beyond partisan control.

Somewhere between black and white lies the ugly truth. Maybe it's a painting in an attic that nobody dares lay claim to, let alone wants to see. But unless people find the courage to face the inherent flaws of a corrupt political system, neither R nor D will matter because both will have justly earned their place in oblivion. Justice will win out, with you or without you. I only hope that those poor people who can't hold on somehow manage to while the armies of ignorance do battle on the wrong field.

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The Republican Party knows which side of their bread is buttered and who is doing the buttering - financial support from special interests, wealthy supporters, and corporations. They place a greater value on wealth and discount the value of work to which they are all apparently allergic. This is class warfare and the middle class and the poor are getting screwed.

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The selfishness of people is truly increasingly worrying. People can't even recognize that there are so many struggling people...and even if they do notice, they claim that they're nothing to do with them and that it's not their problem. But of course that's not true. We're all victims (well, 99% of us anyway) of such an opportunistic system. And of course the media does a terrible job of publicizing the complexities and negative (or at least the complex) effects of capitalism. People seem to think that if you're not for untrammeled capitalism, you're a total communist when of course they don't consider the extent to which the biggest corporations rely on government contributions. Of course, our watchdogs of democracy, the press have failed miserably, as have Congress recently in limiting Monkey Boy's power. And so he can implement policies which continue to divide and conquer, divide and conquer....there isn't a place hot enough in hell for the architects of the Bush regime's policies.

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Talk about greed

http://www.businessjive.com/nss/darkside.html

It all will end badly.

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A new political movement is afoot that is an attempt to sweeten the images of both Democrats and Republicans by bringing the two parties together to sing Kumbaya. One is Unity08.com and the other is HotSoup.com.
I created a mascot for this hybrid hype, fresh from the barnyard at my blog.

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Those who show NO MERCY better know what to expect.

Every day in lots of cunningly deceitful ways the Republican party attacks the underpinnings of the middleclass. Those of us at the bottom of the food chain can only watch with ambivalent emotions. After all, the middleclass abandoned us with stark indifference and without a backward glance. Now it’s their turn.

Oblivious to the Republican’s divide and conquer tactics, the middleclass is now under siege and their heads are on the chopping block. You can call it class envy or anything else you want, but you can’t blame us for the Republican’s Class War. We were the first victims, so please forgive us while we gloat.

We’ll being seeing you,
down at the bottom,
down at the bottom of the heap.

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"Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven????" ........"whoever becomes humble like the child..."

How hard is it to identify with "the children".....weak and dependent people with no status or influence ????

Certainly not my Congressman, he did not support the recent vote on the Hinchey-Rohrabacker Ammendment. Was it too much to ask our leaders to stop, Big Brother, from persecuting the sick among us who live in States that have voted to allow medical Cannabis? How did your Congressman vote? What really shocked me was the Congressmen in the southern States, the "so called "Bible Belt.
This is just ONE example where ...."THEY".... SHOW NO MERCY !!!!!!

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we all see it coming inch by inch

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If poverty is $24K, the minimum wage should really be $12.50 an hour. That's right. $12.50 an hour! Let's stop putting folks beneath the poverty level. I say $12.50 for folks with high school diplomas and that willingness to perform those functions that no one else is going to do. With experience of six months or more, $15.00 an hour. With full health, dental, visual, and drugs. Pass that along to the Waltons, please!

To be able to achieve that, cut the pay of that MBA-having a$$hole in the corner office to whom the corporation is gifting pretty near eight figures for his ability to screw the competition and anyone else in the way of profits. This punk spends his day getting his rocks off by pushing around the $15 an guy today from who he pissed his pants running away in high school. He isn't worthy of or valued at that kind of bread. No human on this planet is worth that kind of cash. I don't care if he does know the incantation that will turn the CEO of the top competitor back into a 12th century dung slinger. He gets $65K like normal management. That's right. Though he be the antichrist, he's just a man, and we need to consider compensation commiserate with humanity, with benefits to match. For stock options, point this beavis in the direction of the local Edward Jones in his neighborhood mini mall.

This can be balanced rather nicely this way.

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one problem with very red (or vey blue) states is that they in essence don't have a two-party system anymore. The Repugs will "rule" (I can't use the word govern) in Texas until they turn on each other and self-destruct. The problems of one-party rule will become apparent as there is no balance, no counterweight to total corruption.

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find the true bottom line, the goal of those causing our problems.

The bottom line of this mess, (aided and abetted by ALL recent Prezes, the media, Dems, Repubs, and activist judges- ALL these are complicant) is that the USA is being betrayed and sold into the NewWorld Order's OneWorld Gov.

Wheather of nor we want to be forced into a One World Gov is the question we must each answer. We must rise above the debate between so called Lib Dems and so called Conserve Repubs to see who is behind all the mess and where they are taking US. Molly keeps the distraction going. She offers, like all of her ilk, no real soloution. Dems AND Repubs are part of the problem. Neither of them offer or have been any real help for the USA. Switching from one to the other will only keep the US headed for dissoultion.

