Capitalism has many bad things, but it is a workable system if it is regulated and if it is forced (somehow) to provide a social function or add value to the society.

Listen to this crazy thing I heard from a client.

She tells me she is dating man who lives in Tasmania. He has 1,000 employees and is very brilliant (aren’t they all). He is a mathematical genius. And what does he do? He has developed advanced algorithms for analyzing horse racing and his company makes money by betting on horses in Las Vagas via the internet.

Here is a business that adds nothing to society… except that it employs people… but all it does is extract wealth… and they probably shelter all their income and buy big lovely things and give a bunch to charity.

This is what is wrong with free market unfettered capitalism… that such companies can exist, but not only exist… but so many are looking for similar get rich biz plans.

Hedge funds? Derivative? Trading shares?

Milton Friedman economics has turned our great nation into the One-Eyed Cyclops. Why are’nt we embarrassed and shamed by american hunger for goods that overflow our closets, garages, basements, and worse of all rental storage spaces. Material goods used to fill a bottomless void of wants. We are an out-of-control nation of greedy consumers, not caring whether children hand dyed our clothes. People in China, India, Pakistan, and Indonesia in lockdown compounds making toxic cheap goods for us. We’ve created poverty worldwide and consume with a passion. A voidless passion of worshipping at the altar of capitalism. And still we envy the vacuous, spoiled, mindnumbing, anxiety ridden paranoid gated community, Blackwater protected, wealthy elitists. For what they own. George Bush has been the fearless cheerleader of spend spend spend. And we’ve lost our way in the wilderness of consumerism. Where the hell is our moral compass?

I’m a regular contributor to your campaign Larry, but kicked in $44 to help you start buying ads. Looking forward to the series you say you’ve got in the can.

My oldest Godson, his parents’ only child, just went to back to Iraq.

For the third time.

We’ve got a heap of worries and woes in our nation right now, I know, but this filthy war has got to end.

Good luck and best wishes for a victory for you and the people of North Carolina. Hope when you get to DC you can run some remedial courses in American history, civics, and how our Constitution is our shield and foundation to your new colleagues up on the Hill in ‘09.

Someone has to pay for everything we consume… including medical treatment. Pols and so forth don’t care who pays… as long as someone pays (for them).

The rest of us have to get into shared risk pools which must make profit and so end up not paying the bills for many perfactly valid claims.

Then they blame it on lawyers who sue for mal practice.

When I feel sick I need a doctor not an insurance company.

I’m blinded by such a simple yet powerful truth. Wouldn’t it be music upon our ears to hear the nurse ask what ails you today rather than who’s your insurance provider?

The reason is that these pols don’t have to guts to say to the insurance pigs… the trough is closing. Go suck some other teat.

Larry Kissell @ 37

Sandman, I believe that we’re going to have to get patients, doctors, insurance and business owners all around the same table if we’re ever going to do anything about the runaway cost of healthcare.

Insurance companies do not provide healthcare. They are the brokers that created the crisis for us in seeking medical care. It’s not that health costs are the issue, rather the insurance companies hefty servicing fees that everyone pays. We need to remove the paper pushing, claims denying, for profit insurance companies from the equation. Every citizen should have healthcare as we have given every politician. How?, how do we pave roads, garbage pickup, public education, infrastructure maintenance, libraries, public buildings, parks, firehouses, police stations, army, navy, marines, national guard, congressmen, senators, president, vice president, salaries & retirement packages, etc…? We can tax payrolls, businesses, real estate, corporations, and imports. The money taken out in payrolls every two weeks for the insurance companies, will be put into the US government healthcare fund. Not into the insurance companies pockets, they’re gone. The money saved in paper pushing, claims denying insurance companies will go directly toward the Universal Healthcare System.

So much good sense here today, it’s positively embarrassing. You and SanderO should write more often for the edification of the rest of us. Very fine. Thank you both.