RowdyRedRam

We have been manipulating booms and bust for years now, and yes regulation has played a large roll in that.

But we all pay regardless of "should's". The collapse of the credit industry hurt all of us. We are all intertwined in this economy. What Jim does effects Bob. What good is it for the stupidity of some to have the power to breakdown the system for all of us. Regulation is a tool to prevent that, and had it not been rolled away, it could have prevented the crises.

Then how did we get into this mess. Your logic makes no sense. You say that A. The reason we got into this mess was because of the stupidity of people. But that there should be no regulation because B. People are smart enough not to need regulations. These two thoughts can't really coexist. Maybe YOU didn't need the regulation but the impact sure as heck effected you and everyone else I know.

I don't think Pelosi is good for government. She is too much a politician and to little a stateswoman.

This point is very arguable. It is not humanly practicable to protect yourself in today's society. Should you understand your loan? Yes you should, however you are probably not as knowledgeable about the lending industry as the creditors. It is both impossible and unreasonable for you be an expert on every subject. It makes a great deal more sense for the distributors goods and services to be regulated by areas of government that can be specifically knowledgeable on these areas than ask every American to be knowledgeable on every subject. What is a more reasonable solution to the problem? Make all Americans smarter, or Allow the experts to restrict bad practices? Sure it would be great if we could all be smart enough to know better but it is only wishful thinking.

I would add the demographic shift in regards to growing African American and Hispanic population (especially in the youth) will doom the Republican party if they don't make in roads with these groups.

You speak as though the creditors greed didn't blind them from seeing the risk they were offering. Dead people, childern, and pets are still being preapproved for credit cards and loans. The fact remains that if the lending institutions were more closely regulated to prevent irresponisible loan giving we wouldn't have seen the sub prime market collapse.

If you want to site specific areas of regulation that need to be reformed or removed I could contribute a great deal to the list and we might agree with every single issue, but still completely disagree with you on the issue of less government. For every bad example of government regulation there are a heck of a lot of good one, they just don't hang around top of mind like the problem ones do. I'm sure is we removed building codes from builders they would love it, but we would have structures falling down every five years. We could remove health regulations from McDonalds and you might be eating bad meat patties. Again if specific areas of regulation bother you, we are in the same boat. If you don't believe that government should regulate, I simply believe your wrong and the removal of government regulation would result in the abuse of industries on the people, kind like the credit crises we just experienced.

I don't know of that place specificly, but it could very likely be one.

Like Somalia or Pre-Taliban Afgahnistan? There are places with no government in this world, but they are places you don't want to go to.

Mexican in Louisville is mostly cookie cutter. I haven't been to El Mundo and have heard great things about it, but most all the others are hardly much different from each other then the restaraunt's seating package. However there are beginning to appear in the Louisville area a number of authenitic Mexican Taco eateries. These are much different from you Taco Bell and cater to the growing Hispanic population. If want the real thing try one of these it will change your concept of Mexican food.

I was going to write the exact same thing. It tasted like they took diet soda and added sugar to it, it did not taste as good. I have previously had suger flaver Coca Cola and I thought it was distinctively better, I have not tried the Pepsi.

I think what you "are" is very much relative to who is comparing. 1. Death penalty; I suppose I have to say I'm for it but I only feel it should be used when the defendant is determined to be a continued threat to society by his existance and that the proof against this person is completely overwhelming. I don't like the idea of the state taking lives. 2. Steeply progressive income taxes and the belief that the rich should be forced to give back more to share with the poor; I'm for this. I could go on for three pages as to why but essentailly it boils down to the fact that the rich make there money within a system that both protects and facilitates thier buisness. These systems are obviously more benefical to the rich (because they make more money) than they are to the poor. If the systems were to fail the rich would be the most hurt, and in the sense that they are getting more out of the systems they should be putting more in. 3. Estate taxes; I haven't really thought about this enough to give an opinon. 4. Abortion; Should be avoided and unwanted pregnacies should focused on. I carry a concern about the amount of social problems created by the elimination of abortion, and therefore do actively seek to criminalize it. 5. Welfare programs (including increased govt provided/paid health insurance); There are major things that need to be fixed in the welfare programs, but I don't see welfare as a generality a bad thing. I would support the government providing limited health care. I would support government provided prenatal care, doctors visits, small procedures like casts for broken bone. I would not support long term highly expensive medical care. In otherwords pay for the preventative and the little stuff. 6. Privatized social security;I haven't looked at the models for how this works. My initial concern is that should those who priviatize fail in providing for themselves the government would eventually come back in and help them, but not have the funds that those people were intended to provide for in the first place. But as I said if the plans adjust for this it could be viable. 7. Degree of Govt regulation of business; I ran a business for a few years and I conducted internal inspections of franchisees for another period of time. It is my experience businesses need regulation otherwise the owners will put the consumers and themselves in jeopardy. However it is also my contention that some regulations and regulators are insane. So regulation is a good thing, but on the specific level there are major problems with the regulations and especially the regulators. 8. Minimum wage; My big problem with minimum wage is that it prevents employers from hiring marginal work. But the other side is that business will cling to whatever that minimum wage is and if you increase it you will increase the benefit of most workers. If businesses would pay rates fair to the work done than I would push for no minimum wage, but in this real world that doesn't happen. Either way you go someone will exploit it. As an employer I never hired anyone including teens at minimum wage, I personally found it unconscionable to hire full time employees at levels they couldn't pay for the most basic things while I myself was doing very well. 9. Gay marriage; I don't care, you want to marry another dude have fun, you want to marry your horse have fun, you want to marry your TV have fun. One of these days I'm going to look into why government sanctions marriage at all, perhaps there are good reasons, but my initial feeling is the government probably doesn't need to recognize marriage at all and it should be up to the religious institutions. 10. Gun ownership rights. I don't like guns but I respect the fact that it is my problem and not yours.

