Put the politicians on minimum wage and watch how fast things change!!

Dark Prince: Why should the means of producing and distributing goods be owned collectively or by a centralized government? If you don't need a middle man telling you what to do and how to do it, because you are already doing it, then why give a third party a piece of your action? Protection money? To avoid future shakedowns? Do you like the idea of a nanny state controling every aspect of your life? I suppose it's okay for the "nannys"... not so good for everyone else. I could understand the appeal of socialism if I had an aversion to making decisions regarding business and personal matters.

My point about Castro was, I thought, self evident. If I was him I would make sure I had the best medical care possible, but apparently the finest Universities and Colleges in Cuba couldn't produce a doctor good enough to do the job.

Capitalism doesn't need to be socially engineered. It has always been the natural way of doing things. People began specializing in one particular area and then trading with people who specialized in other areas. Bartering was replaced with coin and paper transfers that made the system move more efficiently, and the rest is history. All socialism does is to fix what isn't broken and cause the development of better technology to come to a grinding halt. As bad as things are right now I'm still better off as a proor man in the U.S. than a king was in his cold dank castle a thousand years ago.

Übergeek 바둑이:
I agree with much of what you said. It is a conundrum.
I think such judgments can only be made realistically on a local community level. That too would be difficult in our disjointed societies in which there is a great deal of fluidity with large numbers of individuals relocating with some regularity.
I don't think any national or state policy could adequately address the issues you expounded.
In the world as it is, the real problem is that people work for corporations instead of corporations working for people. Of course corporations should make profits, but profit above all else is a disastrous model both for the environment and the work force.

Artful Dodger:

> failed Keynesian economics.

What does that mean? I mean Keynesian economics? How did they come about? Why was it necessary to control interest rates and the monetary supply?

Iamon lyme:
Hah, more like record profits.

"...insert itself into a normally functioning society by convincing people that they need a small elite group of people (them) to micro manage their lives for them."

That sounds like the republican party passing laws to make abortions unavailable or difficult at best and squashing collective bargaining.

Who is controlling or attempting to control productivity in the US?
Or was that just hyperbole suggesting that the US will soon be like Cuba?

Iamon lyme:
That concept is thrown around a lot and usually has nothing to do with the actual topic.
As far as doctors go, there are plenty of doctors working under capitalist economic rules that are guilty of botching the job whether it be diagnostic or surgical.

Socialism implies that the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government. Neither socialized medicine nor government sponsored public works projects are socialism. Government sponsored health insurance is not the same as socialized medicine. There will still be numerous functions provided by the health industry that will be elective and not covered by insurance.

Without government sponsored public works projects, we would not have our interstate highway system. That system is in disrepair. Fixing it will put many of us to work and provide a valuable resource in better working order for all of us to utilize including corporations that need to move products where they will be available for us to purchase and thereby further stimulate the economy.

Iamon lyme: Now that Obama's teleprompter is missing, we'll hear a lot of nonsense!

Artful Dodger: I like Cain. I like anyone who doesn't talk nonsense.

Dark Prince: spend money to employ people to do what? Maybe create new government jobs? We obviously don't have enough of those. If we did, then everyone could be employed.

We are already playing with the concept of diminishing returns, making it possible for there to be less and less money to go around. But we can't keep that up forever.

The only way socialism is able to do anything is to insert itself into a normally functioning society by convincing people that they need a small elite group of people (them) to micro manage their lives for them. When I say everyone suffers when productivity is controlled instead of encouraged, I am not exagerating. Castro would have died if he hadn't sent for a doctor outside of Cuba. His own doctor botched the opperation. Think about it.

Iamon lyme: Cain is the man in the debate! You watching?

Iamon lyme: Exactly. Many on the left continue to blame Bush even thought it's Obama that has caused more debt that ALL THE OTHER US PRESIDENTS COMBINED!!!

But it's Bush's fault we're so far in debt. Even though Obama spent the money!

