Johnof,

You post a quite literate and insightful treatise into several of the faults and flaws of our nation. I believe they stem almost completely from the need to increase profit every quarter, from an abiding suspicion of our government due in part to massive waste and inefficiencies and in part to propaganda and willful destruction from Reagan, Bush 41 and Bush 43 on behalf of those who own our government.

As Skruff noted most eloquently there have been successes such as CETA, only to be made inefficient by profiteering, by those who see the tax revenues as personal fortune and those legislators who allow it.

I believe Edwards to be a sincere and thoughtful man. I would be more inclined to support him if his health care plan took the profit from the industry that has put such profit before the health of the nation. Alas he doesnt seem capable of seeing outside the box, at least on this.

I do not believe that electing any one person is the road to rescuing our nation from the forces that own it. I believe that we must change the system that allows, no encourages, massive inequalities. As more and more of our wealth migrates to fewer and fewer of us we will see that one person can do nothing. We see now, or we should, that our Legislators are bought and paid for prior to a single vote being cast for them.

Edwards is an honorable man, but he is wedded to a system that will not allow him to achieve his goals, perhaps, should he beat the odds and win the office, he might achieve some cosmetic result. But the disease that infects our body politic will remain virulent. The solution lies in the realisation that we face a generational battle, we will achieve nothing until we see an electorate sick and disgusted with bought and paid for politicos who answer to boards of directors and not we the people.

Deborah
If we had a President, instead of what we have, multi tasking would be possible.
Any bill that is passed by Congress to help the working poor will be vetoed by the Shrub; or he could sign it amongst much fanfare and then issue his signing statement (in secret), nullifing the bill.
That is why I said they must go before anything else can be accomplished. Not because I think everyone can wait, but because they will wait until his type is history.

Assessment of John Edwards:

Go straight at them.  Eschew any advice from Wall Street chameleon Robert Rubin (union-killing shill for NAFTA, GATT, etc.); speak Keynesian economics again.  Seek new, innovative solutions – not stock reprises of old routines; that’s the pattern of alcoholics and addicts.  Emphasize us, we the people, community, public issues, human rights, common sense, and the common good.  Corporations must pay their fair share to support the system that enabled their success; stop treating them as “individuals” in the legal system; hold executives and stock holders accountable and responsible for their actions and results.  Protect the planet.  Educate the children – dump top-heavy Trojan Horse Standards obstacles; eliminate public subsidies (vouchers) for boondoggle separatist, preferential, and elitist “home” schooling; insist upon a democratic education, scientific rationalism, and the rule of law.  Call the generation to service: “Let’s get our hands on these problems and solve them.  We can do it, if we stop procrastinating and move on.”  Tell Republicans they can worry about haircuts, dirty words, and hurting people by making money from wage slavery, exploitation, and violence.  The rest of us will go to work to fix the nation’s pressing, and now critical issues (thanks to Republican neglect, abuse, misuse, cynicism, and outright theft).  We can’t let the Republican monarchists kill the real American dream: a better life for all our people, children, our posterity, and ourselves.  We’re not in this life for the next quarterly report, we’re here to build a lasting nation that we can be proud of again; and that means saving it from the Republican cabal that brought us this fiasco, before it collapses us in an economy of chaos, disorder, destruction, and death, as they smugly profit on our bones.

How’d that be?  I fully support John Edwards for President.  We need to give him an overwhelming majority in both houses of congress, too, or we will spend generations undoing the harm of the Bush administration and their corporate neocon masters. If we want positive change in America, John Edwards the man we should back, and help to win in 2008.

Citizen Defender,
Your assessment of the control of our economy and our lives is an accurate one, yet I believe it to be an unconscious sort of control. Profit motivates, and anything that increases profit is desireable, thus we get such as you have deliniated.

Thus, to effect change we must look beyond individual candidates to achieve a transcendance over profit before people. It is a sick and sorry system under which we toil, and it is this system that we must work to alter.

The “War on Terror” is motivated by the North American Union, Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission, Bilderbergers and the New World Order, the Freemasons agenda, NAFTA, CAFTA, the Project for the New American Century, the Federal Reserve, and International Bankers.

There is an Elite few who are responsible for fuming every war that the United States has found itself in. The Federal Bank and the New World Order have been created to rob the world of its freedoms. George and DICK know this.

I believe most are familiar with all of these references. Woodrow Wilson lamented in 1916, “The growth of our nation and all the activities are controlled by a few men.” He was referring to the Central Bank later to become the Federal Reserve. Any plot intended to rob somebody is a criminal act. So it is with the Federal Reserve.

Whitehouse actions go well beyond Corporate Greed and have placed the wage earning class into the flip side of Open Markets creating greater poverty for America.

Warrantless wiretaps, sneak and peak policing, extraordinary rendition, the Real ID Act, RFID technology use, torture of detained people, cameras at every big intersection, downward looking satellites means only one thing, lost Freedoms. None of what I just mentioned makes Americans any safer.

The Bush administration is despicable. They have taken away nearly all our freedoms as a result of the staged 9-11 event. Who is investigating the World Trade Center attack? The 9-11 Commission’s conclusions are a farce.

If the Congress and Senate do not have the guts to do the right thing and impeach both Bush and Cheney then we need to vote all of them out of office.

Because the Bush administration gained the Presidency through vote tampering in both the 2000 and 2004 elections a Recall Petition against Bush and Cheney should be acted on by the House, Senate and the Supreme Court of the United States.

Over 200 years ago Thomas Jefferson wrote:
“If the American people ever allowed the banks to control the issuance of their currency, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers occupied.”

The Federal Reserve issues money with interest. That money is created from nothing, not based on a Gold or Silver standard. The $1 bill is worth about 3 cents.

One last thing, if you believe there is a separation of Church and State just listen to Bush talking about his mission for God.

Who owns your money? http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2005/09/09/who_owns _the_federal_reserve.htm

Funny how shocked people were when Edwards had the nerve to actually break the news to the nation that we had millions of citizens in deep poverty.  They tried to shame him and silence him and at last they’ll have to join him in this real cause.
Edwards may not have the big money people in his pocket, but his messages are starting to gain momentum, poor folks have the vote too and its time to pay attention.
Have we had enough of the too rich for too long?

As much as this issue needs addressing, among hundreds of others that have been ignored by the current crop of Congress Critter’s, more attention needs to be focused on getting these two (Shrub/Shootist) out of office now, not next year.
The longer these two are allowed to roam free, grazing on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, the less of this country that will be left.