Something not being illegal doesn't mean it isn't wrong. The United States is a great place to do business, in order to be a great place to do business many things have to be paid for, the getting around of paying taxes doesn't have to be illegal to damaging to the country. They are damaging the country by not paying what they should. I completely agree with your solution.

My point is that there is no reasonable argument to protecting these companies, what they are doing is avoiding taxes, taxes pay for things. If I were a local business and knew that my competitor was using some offshore business scheme to avoid local taxes I would scream it at the top of my lungs that these people are tax avoiding and hurting the rest of the tax payers. To your other point, you are right. Should those rules be applied then many Americans would be denied services. Now let me make myself clear in that my statements in the previous post were part of a rant, not to be taken completely literally. My great frustration comes from this belief that "business has no responsibility and any all actions from business are good and anything that makes profit is good no matter the moral and social cost". This belief has gone to far. My scenario is more illustrate that should we want to, we could ruin those that chose to damage our society those that chose to take and not give back. I do not believe that the actual implementation of such a plan could work.

If they don't contribute there legally authorized share of governemnt support (taxes) they not be allowed access to government protected (police and military) markets nor should they have utilization of our roadways and due to the fact they are not paying for the regulartory services to be administered upon them, they should not be regulated and if not regulated they should be banned from American use. This is nothing more than companies using US reasources and getting out of paying for them.

I don't see a great deal to get wound up about. Was it stupid? ... Well, yeah but kids are stupid, this is the type of thing to learn from. If he proves not to learn from it than I would start passing judgment but not now.

The U.S. is terrifically right of center in terms of world economics. I think you need to read up up on hard core radical leftist before you can define him as such. Hard core radical leftist take companies outright. Chrysler and GM were on their deathbed, the government is propping them up. It is left of recent administrations, it is socialistic but not hardcore leftist nor would I say it is wrong. How blind are we to not notice that the greed of the free market and the lack of corporate responsibility to society initiated our problems. We got here by being to far right, we needed an adjustment.

I don't have any kind of warm feelings for Specter, I think making this move prior to elections is very sleazy and self serving. But I can not agree that this is only about Specter. Ask yourself "Why did the math change?" "Why can he no longer win as a Republican in Penn?" The answers illustrate a major problem for the Republican Party. The Republican party has changed into an ideological, mean spirited, Southern, Conservative party. They see too much in black and white and have conducted rather definite social litmus tests for party membership, and many of them see nothing wrong with it. The fact is they have un-welcomed much of America. If you are a worker, gay, non christian, pro choice, non native, anti gun, or poor the Republican party no longer is willing to accept the other shared interest you have with other republicans, and they aren't shy about it either. Just read the very forums we have here and you get the message that Republicans see Good and Evil and disperse an intense personal anger towards other ideologies. In terms of demographics alone the republican party has to make in roads with African Americans and Latinos or they will not have a future to look forward to. The population is diversifing and there is little to no growth in thier tradition population base. Right now it looks as if they are still going in the wrong direction. I think we will have to see a changed Republican party in the coming decades similar to the UK's New Labour movement by Blair, or the we might see the begining of a true multi-party America.

I'm for one class. When the difference in boys between the middle 6A school and the largest 6A school is larger than the difference between the the middle 6A school and a 3A school then it tells me either population doesn't matter or the 5A through 1A schools are selling out the 6A schools. I'll go with the former. So I say no more classes and now the small schools have to get through all these "underachieving" big schools. And of course if you don't beat these underachieving programs with 5 to 6 hundred more boys than you it means you are underachieving also.

I would personally be indifferent. UofL doesn't play that weekend so that makes it a little more feasable to many fans.

I walk a mile in and out of work everyday.

Could the absence of coal create and atmosphere for developing economic diversity in the state's coal producing regions? I'm not convinced that Coal has been a good thing for the people of the areas it affects. Poverty and education rates in our state's coal regions are among the lowest in the country. I do not want to belittle the personal effect this could have on any individual. I would empathize with anyone who lost their job for reasons out of their control. But I could see where the absence of coal would forcibly create and expedite the development of other industries.

I don't think it completely out of the realm of possiblity to believe Pitino would want to speak to a person who is making threats and demands. If you were in the same situation and someone left messages that they were going to say a buch of stuff about you, would you not try to figure out what was going on? I agree that it would be more prudent to send it straight to lawyers but then again we have hindsight of what this ballooned into. Perhaps they were fishing for evidence. I think this the case considering Pitino saved the other messages he recieved. If he had something to hide it would make a lot more sense to erase those messages ASAP

I'm not following... explain.