Random thoughts and TJ takes

When the incumbent president is a republican, gas at the pump will historically go down just before an election. This year was no different. There was no great new discovery of oil, there was no surge in supply from OPEC, the national reserves weren't tapped into . . .Oh no, just for some strange reason, Gas began falling form $4 a gallon to well below $2 a gallon. Well after all those "speculators" on Wall Street made their investment profits. Then those very same people received a 750 billion dollar hand out from the American tax payer. Thanks to a gutless bunch of politicians with millions invested on . . ."wait for it" . . . Wall Street! The bailout was less about financial institutions that are too big to fail and more about saving our Senators and Congress men's savings and investments. Let's see the bail out funded by the middle class could have only been sold to them by terrific con men.

The con began when companies no longer offered secured retirement pensions, (you remember those, many of your grandfather's enjoyed them and had plenty of money to live on after retirement.) Then the 401k was sold to the workers in place of the pensions. These were more liquid and if you changed jobs you could roll it over into your new companies 401k plan. Sounds good doesn't it? What companies neglected to tell their employees was that the 401K's helped build investment institutions capital base and company owner's, board members, and CEO's were all invested in these institutions. What a deal for the wealthiest of us! Not only did get to save money by not writing pension checks but, they could make money on employee savings. It was only by the grace of God, Buddha, Allah, Ganesha, or Zeus that Social Security didn't get privatized and go the way of the pension plan.

401k's and the inventions of Ira accounts are schemes to get the average Joe to invest in the market. When something isn't broke why fix it? I'll tell you why, greater profit! Period. Now we find the poor guy trying to save for retirement loosing 40% of his savings while the people investing those savings are the beneficiaries of billions of tax payer dollars. It's genius really. Evil greedy genius but, genius none the less. Selling unsecured investments that could easily loose money and did, to an entire working population. Wow! Not even the Mafia in it's hay day could boast this much corruption, extortion, and inside jobs. Money that was meant to buy bad assets and open up lines of credit merely went to fund bank mergers, pay CEO bonuses, and buy corporate Jets. Oh yeah, I forgot they did buy some bad assets . . .at nearly twice as much as they were worth!

Remember McCain and Palin's slogan, "Country First". It's funny how those who say that are the very same ones who oppose tariffs and the part of the recovery package that insists we only use building materials made in the USA. These very same people want to allow companies receiving money to hire workers from overseas and bring them here instead of hiring our very own unemployed. "Country First" my ass. That slogan should be "Profit First".

Here's a Jefferson quote those on the left are fond of: "A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference." Notice he uses the word "against" letting citizens of a government know that they are in a conflict, competition or a battle even, and the Bill of Rights is more or less a weapon.

Here's one for those on the Right: "A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government." If Rush and Hannity did a little research before they start flapping their gums they could use this quote to knock the whole "We need more government regulation"argument right out of the park.

Here's one I like: "A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine." Are you listening Prop 8 proponents?! That's why civil rights are not up for a majority vote! Jesus H tap dancing Christ . . .with "jazz hands"!

Our fore fathers, like the Romans before them feared the 51% and didn't think it was a good idea to give the unwashed, uneducated masses too much power or "say" in their own governing so, they devised something called a representative democracy. The unwashed and uneducated could vote for someone they felt best looked after their interests. Just in case that individual didn't stay true to his constituency, we have the three separate branches as a sort of check and balance. Executive, Legislative, and Judicial. No one branch has controls the power. No one branch nor one party, however it may not be that way anymore.

Over the past 6 years the Judicial (the Supreme Court) had two new appointees, both staunch conservatives, giving the deciding vote to Head Justice Roberts. Justice Roberts, according to a 16-page financial disclosure form Roberts submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee prior to his Supreme Court confirmation hearings, his net worth was more than $6 million, including $1.6 million in stock holdings. I don't have a problem with Roberts earning a 6 million his 50th birthday, but I do have a problem with the fact that he held positions in Republican administrations in the U.S. Department of Justice and Office of the White House Counsel. He's a wealthy Republican insider that has defended big business on several occasions when he was a practicing attorney.

And most recently upheld Exxon's right to gouge billions in profits from the very people whose tax dollars subsidize that company. Let me just wrap this one up with one more Jefferson quote: "Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.

"DaG Out