I do not and never will support giving illegals benefits. However if they need medical assistance here what are we supposed to do? I say treat what is necessary at that time and send them back. But that still has a cost to it. But I am mainly talking about our own citizens, working citizens, without coverage and no reasonable avenue to get that coverage. We still pay through higher premiums for treatment of the uninsured to the tune of billions per year. Those costs are underwritten by charging those in the system-us. That is a fact. And the uninsured usually wait until an emergency to get treatment and that is when it is at it most costy to treat-both in terms of money and lives. Debating about it and doing nothing due to political grandstanding and ideological pretense serves no purpose and just results in more costs and more lost lives. We need solutions not hyperbole.

it is not placing a tax to cap profits, it is asserting a tax that was lifted to aid the industry in the lean times -- well over twenty years ago. It is well past the time to reinstate it.

They tax the oil in that state, even raised that tax under Palin. They also receive more money per capita from Washington by many fold, than any other state in the union. Why in the world would you want a governor from a socialist state? Despite her lies claiming turning down federal money, she was at the trough getting as much pork as possible. Should that comment have been "lipstick on the pork"? She is sure trying to paint a pretty picture of herself as a reformer, but she was unable to keep her hands off of our tax money. Not an empty suit there…the pockets are stuffed with our money. Alaska sends about 5K per capita to Washington and gets back about 14K. About 3/4 of the price of a barrel of oil is taken by the state and redistributed to the residents. That's socialism, folks, and the Republican choice for VP was the queen of redistribution.

Putting into place a tax to cap an industries profits and then redistributing that tax money to the general population IS socialism. Government has effectively taken over an industry by dictating what its profits will be. The health care issue is quite a bit more complex but maybe we could cut off the massive amount of treatment for ILLEGAL ALIENS for starters and just send their butts back to Mexico, so sad so sorry to the leaches. That alone is costing tens of billions in taxpayer paid fraud as we speak. We already know that a socialized system, besides maybe some primary care, is an ineffective nightmare that super high taxing countries are not able to fund appropriately. There is not enough money in the working public to pay for that government controlled abyss.

I think the answers for people who are struggling are multifaceted and not always primarily "government first."
Might be that a private-government interface program can retrain them for a better job.
Might be that they do that themselves, with maturity. Sometimes, the ones doing the menial stuff are just young and "paying their dues" as most of us did. If they keep working hard, they can become the foreman of the crew or even part owner of the company. Many successful Americans have stories that start that way.
Also, I don't rule out church and charity assistance in job training, inexpensive child care (our church provides that), food pantries, etc. Kind of a cooperative effort. Cheers, MGM (I think Calvary Revival Church, a primarily black church, does this best of all!)

I hope you are not placing me in that category of not rewarding unsuccessful people. I am not saying that. There are many hard working honest people doing work that someone has to do and they are struggling horribly and health issues including insurance (or lack thereof) is a major one. It is a real problem with real consequences (deadly ones included) that needs real answers not political hyperbole, grandstanding, insults, and otherwise. We can either choose to work with the realities or we can bury our heads in the sand even further and just wash our hands of the plight of those less fortunate. Our choice, but the decision will show just how much of a nation "Under God" we really are. Is it everyone for themselves or is it help thy neighbor.

The knife cuts both ways. These "successful people" have been receiving huge tax breaks for years. It's easy to be successful when the government bends over backwards for you...

So some of you folks think that the government should take money from successful people, who have lots of money, so they can redistribute it to unsuccessful people because it is unfair that they don't have much money. When you compare the lives of successful people with unsuccessful people it doesn't take long to see why each situation is what it is. You reward intelligent, hard working people who are willing to do what is necessary and put forth the effort to get ahead. When you reward the "have not's", you reinforce their desire to ask for more for doing less.

Putting into place a tax is not socialism. As for healthcare, something needs to be done and even McCain agrees with that. We pay for the uninsured already through higher premuims resulting from higher costs due to write-offs from the treatment of uninsured persons-many who are working but their employers do not provide coverage and they cannot afford it. As for the oil companies I do not believe in a windfall tax (and it will not pass) but I can say this: we can eliminate subsidies to them, raise the land leasing to reasonable rates instead of the steals they get now; and we can clean up the Bush/Cheney cronies from the govt who get "special" favors for better deals at the expense of the taxpayers. That joy just got exposed and it happened from 2002 to 2007. This is in addition to the scandal that broke earlier about Feds breaking contract practices to favor the oil companies. Rid the graft and corruption out of the system first.