All the $$$ problems are caused by all those above. They all are either directly involved (activist judges, white house and congress) or are aiding and abetting (media & activist judges) the sellout of the US to those who run the world's banks thus contol the laws of every nation they print money for. The USA is the first that comes to my mind...The UN is one of their vehicles also.

We must not be distracted by the Lib vrs Conserve shell game. They are both controlled by One World Gov interests.

SamFox

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Capitalism is the biggest Ponzi scheme of all and we're living it. Capitalism depends on a large supply of people willing to dedicate their lives to enriching a few people in the hope that they, too, will one day become rich.

A balance has to be maintained so that the majority of the people living under capitalism continue to believe that if they just work hard enough, make the correct choices and continue to sacrifice their lives to the scheme they will be winners.

The reality is that the vast majority of people living under capitalism don't win. The real beauty of the scheme is that those who continue to lose out blame themselves. They don't understand that the system was balanced against them from the very beginning.

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Dear Molly Ivins,
My name is Matthew and I am a big fan of yours. I am a 21-year old from New Orleans. There are many examples of how the Republicans do care about ordinary Americans and my city has many, many examples of that. Ever since Hurricanes Katina and Rita, Southern Louisiana has been struggle to pick itself up. This region has only $100 billion while we have spent over $200 billion a year on Iraq. The residents of the Gulf Coast are being screwed by the govenrment and the insurance companies. Yet, the media and the Republicans have spent more time concentrated on gay marriage. Louisiana Republican Senator David Vitter said gay marriage was the crisis facing America today. I guess all Republicans including those from Louisiana don't care about this region. With that said we have only one senator that cares about New Orleans- Sen. Mary Landrieu, the Democratic and senior senator from Louisiana. I predict that the Democrats will sweep Congress on November 7. If you have any comments you can email me at: msbravender@yahoo.com.

avid fan,
matthew bravender

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The presence of more highly educated young people would indeed lift the whole job market. Part of the education though would be a component that embodied drive, ambition, and a solid work ethic. In fact if that were taught, you may be surprised how it was more meaningful then the academi. Its parents responsibility to instill these traits. Raising the minimum wage and the rich/poor divide are so completely unrelated as to be ridiculous to mention in the same article. What are kids really learning is what you progressives write here and whine and cry about all the time and you are so self absorbed you cannot see it. Why would a student who is even remotely ambitious have any reinforcement to their drive whatsoever when the are daily bombarded with progressives telling them to forget about it, they cannot succeed, the system is against them, and better to sit and cry and bitch and moan and let big brother peel a couple more dollars per hour out of his wallet for you, or maybe we can just get the wealth redistributed and the student can avail himself to the money someone else earned.
I know, why don't we tax more people like that old African American women who saved millions while working as a laundry wash and fold for decades. She was absolutely dirt poor and saved every doller from the work of her back and no help. She died as one of the wealthy. That puts her in the bad catagory. And how dare that women, with a life that invloved being an African American women during most of the 20th century and all the roadblocks that entailed, how dare she be rich when white middle class suburban kids are bitching that, on minimum wage at the mall they cannot afford a new ipod. She gave her money away, but I think she should have been taxed heavily once she accumulated a certain amount and then at her death, since she was rich, the government should have taken say, 75% of it as estate tax? That fair?
Educated ambitious kids with a positive outlook will create the industry that will employ the rest instead of minimum wage jobs. That is common sense.
Finally, good jobs like low paying jobs all have a boss or an owner. The boss makes more, his boss more until the owner at the top. The owner makes the most. No one from the bottom up until you get to the owner, created one single job. Owners do. Poor people never employ anyone. Actually middle class people dont really either. It is the rich. They employ people. Those of you here reading, if you are employed, somewhere up the chain of command is someone who is rich. It must really suck having to work for that person.

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.....over 150 years ago by a guy named Karl Marx.

They have denounced, suppressed, ridiculed, put down his theories. They have disparaged, blacklisted, ostracized, and even murdured his followers. But everything he has predicted has and IS coming true right before our eyes.

Capitalism is UNSUSTAINABLE, because it is based on a belief in a continuous supply of unrestricted resources, and it has a fundamental flaw at it's core: the problem of surplus production and the concentration of wealth.

If you accept the following fact:

LABOR IS A COMMODITY

you are accepting one of the basic tenets of socialist theory.

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And that's where much of the problem lies. Not rich, not poor, just addicted to consumption, wherever the f--- that is leading us, economically, morally, spiritually. And maybe that addiction, living on 'borrowed time' (and money) comes from the desperation to deny or escape the very economic scenario described here, in part at least.

