The state owns your property if you have a mortgage, or if they deem it necessary to use “Eminent Domain” to acquire your land for their purposes.

If you are on a Bill Gates “Roller Coaster Ride�, then you are just exercising your need to solve the problem of being the best and staying on top of the competition. You have to pull the rug out from under the competition to do that. You have to steal the ideas of the little guy trying a garage startup because you managed to get a foothold early.

Too many times those who make it to the top, often have to bribe a congressman or law enforcement to stay there.

The rest of us are damaged by the bad habits of those schemers who find a way to extract money from the tax coffers, i.e. insurance scams, price gouging Californians for energy by manipulating markets, bankruptcy laws that protect schemers and allow them to rip-off the unsuspecting hard working public, while giving people like Martha Stewart a slap on the hand. Bank officers that collect points on ever inflating property values, the “Greenspans� of the world feeding this frenzy by lowering tax rates at strategic times, fueling cost push inflation by manipulating the money supply.

How is it, that I know economic professors, who aren’t rich, they teach the subject, what are they teaching, if they can’t take advantage of what they know? What a system… where a garage band, or garage geek gets all the prizes while the rest of us can’t hang on to any kind of hope for the future. We are overcharged for drugs when we become feeble, cheated on our bank loans, over insured on our property, while the insurance companies can’t pay to replace property insured in a storm, or an earthquake or a fire or a flood. When we drive on the highway, there are far too few police officers to catch the perps, speeding and driving recklessly. Veterans are promised the best in healthcare, and then abandoned when it comes time to need the health care.

Now the snobbery of the media in education circles are marginalizing teachers who have invested a large amount of their money and time to get where they are, and then belittled by the arrogant academic bullies who target the teaching profession as a bonafied profession. You say the free market works and I ask for whom? As a teacher you are expected to bring children into the age of literacy when their parents are offended by the very idea of someone educating their children. Doesn’t matter what income level they come from they fight the teaching professions tooth-and-nail.

We spend 18 years in school and college, to get a foot in the door of a living wage, and are considered idiots by those who make us jump the academic hoops while someone else gets hired. We’re supposed to be proud of our country, but what does our country give us to be proud of? Maybe a home team winning at football, basketball, baseball, and then we say America the beautiful because we are proud of our team?

I guess we can be proud that Honda took over the mini-van market, that Toyota took over the small pickup market, and that Dodge can’t put a decent transmission in it’s vehicles. Ford eliminated the mini-van market, which by the way, is the family transportation market. G.M. and the Airline industry are threatening the retirement payroll of their employees.

We have an obesity problem in this country, which translates into immune dysfunction and diabetes. Our lifestyles dictate that we keep on a squirrel cage until we drop dead from the side effects of working ourselves into the ground. Some of us are lucky enough to squirrel away some money to make a fast dash at enjoying our golden years, but then we are faced with the debts that come with declining health of our later years.

These problems are overcome by those in the good-ol-boy network, those who take care of the special friends they have but the rest of society has to sit and wait to for favors from government, and hope that we can convince them to employ us enough to get by, and beg for favor at the social security trough, or the Medicare trough or the Veterans Association trough in our final years.

Now they are making so confusing to receive medicines, that people are complaining about the obstacles thrown in the way to collect.

My wealth is my family, and that can disappear overnight with a traffic accident, health condition, or other factors including divorce.

I would like to think we as a group of beings can find a better way to coexist than always needing to be stronger than them over there, richer than him or her, better looking than he or she, more knowledgeable than everybody.

We breed like flies and then use the males to fight devastating wars to prove we are the mighty until the cannon fodder gets smart and decides not to buy into that goal in life.

As much as you may hate to admit it, but most people go into business to make money, not promote the common good. That being said, most of what gets invented and does well are things that we find that we need to make our lives a little easier and/or make us more money.

While yes the Markets govern the economy, It is consumers that drives the markets. We consumers are the ones that makes this economy go and nothing that Clinton or Bush does can change that fact.

As far as rights being taken away, exactly what rights that are given to us by the Constitution have been taken away. Privacy? Nope. Speech? to a degree. Bear arms? yes.

Why no to privacy, simply put, there is a law on the books Known as the Foriegn Intellegance Suveillance Act (FISA) which allows for secret searches with secret search warrants and some survallience where warrants are not required, FISA was enacted by Jimmy Carter in 1977. Executive Orders by both Carter and Reagan allowed the FBI to monitor all calls going into and out of the country looking for anything that would lead to disrupting an attack on US soil. After 9/11 happened, everyone went after our Government for not connecting the dots, and when we try to do exactly that, we cry Privacy. Which is it?

As it stands right now, No power has been abused as of yet, but there is a body that helps keep things in check. It’s called a FISA court. These Judges make sure that what the FBI wants qualifies under FISA.