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MillieNeon wrote:

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It's ridiculous to blame Obama. Bush set up the situation . . . actually, Republican Phil Graham sponsored the legislation to repeal the Glass-Steagall (spelling?) act, which is what FDR put in place to regulate banks and financial institutions so a Great Depression wouldn't be repeated. Clinton signed it on his way out of office (and now he regrets it). During the Bush years, the completion of deregulation and the no-bid contracts to companies like Halliburton are what caused the mess we're in.

It was handed to Obama, including TARP. Now could Obama do better? Yeah, he could invoke more regulation and restore anti-trust. Because monopoly capitalism is really anti-capitalism, because monopoly capitalism doesn't allow for a really free market. They hoard, corner, insider trade, make fake trades, squash innovation and competition, and a free market can't exist under those conditions.

But just trying to get SOME regulation, the Republicans fight him every inch of the way. So don't blame him. Blame the friggin Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats. If you want to back people who are really on our side in Congress, back the progressive Dems.

Marcy Kaptur, Anthony Weiner, Alan Grayson, Al Franken . . . to name a few. It was interesting that the trailer used Jesse Ventura, because he backs Obama, so they edited his remarks to fit their scheme. That right there shows me there's something wrong with the trailer.

Lately I have been using the phrase "Corporate Communism" on my television show. I think it is an especially fitting term when discussing the current landscape in both our banking and health care systems.

As Americans, I believe we reject communism because it historically has allowed a tiny group of people to consolidate complete control over national resources (including people), in the process stifling competition, freedom and choice. It leaves its citizens stagnating under the perpetual broken systems with no natural motivation to innovate, improve services or reduce costs.

Lack of choice, lazy, unresponsive customer service, a culture of exploitation and a small powerbase formed by cronyism and nepotism are the hallmarks of a communist system that steals from its citizenry and a major reason why America spent half a century fighting a Cold War with the U.S.S.R.

And yet today we find ourselves as a country in two distinctly different categories: those who are forced to compete tooth and nail each day to provide value to society in return for income for ourselves and our families and those who would instead use our lawmaking apparatus to help themselves to our tax money and/or to protect themselves from true competition.

If you allow weak, outdated players to take control of the government and change the rules so they are protected from the natural competition and reward systems that have created so many innovations in our country, you not only steal from the citizens on behalf of the least worthy but you also doom them by trapping the capital that would be used to generate new innovation and, most tangibly in our current situation, jobs.

We are losing the opportunity cost of all the great ideas that should be coming from the proper deployment of that 23.7 trillion in capital. Everything from innovation in medical delivery systems to accessible space travel, free energy to the driverless car; all of these things may never come to bear because those powerful individuals who have failed, been passed over by technological advancements, innovation and flat-out smarts, have commandeered our government to unfairly sustain their wealth and power.

Unfortunately, they use our wealth and laws not only to benefit their outdated, failed companies, but also spend a small pittance of their ill-gotten gains lobbying and favor-trading with politicians so the government will continue to protect them from competition and their well-deserved failure.

The massive spike in unemployment, the utter destruction of retirement wealth, the collapse in the value of our homes, the worst recession since the Great Depression have all resulted directly from the abdication of proper government.

Even with all that -- the only changes that have been made, have been made to prop up and hide the massive flaws on behalf of those who perpetuated them. Still utterly nothing has been done to disclose the flaws in this system, improve it or rebuild it. Only true rules-based capitalism ensures constant adaptation and implementation of the latest and best practices for a given business, as those businesses that don't adapt fail, and those who deploy the latest innovations to their customers benefit, prosper.

The concept of communism is rightly reviled in this country for the simple reason that it is blind to human nature, allowing a small group of individuals near-total control, while sticking everyone else with the same crappy systems -- and the bill. America spent countless lives and half a century fighting against this system of government. So why are we standing for it now?