Just checked out the election results...

[Organics North]

Quote:
Why, We elect our government! So when do I get to elect a new CEO of Monsanto???

I contend businesses do have the power to level cities... The only factor driving buisness is profit. There are no morals in profit. Second only to Religion, wars are fought over resources.. Why are resources important? Because businesses want them to make a profit...

Additionally we frequently elect officials that are wealthy influential businessmen, those people appoint other folks with conflicts of interest to high positions... IMO one party does that more than the other..

But both are guilty of pandering to their own interests..

Wow I thought the reason we have government was taught in grade school... Were you not taught anything positive about government as a home schooler?

ON

 

[Dunkopf]

Quote:
I am, the business plan is simple, stop the wasteful spending. There its done, now lets see if the giveaway party can follow it.

They just took the House so here is their chance.

 

[Q9]

Quote:
Why, We elect our government! So when do I get to elect a new CEO of Monsanto???

I contend businesses do have the power to level cities... The only factor driving buisness is profit. There are no morals in profit. Second only to Religion, wars are fought over resources.. Why are resources important? Because businesses want them to make a profit...

Additionally we frequently elect officials that are wealthy influential businessmen, those people appoint other folks with conflicts of interest to high positions... IMO one party does that more than the other..

But both are guilty of pandering to their own interests..

Wow I thought the reason we have government was taught in grade school... Were you not taught anything positive about government as a home schooler?

ON

I'm sorry, but I don't recall Standard Oil ever burning cities to make way for oil fields.

I do not include corporatists in my definition of "business." Besides, wars are indeed fought for resources, but there are many other factors. Heck, World War One was fought over nothing in particular. Resource wars are often fought by governments to give themselves an advantage rather than businesses. Corporations didn't exactly have any power in the Middle Ages and the Enlightenment. Some wars are fought for land; some for wealth; some for strategic cities; some are fought for independence and freedom; and, as mentioned above, some for no discernable reason.

As for your example of businessmen getting elected to government, government is the problem there, too! If we followed the Constitution, this would not be a problem. I have no issue with government at all, provided that it does not overstep its boundaries and infringe on rights. Businesses don't start wars; greedy governments do.

As for electing the CEO of Monsanto... No, you can't do that, but as of right now Monsanto can't march thugs into your home and arrest you for no good reason, either. Anyhow, people DO get to elect which businesses survive and which don't. Informed people vote with their feet; they don't like a company for some reason, they don't buy its product. If people are informed, they can sink any company, no matter how large. To paraphrase the great Ludwig van Mises, the purchasers make the rich poor and the poor rich.

You have the situation exactly backwards - government is the problem. Businesses on their own cannot force one to do anything. Were the government to remain within its limits, businessmen in it would be irrelevant, except that they would likely lend superior skills in leadership or management.

By the way, I am self-taught. I have said it many times; unlike in the average school, I am not spoon-fed my information. I do my own research, and come to my own conclusions. From what I've seen, government was not that much of a problem until 1861, the year the Constitution died, and even more in 1865, the year America died. Other years and events come to mind, when the government made itself more of a problem - when the 17th Amendment was drafted, when the Fed was founded, the New Deal, various 20th-century wars... Oh, and the 14th and 16th Amendments, too.

America is dead. Welcome to Amerika.

 

[Dunkopf]

I doubt that the dems will be the party of NO in the House as the pubs have been in the Senate. Obama is very capable of reaching across the aisle and has done so on many occasions in his first 2 years. same with the Democratic members of Congress. That is why the legislation that was passed is so watered down. The House was doing their job during the last 2 years. There are 274 pieces of legislation passed by the House that are waiting for the Senate. If it wasn't for the super majority requirement in the Senate a lot more would have gotten done and we may have been in a better place by now.

The Congress during Reagan had a choice. If they wanted tax breaks for the middle class they had to capitulate to Reagan's demands of increasing the wealth of very rich people. There was a reason why Reagan always had a big smile on his face.

The next 2 years may be surprising. The pubs can't sit back and blame it all on the dems anymore. Something might actually get done. I sure hope so. I hope Obama doesn't do like Clinton though and pass bad stuff just to get the pubs to let some of his stuff go through. Eg NAFTA and the whole free trade joke.