And not Obama wants to spend more money on failed Keynesian economics. There's no end to his stupid!

Iamon lyme:
The time for spending is now, but not on wars.
We need to bring our troops home and spend some of the money that would be going to the war on our country employing those released troops and other unemployed.

Dark Prince: Overheard at a meeting of Spendaholics Anonymous: "Hello, my name is Barack Obama, and George Bush is a spendaholic."

Artful Dodger: You are right, motivation for doing more than most of us are willing to do would fly right out the window. The only reason some people work hard to make their business grow is because it's possible for them to make their business grow. I don't have that kind of drive, but I've done okay working for people like that.

Taking away the incentive for getting ahead is the best way I can think of to kill anyones motivation for getting ahead. I've known guys who refused to work because they didn't want to pay alimony or child support. If some dead beat dads refuse to work because they won't see all the money they earn, then what makes socialists think killing any incentive to work is such a good idea?

I've never been rich or owned my own business, and I've never been hired to work for someone who wasn't in a position to pay me. Actually, I did work for someone like that once. I got talked into working for a short time for someone who couldn't afford to pay me, so as you can imagine that job didn't last very long. He was paying me with stories and explanations and promises, but I can't buy groceries with nothing but a mouthful of words, so it had to end.

The idea that it's not fair for some people to have more than others is nonsense. Not everyone is willing to do what it takes to get ahead. What is not fair is to reward non productivity and penalize productivity. When that happens then everyone suffers, even the people who put themselves in the position to gain the most.. you can't gain much when there is much less being produced to gain.

Artful Dodger:
Is that argument against the Free Market or for Regulation?

Artful Dodger:
Well Spun!
Unfortunately, Bush got us into this mess starting 2 wars while cutting taxes for the wealthy instead of paying for those wars. It was under Bush that jobs migrated out of the country and unemployment rose and continued to rise. Where were the fiscally responsible pundits then?

The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit. Milton Friedman

Artful Dodger:
Taxing the rich has never been about monetary equalization but about progressive taxation, and it is sustainable. It won't make people equal and isn't intended to.
Friedman was an effective propagandist, but his theories were never able to explain the great depression.
The free market cannot help equalize financial disparity. Quite the opposite. As taxes and regulations for the wealthy has decreased over the past decades, the middle class has shrunk and the disparity increased dramatically.
It's a fallacy to think either that the wealthy work hard or that those not rich do not. No doubt some of the rich work hard and some of the poor do not.
Few would fall in the category of undeserving that suck off the work of others. Some that do fall into that category are wealthy.
By percentage, more is "confiscated" from the middle and lower classes than the upper class when sales taxes are factored in.

Iamon lyme: There are some people in the US that think that by taxing the rich, and giving that money to the needy (as a sort of monetary equalization) that such an idea is sustainable in the long run. It's not. And it won't make people equal. Milton Friedman had it right. Only a free enterprize system can help equalize the financial disparity in a country. You take money from the rich and two problems immediately emerge: The rich run out of money and then refuse to work so hard and take so many risks only to have it confiscated by the government to give it to the undeserving who have little ambition in life (except to suck off the hard work of others).

Übergeek 바둑이: Connect the dots. If we were really concerned about getting control of oil (anyones oil), then why do we resist drilling for it in our own backyard? Are you suggesting we aren't accessing the oil we are already in control of so that we have an excuse to invade other countries?

Your obsession with oil is like obsession with aliens. You can make a case for U.S. greed for oil, and I can make a case for why aliens are interested in our planet. Mine isn't predicated on looking for any reason to find fault with the U.S., especially when it's obvious that the rest of the world couldn't care less about your concerns if you bothered to apply them equally across the board.. the aliens are equal opportunity invaders.

Dark Prince:

> I agree with a fair distribution of wealth, but I can't say "fair and equal" does enough to encourage excellence.