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Own a car?
Own a TV set?
Own a DVD/Video recorder/player and somehow rent movies to play in it?
Own a refrigerator with plenty of food in it?
Are fat?
Live in taxpayer subsidized air conditioned/heated housing?
Get taxpayer subsidized food from a government warehouse?
Get free medical care?
My point is: Poverty in America is not really poverty. People are "poor" relative to other people, not deprived. And it is easy to get out of poverty. Get a job, show up for work, stick with it and soon you are not in "poverty" any more.

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I am a Molly fan. But this piece just rehashes material I read in Harpers a week and a half ago. Not up to your usual level Molly, gotta bring more to the table than rehashing the work of others.

Would be nice to see some research references to the implications of this kind of deepening income inequity on our democratic experiment.

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For those of you who actually USE your minds, please ignore this post.

Where to begin? To start out with, there is no such word as “a lot”. It’s “a lot”, like when you eat a lot of something. Okay? Second, no, we CAN’T grow “babies in the laboratory”. After an ovum is fertilized, the only place to make it grow is inside a woman’s uterus. Period. Otherwise, it must be frozen, or it dies. Next, “frankenfoods” are NOT “safe as far as we know”. The FDA and other agencies say so because corporations PAY for them to say so. The evidence is that much or most of it ISN’T safe – WE JUST DON’T KNOW ENOUGH YET.

Killing animals for food is NOT EVIL. If your ancestors hadn’t, you’d be an ape with an IQ of around 40 or 50. It takes protein to build a big brain, and you can get and make only so much from plants. Being cruel about it, or destroying the environment for profits and other short-term gain IS evil. That is dooming the future for the sake of owning more home than you can live in or being able to screw up the lives of thousands or millions of people with just your word

We CAN’T “destroy the world” – it’s just too damned big. We CAN destroy the environment’s ability to support us and kill ourselves off. We CANNOT construct artificial habitats the people can spend generations in – WE DON’T KNOW ENOUGH. At best they last a few months, then something goes out of balance and it becomes a toxic container. Allowing hunters to kill deer and other such creatures in a regulated manned is NOT cruel, it’s a NECESSITY, since we’ve killed off most of the predators. Look up Australia and rabbits (and other imported flora and fauna, for that matter; or consider Africanized bees. Global warming and another ice age are NOT mutually exclusive – one can trigger the other, and will. We are near or on the line beyond which there is no returning.

Fission power is NOT safe – it produces wastes that we have no way of containing until they are safe, which will be about the time cockroaches are writing books. We are not even close to building a “Star Trek transporter” – it would require more memory than there is right now in the entire world, besides being too slow.

Privatizing and “trickle-down economics”, Smithian economics or whatever you call it – are both paths to poverty for the vast majority. Rich people ARE rich because they minimize expenditures – including eliminating as many employees as possible – maximize savings (they hold onto the money) except to themselves and their own, and MONEY DOESN’T TRICKLE DOWN. Not unless it’s regulated. Period. Without regulation, corporations grow and consolidate into fewer and fewer companies, pay and benefits drop, and industrial practices become more and more toxic. In every instance, the economic theory Bush and co. follow bankrupts and ruins countries – EVERY TIME.

COMPANIES ARE NOT PEOPLE, AND SHOULD HAVE NO RIGHTS; PEOPLE HAVE RIGHTS. COMPANIES SHOULD HAVE NO SAY IN THE LEGISLATIVE PROCESS. EVER. THE people who own companies and those who work there have rights, and that is as it should be, but that is being reversed under Bush.

The astounding ignorance I encounter here in reading the comments sections is appalling. If it weren’t for the good people trapped and unable to leave, I would begin to feel that maybe a Darwinist solution is the only way to correct things – and it may be the only way it WILL be corrected regardless.

CONTINUED ON NEXT POST

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One more thing: not using capital letters or any punctuation at all does NOT make you look “cute” or “artistic – like e.e.cummings” – it make you look like you’re still in second grade, and it makes your posts hard to read. Consider using the spell check in your word processor (it messes up on homonyms, but it helps), THEN cut and paste and post it.

Please.

And try reading something with some real information in it about the physical world, and about morals, and about ethics… damn. That list is just too long.

Just work on it, okay?

Ian

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My first bitch in this rant should have read, "there is no such word as “alot”. It's "a lot...". The word processor changed it at te last second and I missed it. That's Windows for you - assumes it always knows best.

W.I.N.D.O.W.S - Will Install Needless Data On Whole System.

Pfui.

Ian

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Hi it's my first post.

I've been lurking here for 2 days. I've read columns and comments about the cost of the desastrous iraq war and the tax cut for the rich ...

I know that your country is the richest and the most powerful but still I don't understand how it is possible to spend 200 billions $ in a illegal war, increase the military budget, AND accord tax cuts for the rich and affluent people.

It's a huge amount of money even for the richest country in the world, isn't it?. Please, explain me how it does affect people's everyday life. I'm just curious to understand why people put up with that.

I swear to god, from my non-us POV it's really difficult to understand how it affect people's life and why they accept it.

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