Corporate Greed vs. Political Greed

I honestly am worried about our country as are many others on this site and nationwide. The difference is that the masses are leading us towards more of the same if not worse, while the smart sensible opinions rooted in logic and sound theories that can be applied to real life situations are being ignored, just like all the fundamentals were ignored during the dotcom bubble.

The results of the current crisis will be much worse. The bad news is easy to find, just turn on your TV or read your newspaper’s letters section to see the bad logic flowing from Democrats, Republicans, old, young, black, white, poor, and rich. So many are worried about bankrupting Social Security due to Wall Street “greed,” high gas prices due to corporate “greed,” and on and on. Why don’t we ever mention the real American killer: political greed?

Otherwise smart and logical people get caught in the same trap every day. They are fed the same headlines and spin anywhere they turn. Exxon Mobile reports record profit! No one goes into the details of the situation, such as what was the price of oil? How much demand was there for the product? What was their profit margin? And you could ask hundreds of other questions, but no one even bothers to ask the easiest few. If one does somehow get asked, “greed” is blamed.

However, the fundamentals of economics cannot be altered. Only supply and demand can control prices, not some far-fetched notion of “greed.” So we are not only by and large ignoring the situation’s core lesson but also misunderstanding it whenever we do delve into it a little deeper.

What about politicians’ greed? They run up huge expense accounts, build up their pensions, furnish lavish offices, wear expensive suits and ties (sort of like Palin, right?!), and some (probably more than we suspect) outright steal money to hand it to friends and family in the form of cushy jobs protected by the government run monopoly.

Who pays for this? The taxpayers, of course, else they will be rounded up by the IRS and jailed, so that other taxpayers can then fund their existence.

What is a better example of greed: A company selling its product for a market price, or a politician taking money that he has no real claim to other than “pay up or else” and doling it out as he sees fit?

One option rewards hard work, good ideas, and smart planning, while the other rewards knowing someone higher up, criminal activity, or even sexual favors in some cases. There is a glaring double standard going on right under our noses. Yet we continuously blame the corporations instead of the real culprit, which in turn emboldens the real culprit to ever larger and more glaring offenses.

http://www.ronpaul.com/2008-11-12/co...litical-greed/

It's about Greed, All Right -- Government Greed

A friend of mine asked a rhetorical question the other day. Caught me up short, I'll tell you. I'd never heard it put quite that way, and I had to ponder it. He asked, Why does the Left love jobs -- but hate employers? Oh, they'd never cop to it, but that's what it amounts to.


Think about it. When they speak disparagingly about "tax breaks for the rich," they're usually talking about tax incentives for those who are in a position to hire people. (Ever get a job from a poor person?) Think of "The Rich" as code language for employers, and see how those put-downs sound to you when you plug the word employer into such a remark the next time you hear one.


Once, years ago, while I was living in a canyon and had some time to myself, a dog of mine birthed a litter, and instead of just giving away the pups at eight weeks, as I'd normally have done, I decided to raise and train them myself -- while studying, among other things, their behavior as a group. (I learned quite about myself, as well, in dealing with my reaction to them -- but that's another story for another day.)


I watched the way that -- since the mother wasn't separated from the pups at the usual point of development -- they continued for a while, expecting to nurse, even though I made solid food readily available to them. They quickly reached a size that required the mother to actually stand up to accommodate them. (Recall that famous Etruscan bronze sculpture in the Capitoline Museum in Rome of Romulus and Remus being suckled by a standing she-wolf?) Eventually their nutritive demands became so extractive that for her to let them continue longer than a moment or so at a feeding session would apparently take too great a toll on her bodily vitality for her to tolerate it.


So she would just walk off, even while they were nursing. These burgeoning balls of fur would fall over and try chasing her down the hill -- till she made clear to them that the rules had changed.


I recalled that little tale to illustrate a point. Half of all those individuals included in the income category of "$200K or more ($250K for married couples)" -- whom the president and Demo-dominated Congress want to tax -- are small-business persons, whose total business income has to be reported on their personal tax return.


Again, these are often not "mega-corporate" types, but rather small business owners responsible for hiring the bulk of Americans. It's these small-business folk who will be hit hardest if the Bush tax cuts are "allowed" to expire on January 1 -- an expiration which will most certainly kill the recovery, drive a stake right through its sluggishly struggling heart.


It seems that there are those who have actually given themselves the idea that each of these so-called "wealthy" individuals is wearing a sign that reads,

This gets you to italics: http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/...ight_gove.html

I love that first paragraph. It is all too true.