I suppose that it depends on what "excellence" means. Is it making a lot of money? Is it becoming famous? Is it being fair to other human beings? Or sharing what you have?

I think that the problem is that we insist on measuring achievement in terms of how much money a person makes, how famous they become, how many inventions they create and how much money they make from them, etc. I rarely see anyone say that the best person is that one who helps the most human beings without asking anything in return. My mother does a lot of work to help poor people. She has spent countless hours collecting money, raising awareness, showing others not to be so selfish, etc. I never saw anyone say that my mother had "excellence" in her. When my mother dies nobody will remember her except those of us in our family. I see people crying over the death of somebody famous who made a lot of money or who became very powerful. I never saw many people shed a tear when some aid worker gets killed in some conflict zone. In capitalism excellence is money. Nobody cares about scientists or artists who made no money, even less about those who put time and effort to help other human beings. People care only when some rich, powerful man gives to charity, because it somehow convinces people that capitalists are a-OK. Don't get me wrong, they do great work and help thousands. But who remembers those who dodge bullets to bring food to a conflict zone?

> Using nukes adversely affects all life. There's already too much habitat destruction from human encroachment not to mention resource exploitation. Nuclear weapons have condemned many to slow agonizing deaths.

Of course, I was talking sarcasticly!

Limbaugh is now officially and idiot.

Übergeek 바둑이:
I agree with a fair distribution of wealth, but I can't say "fair and equal" does enough to encourage excellence.

Using nukes adversely affects all life. There's already too much habitat destruction from human encroachment not to mention resource exploitation. Nuclear weapons have condemned many to slow agonizing deaths.

Dark Prince:

> Of course excessive population creates many other problems as well. A common argument is that there are enough resources to sustain an even greater population.
That may be the case with less waste, but that's an ideal that doesn't exist with capitalist economics. In an ideal world nuclear power too would be safe, but we don't live in an ideal world.
Medical advances have greatly reduced infant mortality but have not reduced birth rates. Maybe starvation is the solution rather than the problem.

We could just skip starvation altogether and accelerate things a bit. We can take those nukes that plague our not-ideal world, and then use them to nuke the poor out of existence. We would solve hunger and poverty in one go!

Of course, there is another solution. Give people a good sexual education, make contraception widely available, teach men to accept vasectomy as a safe, cheap and viable means of birth control, accept abortion as another means of birth control, etc. In general use aggressive education and family planning.

But then, the Pope says condoms and contraception are wrong. Nobody wants abortion on religious grounds. Sexual education is wrong because it tells young people how to have sex without getting pregnant. Family planning goes against Genesis and the commandment of being fruitful and multiplying. It generally goes against religious principles.

So on religous grounds starvation is more acceptable. And using the nukes even more so because it spares the poor the agony of a slow death.

Bernice:

> perhaps USA, UK, AUS should just invade the countries and feed the poor.....mainly the USA because their spend on "WAR" is phenomenal

On the surface it seems reasonable. Specially when the cost of the food is a lot less than what is spent on military budgets. However, giving away free food does not eliminate the underlying causes of poverty. It is like putting a bandaid on a wound without first cleaning and disinfecting the wound.

We can give away free food, but that does not mean that we are getting rid of dictatorship, fascism, corruption, imperialism, predatory capitalism, religious fanaticism, exploitation, abuse, etc.

The poor of the world do not need charity. What they is social justice and the fair and equal distribution of wealth. That is the one thing that capitalism can never offer to them. Taking from the rich and redistributing equally among the poor is the stuff that revolutions are made of, and nobody in our capitalist world wants that.

So we look at poverty from far away. We know it is there, but we walk around pretending that it is not there, or hoping that somebody will come up with a good idea. We know what the medicine is, but it pains us to accept it.

