Posted by: James A, Sweeney
Comment: #2
Sun Apr 5, 2009 3:22 PM
Sir;... The problem in this country is, if one single cause can be put on it, the result of the government being run like a business... Businesses sell... The government sold, Our rights, and Our property to the highest bidder....It never considered that it should make clear that public property in private hands still had to support the commonwealth, and that public property in private hands still had to pay for its own defense....Ever since Jackson drove the natives from their own property, held by the government as a trust, and sold it to pay off the national debt, that has been the standard and natural situation, where the rich would evade taxes, and then public property would be sold off to them to make up the shortfall of revenue... They should understand, and we should understand, and mostly, the government should be made to understand that there is no such thing as absolute property rights...Taxes are the dues people pay for the use and profit of property.....For what other reason then, should the people have ever cut loose of any property when it was all once public??? Even in private hands it must serve a public good...And the danger of the rich running the government is that they use the public debt to break the poor, and make them poorer, while they use the debt as an excuse to manipulate all good public property into their own hands... That is our history...That is the business called America...The problem is, that when the poor have not enough of their own property to support themselves, then they will have nothing left to sell but their rights to all the proceeds of America...And that is a statement of the problem in a nutshell, that where property has rights, all rights will be treated as a property that one must sell off to put off starvation.... We have seen our rights in this country, and in its produce sold off for a pittance... It is ours no less because of that fact... Property rights are always in flux, and just as the commoners were once turned out of the commons, so the rich might be turned out of their riches...One simple fact must not be forgotten: Even in private hands, property must serve the public, and if it does not then there is no defense for it, and there should be no defense for it.... The people are the law... The law without the people is nothing... The law, like property, must serve the people or it is not the law, and not legal...The people, the ultimate customer of government and law, are always right...Thanks...Sweeney
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Posted by: Paul M. Petkovsek
Comment: #3
Sun Apr 5, 2009 7:18 AM
I have often heard legislators, especially here in Texas, say that you can't fix education by throwing money at it. Well, I would like for them to try, at least once, just to see what happens. It seems that they are willing to throw money at all sorts of things that comfort the comfortable and take money away from important things like CHIPS and public schools. People need to be educated at least so they can read well enough to understand columns like this one so that they will not swallow whole the vitriol spewed by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, the mean little emails that seem so prolific these days, and the soundbites that pass for news on television.
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