Re: ATTITUDE INTERVENTION NEEDED

We must remember that there is a tug of war going on to control the steering wheel. When the vehicle is about to go into the ditch, it takes more than a tug from the middle to get it back on course. Democrats drove the banking system into the left hand ditch. Now they are trying to blame the right and at the same time trying to take credit for steering out of the ditch. Anyone who has done a small amount of research on the history of Fannie Mae or the Community Reinvestment Act knows that this vehicle could not have run into the ditch without the tugging on the wheel by the left. Anyone can easily see that the very bill that is supposed to steer us out of the left hand ditch was loaded up with more than $78 Billion Dollars of mostly wasteful subsidies. This stuff is not middle of the road stuff. It is the immoral taking from many citizens in order to give a selected group of friends undeserved payments from the government. It is nothing more than a continuation of charging poor and middle class people more for cokes, corn bread and corn chips in order to provide payoffs to wealthy campaign contributors.

On Thu, Oct 2, 2008 at 12:28 PM, Al wrote:

In 1976, I was in very rural southeastern Utah driving a van that was towing a travel trailer. I found myself on a narrow road with no guard rails, that ran along the top of a ridge which dropped off steeply on both sides. This experience brought the phrase " middle of the road" into reality. As life tempered me over the years since this experience, it has become more and more oblivious that real progress can only be made by holding close to the middle of the road. At times a little shift to the right or left may be required to negotiate the hazards on the road, but veering too far either way results in disaster. The economy and politics are deeply intertwined and at times it is nearly impossible to separate them to find reality. Almost all political decisions are made for economic reasons, not ideological reasons. This leads to the haunting question for political decisions, "Who is benefiting economically?"

I believe that the easing of credit to make home ownership available to more people had its root cause in illegal immigration, which was helping business in the US to increase its profits in many ways, the least of which was through their employment. Along with the normal increase in population through births and legal immigration over the last decade, a new market of over a million people a year was created for goods and services. More housing has been needed by these immigrants and it has usually been low end of the scale where no one but the government invests money for new construction. Imagine the outcry if this has been proposed! The solution was to make it easier for existing citizens to become home owners. Thus opening up lower strata rental units for illegals. It also delayed the cries to stop illegal immigration because everyone else felt they were moving up the economic ladder, the Great American Dream. But, too much deregulation and lack of policing existing regulations created a market too lucrative that the temptation of greed could not be resisted by some. As in any overheated segment of the economy, a correction followed.

The real question is "Which side of the van and trailer have their wheels off the road?"