Artful Dodger:
Of course excessive population creates many other problems as well. A common argument is that there are enough resources to sustain an even greater population.
That may be the case with less waste, but that's an ideal that doesn't exist with capitalist economics. In an ideal world nuclear power too would be safe, but we don't live in an ideal world.
Medical advances have greatly reduced infant mortality but have not reduced birth rates. Maybe starvation is the solution rather than the problem.

Bernice: That would be nice. Hunger is a huge problem in the world and it doesn't have to be that way.

perhaps USA, UK, AUS should just invade the countries and feed the poor.....mainly the USA because their spend on "WAR" is phenomenal

Artful Dodger:

> Iraq did have WMDs. Did they still have some at the time of the "invasion?" I doubt it. But no one knew with absolute certainty until AFTER.

But that is the point I was trying to make. They knew BEFORE the war. They were told so by the head of UNSCOM in 1998. Then by UNMOVIC in 1999 and through to the start of the war in 2003. The Bush administration deliberately ignored its own appointed weapons inspectors. They knew the "bombmaker" informant was a fraud, and still pushed him as an authority on WMDs in Iraq. The Bush administration deliberately deceived the American public to justify the war. They "hoped" to find a smoking gun and instead found nothing substantial, as would be expected from years of inspection turning up nothing.

> "What nobody ever talks about is chemical weapons used by the USA in Iraq. The USA used massive amounts of white phosphorus in Fallujah:"
> That is meaningless if Saddam had WMD's of his own. What the US has/had isn't the issue.

Isn't the issue? The USA is invading countries for using chemical weapons, and then it turns around and uses white phosphorus and depleted Uranium. This is being done deliberately. Look at this training video that the American army produced. It clearly identifies the radioactive nature of contamination left behind by depleted uranium. Knowing this fully, the American military is still using a radioactive weapon in the field, exposing not only civilians but also American servicemen in the field:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ML8i3XefHQ

And if anyone doubts what it does, maybe they should see the rise in birth defects in Fallujah:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYBmnw8rgio

> War sucks. And since the intent in war is to kill, white phosphorus is handy. But likely innocents are being killed this way and in those cases, it should be banned.

When will Americans stop and do some soul searching? Talk of freedom and democracy is meaningless if all that an army does is bring death and suffering. Deliberately lying and using false intelligence hardly makes things better. I wonder how many Iraqi children see at what has happened to their country, and then turn around to blame the USA. Then they will grow up hating the USA for bringing a war based on a pipe dream of non-existent WMDs, then seeing their country's wealth pumped out in oil pipelines. Now let's give those kids a reason NOT to become terrorists.

Übergeek 바둑이: So are you disputing the entire info found in the wiileaks?

Not finding a smoking gun doesn't mean there wasn't one. We know there were WMDs. Intelligence suggested that Saddam was trying to get more. But I do suspect that there was a measured effort to find reason to topple Saddam. But it's just a guess on my part. That Saddam was a bad leader is not debatable. He was a killer. But the US is mistaken if they think they can create a Western democracy in an Eastern country. Especially a Muslim country. A huge mistake. All this while Obama has just sent in 100 troops to a South African country to help with the rebellion going on there. Not much has changed in Washington DC. Obama still has in place many of the Bush policies pertaining to the war.


When someone commits suicide, it may say things one way or another. Only the one who took his/her life knows the deeper reason. That man's death COULD say something about the truth but just the fact that he took his own life doesn't REALLY say anything. People take their lives for many reasons. We can only guess why.

Iraq did have WMDs. Did they still have some at the time of the "invasion?" I doubt it. But no one knew with absolute certainty until AFTER.

"What nobody ever talks about is chemical weapons used by the USA in Iraq. The USA used massive amounts of white phosphorus in Fallujah:"

That is meaningless if Saddam had WMD's of his own. What the US has/had isn't the issue.

War sucks. And since the intent in war is to kill, white phosphorus is handy. But likely innocents are being killed this way and in those cases, it should be banned.

Iamon lyme:

> So I guess the fact that Saddam attacked Kuwait and we were asked to take millitary action against him at the behest of Arabian nations had nothing to do with it, we just used that as an excuse to eventually take control of Iraqs oil. Right.

