Imagine a major national newspaper that never saw an $8 trillion dollar housing bubble. Suppose its most often cited expert on the housing market was the chief economist of the National Association of Realtors, who also authored the 2006 bestseller : Why the Housing Boom Will Not Bust and How You Can Profit From It.
Yes, I'm talking about the Washington Post, which had the gall today to run a column by Jim Hoagland complaining about how "we" are passing on a bad world to our children. The "we" in the column is meant to refer to the generations currently in their 40s, 50s, and 60s, who he claims are leaving huge problems to our children.
He's right about the problems, but he's wrong about the "we."
The reality is that the Washington Post and the elite clique for which it is a mouth piece have badly failed us and our children. The housing bubble was easily recognizable. The economic disaster that we are now facing could have been easily avoided if the Washington Post and its elite friends (e.g. Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin, and Henry Paulson) were not too incompetent or corrupt to see the evidence of problems everywhere. Needless to say, those of us who did try to issue warnings were ignored by this elite crew.
The Washington Post has whined endlessly about the long-term deficit problems facing the country. But how often has it told its readers that the long-term deficit problem is almost entirely the result of the broken U.S. health care system: a system that costs more than twice as much per person as the health care system in most of the countries who enjoy longer life expectancies than we do?
Perhaps the Post does not choose to share this information because it identifies with the wealthy people who run the insurance companies, the pharmaceutical companies, and the highly paid medical specialists, all of whom get rich off the waste in our health care system. (Perhaps the fact that these industries advertise heavily in the Post also affects its willingness to print pieces exposing the enormous waste in the U.S. health care system.)
The Post also has been a big proponent of a trade policy that is based on selective protectionism. The Post's trade policy subjects less educated workers (those without college degrees) to competition with low-paid workers in the developing world, while leaving the most highly educated workers largely protected from such competition.
Since the vast majority of the workforce falls into this unprotected category, most of our children will see lower standards of living because of the Post's trade policy as it redistributes income to its elite friends. The Post even applies the euphemism "free trade" to its policy of selective protectionism to make it more palatable.
I could go on at considerable length. The list of the failings of the Post and its elite friends is long -- lying to get us into the war in Iraq would be the next obvious item on the list.
The point is that the Post and it crew of cronies have badly failed the world in a large number of ways and continue to do so. The Post and Hoagland's efforts to attribute the blame to the rest of us for the trouble caused by the greed and incompetence of their elite clique deserve nothing but contempt and ridicule.
Time's up! spend the 80 Billion and give us medical care already.
Stop saying that you are friends to Gay people, and do something, other than giving creadence to Rick Warren and explaining why Dont Ask Dont Tell, EDNA, and equal rights, can wait 3-4 years until Obama no longer has any clout.
These politicians, with Politburo style benefits and salaries, and guarenteed lifwetime jobs as lobbyists have no shame. And neither does the Washington Post.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/25/AR2008122500758_Comments.html
She said we should teach our kids that ALL their electronic communications will be and should be monitored by parents, employers, teachers. This includes cell phones and private e-mail accounts.
It's one thing to warn your children that their MySpace or Facebook is public and say not to do anything they wouldn't want the general public to see. Monitoring cell phone conversations and private e-mail (as opposed to company e-mail at work) is something else entirely. She thinks we should teach children to quietly submit to this from employers, coaches, or any person whatsoever? I can't imagine Americans putting up with something so outrageous. There is and should be a reasonable expectation of privacy on cell phones and private e-mail accounts.
It is time to have this debate.
One cannot go and spend time inside the beltway without hearing the disparaging attitudes of many toward the rest of the country as 'hicks' living in 'fly-over country' or 'hooterville'. The arrogance is stunning, their ignorance of their own country is unbelievable.
To the WaPo and the beltway morons:
I didn't vote for George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan because I knew that this was exactly what would eventually happen with Republican (Yes- Clinton is a Republican-Lite) leadership.
I didn't borrow more than I could afford, didn't overpay for a chipboard McMansion in Northern Virginia, didn't use my home as an ATM, lived within my means and even invested toward retirement.
All you bureaucrats had to do was your well defined stinking jobs. Instead, the regulators and bureaucrats hired to oversee banking, investment, insurance and other financial services sold themselves to the highest bidder and forgot who they work for. You should all be fired and banned from your career field for life.
The WaPo bought into this NeoCon fantasyland, cashing the check from the real estate advertisers and all the rest, meanwhile spouting the mantra of tax cuts and deregulation as the answer to every ill. You also forgot who you work for. You should be banned from journalism for life.
the only thing FREE about this market...'is the FREEdom of large corporations to buy this Government!
Look into Measure T...it started in CA. (It needs to spread everywhere.)
The reason why corporations should not be able to influence the government (i.e., lobby):
They don't SEE the world like people do.
They don't PLAN the way that people do.
They can't FEEL compassion the way that people do.
They don't SAVE the way that people do (because if they did they be bought and pillaged...that's capitalism!
I like corporations...don't get me wrong, but, just as with religious views and influence, there should be a separation between business and state.