There's no reason not to vote. People should follow politics by reading more than just one view and vote to keep the bad guys out if you can't vote for someone you really believe in. Obama is the first time I have voted for someone instead of against someone. I have been voting since 1976. Elections have consequences. I'm afraid in 2012 I will once again be voting against someone instead of for. The last 2 years has really shown me how messed up our political system is and that ideas don't mean anything. The only thing that counts is those green things.

 

[cubalaya]

the whole point of electing the tea party candidates to the house was to stop obummer's agenda. repealing healthcare, stopping cap and trade, cutting taxes, and keeping our liberties doesn't allow for any reaching across the aisle. we won!!

 

[Organics North]

Quote:
Q9 first off I must appologize for the education comments I made.. It was not appropriate and simply passion blinding my judgement ... I do enjoy your personality.. All be it I want to "save you" from the brainwashing..

(Right wrong or indifferent. just honesty)

OK YES Monsanto can march thugs into my home... They are called Monsanto's large formidable field of legal representatives. I cross them wrong, the will sue me... And if the all mighty dollar, is the holly grail of "business".. Then them suing me and winning and bankrupting me and causing extinction for any one that opposes them is the same as being shot at gun point.... Yes?
Neo modern warfare... Lawyers

Be well my young extremist friend..

ON

 

[Dunkopf]

Quote:
The TP party didn't do very well. I hate to tell you this but you have been bamboozled. They will not try to change anything. The pubs may try to stop the health care pkg and cap and trade is pretty dead anyway. Lower taxes? Obama just got you the biggest tax cut in the past 20 years. Yes your federal taxes have gone down. All the State and local taxes and fees have gone up, but that's not Obama's doing. You haven't lost any liberties either. If you think you have please name them.

 

[cubalaya]

bamboozled, what a joke. now the american people have a choice. not between socialist democrats and rino republicans but the growing tea party. the liberties that they are trying to take from us are hidden in the 3000 page healthcare bill that democrats couldn't even take the time to read before passing. glad i live in virginia, one of the states fighting the healthcare bill on it's constitutionality. if you think 60 house seats is nothing, wait until 2012.

 

[I have WHAT in my yard?]

Choosing to state that Monsanto of all companies cannot march thugs into your house was probably a poor choice. Monsanto has indeed marched thugs onto people's property, taken all of their stock, invaded their homes and barns, bankrupted them and intimidated them. Some of Monsanto's thugs were known to follow people's children to school in an open attempt to intimidate them into giving up any attempt to fight Monsanto.

Did you know that the very concept of "corporation" that we have now is nothing like what it was even 100 years ago? And even then there were people who claimed that allowing businesses to incorporate without a time frame for the dissolution of the corporation was the path to corporate domination.

Please read or study and understand the role of John Nash' theory in the current crop of people who are running business' world view. They truly look at people as driven entirely by self interest and so assume that everyone will do what is only in their own best interest AND that people make purely rational decisions about money.

It has been soundly proven that people make the MOST irrational decisions about money. And if people are taught that everyone makes all of their decisions in pure self interest then they themselves will make all decisions based on pure self interest. The small business owner who identifies himself with his business who knows that it lives and dies on his work treats his business like business should be treated. But, in the big corporations people know they can drive the business into a toilet and bail out taking all of their cash and stock.

I have talked to these people. I have had significant conversation with people who look at the world this way and agree that when business gave up the social contract with their employees they missed recognizing that employees would give up feeling any loyalty to the business. And that extended pretty far up the ladder. I talked to people who cooked the books to make it look like they were profitable, paid themselves and their buds monster bonuses and then just opened the real books declared the thing bankrupt and walked away. There are tons of stories of businesses' during the hey day of buy outs that would buy perfectly profitable businesses, clean out their pension funds, saddle them with the debt of their own hostile take overs and then declaring it unprofitable, shutting it down and bailing. There are one or two that survived and are still struggling to keep their doors open.

Business is not the answer.
Government is not the answer.
That is why the system was set up to balance the two. We gave up that balance and both have suffered for it.

 

[RabbitMage]

Quote:
So basically we have a Progressive Party, a Conservative Party, and a Regressive Party. Awesome. If the "tea party" takes over (they won't), I look forward to the slow slide to a third-world country.