The Gulf War (1991) was approved by the United Nations. Saddam's forces were defeated and sanctions were imposed on Iraq to stop Saddam from acquiring more weapons and invading any of Iraq's neighbors.

Now, the Iraq War (2003) was not backed by the United Nations because the Security Council saw through the web of lies that the USA and the UK were trying to sell. Most members of the Security Council realized that the claims of WMDs in Iraq were false. Colin Powell gave a speech before the UN General Assembly saying that Iraq was a big threat because of its huge stockpiles of WMDs, in particular its biological weapons nuclear weapons programs.

Weapons inspectors, including those sent by the Bush administration, repeatedly serched and found nothing before the war.

Consider for example what weapons inspector Scott Ritter, director of UNSCOM from 1991-1998, said with respect to Iraq's weapons capabilities in June 1999:

"When you ask the question, 'Does Iraq possess militarily viable biological or chemical weapons?' the answer is no! It is a resounding NO. Can Iraq produce today chemical weapons on a meaningful scale? No! Can Iraq produce biological weapons on a meaningful scale? No! Ballistic missiles? No! It is 'no' across the board. So from a qualitative standpoint, Iraq has been disarmed. Iraq today possesses no meaningful weapons of mass destruction capability."

This was 4 years before the war even started and by then Iraq was already disarmed.

Then UNSCOM was replaced by UNMOVIC in 1999.

"UNMOVIC led inspections of alleged chemical and biological facilities in Iraq until shortly before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003, but did not find any weapons of mass destruction.

Based on its inspections and examinations during this time, UNMOVIC inspectors determined that UNSCOM had successfully dismantled Iraq’s unconventional weapons program during the 1990s."

"Bush later said that the biggest regret of his presidency was "the intelligence failure" in Iraq, while the Senate Intelligence Committee found in 2008 that his administration "misrepresented the intelligence and the threat from Iraq". A key CIA informant in Iraq admitted that he lied about his allegations, "then watched in shock as it was used to justify the war"."

Here is more from Scott Ritter:

"We seized the entire records of the Iraqi Nuclear program, especially the administrative records. We got a name of everybody, where they worked, what they did, and the top of the list, Saddam's "Bombmaker" [Which was the title of Hamza's book, and earned the nickname afterwards] was a man named Jafar Dhia Jafar, not Khidir Hamza, an if you go down the list of the senior administrative personnel you will not find Hamza's name in there. In fact, we didn't find his name at all. Because in 1990, he didn't work for the Iraqi Nuclear Program. He had no knowledge of it because he worked as a kickback specialist for Hussein Kamel in the Presidential Palace.

He goes into northern Iraq and meets up with Ahmad Chalabi. He walks in and says, I'm Saddam's "Bombmaker". So they call the CIA and they say, "We know who you are, you're not Saddam's 'Bombmaker', go sell your story to someone else." And he was released, he was rejected by all intelligence services at the time, he's a fraud.

And here we are, someone who the CIA knows is a fraud, the US Government knows is a fraud, is allowed to sit in front of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and give testimony as a expert witness. I got a problem with that, I got a problem with the American media, and I've told them over and over and over again that this man is a documentable fraud, a fake, and yet they allow him to go on CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, and testify as if he actually knows what he is talking about."

So the government knew that the key CIA informant was a fraud.

"On 23 January 2004, the head of the Iraq Survey Group, David Kay, resigned his position, stating that he believed WMD stockpiles would not be found in Iraq. "I don't think they existed," commented Kay. "What everyone was talking about is stockpiles produced after the end of the last Gulf War and I don't think there was a large-scale production program in the nineties." In a briefing to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Kay criticized the pre-war WMD intelligence and the agencies that produced it, saying "It turns out that we were all wrong, probably in my judgment, and that is most disturbing." Sometime earlier, CIA director George Tenet had asked David Kay to delay his departure: "If you resign now, it will appear that we don't know what we're doing. That the wheels are coming off."

