Someone once said a revolution can’t happen unless there is a crisis of the “over-class” and the “under-class”. I think I know who said but I don’t want to feed a negative into Mr. Robert’s 4 principal as stated above: “4) Berate those who unmask market fundamentalism as socialists or utopians and avoid the contradictions that are apparent to all.”

As just a poster on the web, it seems our battleground will be in the realm of ideas and little else as the Democrats fight each other and much of the ideological dialogue is between right and center within the American context.

I’ve debated hard-line conservatives and they can’t seem to get past their fear and antipathy towards anything smacking of socialism. Redefining it doesn’t help as they just keep dredging the term up. Progressivism is denigrated by those like Bill Clinton who’ve pushed the term wrongly in my opinion to the center/right as a Centrist term. I am afraid only a major trainwreck which would hurt us working and moderate income people most of all will be the only way to turn the debate. However, keeping the ideas alive and prevalent is important. Thanks for doing that!

I hope and wish that if Democrats regain power in the White House and on down that they remember the people who were pissed off enough to vote for them. And boot out those in govt. who are padding their conservative ideologies with ’socialist’ paychecks. Populism, mixed with old time patronage.

1. Bring together a group of progressive thinkers who present two things

a. A broad based reform of financial regulations. Including restrictions on the asset side of balance sheets, a broader reporting requirement including hedge funds and particularly investment banks, and some restrictions on the compensation structures of Wall Street executives that retard the excessive risk taking in the “heads they win tails the taxpayer loses” incentive structure that now prevails.

b. A broad based, media and blog and grassroots campaign about the fallacy of market fundamentalist vision. A refutation of: the Horatio Alger myth, the notion that what we have is a free market, (we have corporate welfare all over Wall Street, Telecom, Oil, Defense and other sectors) and the simple fact that people on Wall Street are using campaign contributions to buy insurance on setting the rules of the game, and not pricing the externality that their risk taking imposes on the society and economy when they are reckless, as has been the case in recent years.

I would also favor broad based efforts to support public financing of elections. I believe that will save real money for the population in the medium to long term.

I don’t subscribe to the private ownership of real property, the notion of interest, and exploitation of labor and value added or private ownership of the means of production.

I’m on the same page here but what you ask already exists

we really never own our house, all we really have is title to resell the occupance

we are renting the rights to this dwelling from the government, they raise the rent all the time, they set the rules of occupancy and they can change those rules at any time, and they can revoke our title at any time

so we never really own property at all, we just use the word ownership, we just rent

The person who is servicing the loan will file foreclosure proceedings. In Ohio, the homeowner can object on the grounds that the servicer cannot produce the note, or so it appears, because there are judges there who are stopping foreclosures, at least until the holder produces the note.

On the house question, the answer is that if a house is upside down, you have to ask yourself how long you want to pay for it. The price you are paying is a whole lot higher than the value you have at the end of the day. You might compare the mortgage price to the price of rent for comparable housing. If it is higher, you might as well stay. If it is lower, maybe leaving isn’t a bad idea.

milton freidman=hoover institution

I am not an economist.