So the head of the Iraq Survey Group, the agency set up by the American government to find WMDs, resigned because the government wanted him to find WMDs that did not exist.

Considering how many people before and after the war found no WMDs, how can the war be justified? The USA can come out and say that Saddam was a brutal dictator, but for decades the American government has supported and done business with many brutal dictators around the world. However, Saddam never attacked the USA, the links to terrorism were never proven, Iraq's military was weak, and Iraq was contained within its borders.

Then one has to wonder how much money Exxon and Haliburton made from the war. If the war was not about oil, then why did Haliburton make billions from both oil and servicing the military at inflated prices?

: Lemon lyme: I meant probing, not probling.

Probing, as in poking us and making us stick out our tongues and say "aaaaaaaah".

Probing.

Übergeek 바둑이: So I guess the fact that Saddam attacked Kuwait and we were asked to take millitary action against him at the behest of Arabian nations had nothing to do with it, we just used that as an excuse to eventually take control of Iraqs oil. Right.

On a side note, the reason aliens were scooping people up and probling them had to do with the fact that they originally came here for our jobs and our women. But before they could go after our women, they first had to figure out which of us are the women. You see, we all look alike to them. Personally, I think they are all a bunch of imperialist spacists!

Artful Dodger: I knew we found some of it after the initial search, but didn't realise how much there really was. The news of what we found wasn't exactly splashed across the headlines as most of the negative reporting was.

Just because news agencies lose interest in the story after the initial find doesn't mean everyone else has lost interest. All I saw were bits and pieces of news stories that made a few finds sound anti-climatic, so it was never front page news.

Artful Dodger:

> the WikiLeaks Web site revealed that small amounts of chemical weapons were found in Iraq
> American troops were able to buy containers from locals of what they thought was liquid sulfur mustard
> troops discovered a chemical lab in a house in Fallujah during a battle with insurgents

Maybe it was the real deal, I mean Grey Poupon!

The truth is that there never was a "smoking gun". Colin Powell stood in front of the UN General Assembly and gave a speech about Iraq's alleged WMDs, even though weapons inspectors and intelligence agencies inside and outside the USA had insisted that Iraq had destroyed its WMD manufacturing capabilities in the 1990s.

The fact that the UK manufactured a weapons dossier, and the man who wrote it mysteriously commited suicide before the inquiry says a lot about the truth. By the admission of both Tony Blair and George W. Bush the intelligence was "faulty".

Some Americans really want to believe that Iraq had WMDs because that gives legitimacy to the war. Without WMDs the war in Iraq is an imperialist war aimed at misappropriating Iraq's oil. 400,000 civilians were killed by the Coalition of the Willing. If there were no WMDs, then those civilian deaths amount to no more than a war crime, rather than some heroic liberation of the country.

If Iraq had WMDs, instead of a few thousand American soldiers being killed there would have been hundreds of thousands of casualties.

If those containers of Grey Poupon truly contained chemical weapons, the insurgents would have killed thousands with a single suicide chemical weapons release. After all, if common citizens had chemical weapons, insurgents would have chemical weapons too, and American servicemen on the ground would have stood no chance.

What nobody ever talks about is chemical weapons used by the USA in Iraq. The USA used massive amounts of white phosphorus in Fallujah:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4440664.stm

The USA has refused to sign a treaty that bans the use of white phosphorus because it is a convenient way to "provide illumination". The fact that it can set human flesh on fire has nothing to do with anything.

The USA has also used Uranium depleted missiles. These shells are made with a steel alloy containing waste uranium from nulcear reactors and they spread large amounts of radiation. They are in essence a "dirty bomb".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQhvX6Vbvhc
http://www.rense.com/general64/du.htm

The number of children born with birth defects has increased 2-6 times. Cancer and leukemia among children has increased 3-12 times. That is a 300% to 1200% increase in cancer rates. There is already evidence of a large incidence of cancer and leukemia among American servicement who were exposed to depleted uranium left over after explosion.

The question is: who imposes sanctions on the USA for using chemical and radioactive weapons?

Iamon lyme: and how about this:


US did find Iraq WMD
By DON KAPLAN

Last Updated: 8:57 AM, October 25, 2010

Posted: 12:44 AM, October 25, 2010


More Print There were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq after all.

The massive cache of almost 400,000 Iraq war documents released by the WikiLeaks Web site revealed that small amounts of chemical weapons were found in Iraq and continued to surface for years after the 2003 US invasion, Wired magazine reported.

The documents showed that US troops continued to find chemical weapons and labs for years after the invasion, including remnants of Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons arsenal -- most of which had been destroyed following the Gulf War.

In August 2004, American troops were able to buy containers from locals of what they thought was liquid sulfur mustard, a blister agent, the documents revealed. The chemicals were triple-sealed and taken to a secure site.

Also in 2004, troops discovered a chemical lab in a house in Fallujah during a battle with insurgents. A chemical cache was also found in the city.

(V): lol.. Yes, there are many possible explanations, but only if you ignore the facts and let your imagination run wild.

(V): We were first invited to go after Saddam by other Arab nations. It was the only time they have ever directly asked for our help. Do you really not understand what was happening over there?

(V): The answer can be found in your statement that by the time Bush invaded Iraq we didn't find WMDs. We found evidence that there had been those devices and materials used to make them, but you are ignoring the fact (or have forgotten) that several months passed while Bush was trying to get the UN to sanction the invasion, giving Saddam ample time to get rid of them. We later stopped a ship containing those materials coming from another country after they believed we might strike there next. Can you guess (or do you know) what contry that was?

Artful Dodger:

> If Jesus was in charge, we wouldn't be in this mess!

I suppose Jesus would do certain things differently. He would probably support free, universal health care for the poor since his ministry dealt so much with the suffering of the poor. He would probably support feeding the poor too, and to do so he might have had to use state funds. Jesus would be on the side of the poor all the way. He would care for the working man (his father was a carpenter), and he would pardon criminals who repented of their transgressions. He would probably get rid of all the weapons, including the nuclear arsenal. He would leave all theatres of war operations and simply refuse to go to war. It is difficult to say. It all depends on how one interprets the New Testament.

> I don't want to vilify the rich generally. I know a few millionaires. One, uses his money to help the poor build churches in South America along with roads and wells.

I don't generalize abou the rich. Some of them do great things with their money. Other are just plain greedy. The rich live in a state of contradiction. They want to make a lot of money, and to do that you have to be aggressive. At the same time they want to be good, or at least be seen as good.

The best example is John D. Rockefeller. He founded the Standard Oil Company (today's Exxon). He turned that company into the biggest monopoly in the world. To do that he engaged in industrial espionage, price wars, heavy-handed marketing tactics, courtroom evasions and shennanigans, bribery, supporting dictators abroad, using thugs to beat up workers who went on strike, influencing and corrupting elected representatives, etc. At the same time he was engaged in huge charity projects and gave away over 1 billion dollars to charity (in today's money that would be about 50 billion).

So there is a deep contradiction between the brutality of his business tactics, and the generosity of his charitable donations. He made thousands of people poor and dispossesed, and helped thousands of poor people at the same time.

Some of the businessmen that influence Washington today probably have the same contradictions. They will use their money to influence representatives, they will use brutal business tactics both at home and abroad, and then they will donate a lot of money to charity. Sometimes those donations are given out of altruistic principles, sometimes the donations become tax deductions. In the meantime representatives are easily swayed by money and a system that undermines the democratic process.

Bernice: Jesus broke the tradition of excluding women in the affairs of men. He was a bit of a radical when it comes to tradition.