I'll concede the "windfall profits" if the current tax breaks given to these companies are taken away -- retroactively would be nice (as with the LPs in the 80s), but taking them away now would work for me too. If you are making record profits, you do not need the tax breaks which were designed to assist the industry during the lean times. Fair enough, right?

While I am a bit envious of oil profits and don't like the pump price, I don't think it is the governments responsibility to decide when a company is too successful. Why isn't the government all over Microsoft? Last I checked a while ago, Microsoft had $50(?) billion in cash alone. Competition via real sustainable alternatives is the key but to "take" from one (because you think they have too much) and give to the other is ludicrous. This whole "rich" people envy and promises to steal (robin hood syndrome)earned income from successful people panders only to the lame and lazy.

The problem with a windfall profit tax is that imperfect people (us, politicians) get to raise the hue and cry about what *we* define as a person earning too much money. Okay, gas is up this summer, but how much do we average citizens understand about the risk assumed by the people at the top of this industry and about the number of jobs they provide? I can't say I'm an expert on this, can you?
And where does it end? The natural outcome of this is to narrow the gap between the highest earners and the lowest earners by *legislating* what that gap can be. Or maybe caving in to the liberation theology folks(with Marxist roots) who don't believe anyone should receive any more money than anyone else, no matter what job they do. *That* would really move all of the people with entreprenerial skills overseas, wouldn't it? No one is going to start a company if they think that their risk will not yield profit for their family. Cheers, MGM

which reap billions in profits while still claiming tax breaks enacted when the market was bleak for them. Why should we be giving them a crutch when they obviously do not need it.

"I am absolutely determined that by the end of the first term of the next president, we should have universal health care in this country,". (Quote Jan 25, 2008) Of course, now the attitude has changed to coverage for the "children". We are not blind to BS nor NObamas plan to change our system to socialist medicine. It all sounds nice but most of those countries using universal health care suffer massive shortages of capital to cover it and/or substandard care. Go to the Canadian border and ask the onslaught of people converging on the US to get quality health care what they think. As far as oil companies, I don't think it is any secret that NObama promised to tax "wind fall" profits and pass out checks to the public in their honor. Isn't that saying that a company is making too much money? Since when does the government decide that you make too much money? If you have a problem with oil companies, get your butt in the basement, devise and patent a viable alternative or shut up.

Socialism is not a change I will be voting for. And that is exactly what Obama is preaching. He doesn't call it that but you can put l......oh never mind.

Jean, it's great that things are fine with you and I must say that I have little to really complain about, but many people are not as well off. Many who are in the stock market watch their money continue to drop steadily. Many are loosing their homes by forclosure although this is partly their fault because they didn't think things through about how much they should borrow to buy a home and how they could pay it all back, with interest and other expenses over the life of the loan, while they were cheered on by greedy real estate and mortgage brokers thinking of their commissions. There is a difference in the amount of a mortgage loan you may qualify for and the amount of a mortgage loan you realistically should commit to for many years. Many people have insecure jobs or have been laid off. Jobs that don't require highly technical skills are scarce and don't pay well. Young people are having a hard time getting started in life. It's not the best of times.

You have it wrong perhaps: Phil Gramm spearheaded efforts to pass banking reform laws, including the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999-it passed in 2000. The law reduced government regulations that had been in place since the Great Depression that separated banking, insurance and brokerage activities. Now many financial market experts feel this legislation became pivotal in setting into motion the corporate practices that led to the sub-prime debacle. This same genius in that same law helped deregulate the speculative markets-Wall Street called it the development of a shadow banking system with little or no oversight. That led to the oil futures debacle. McCain has used this poor excuse of a now banking lobbyist as his financial advisor. Thoughts? CB, please say with detail what Obama proposes in the oil and healthcare industries that is converting them over to govt ownership.

I always liked that line. If cutting spending was a criteria for a conservative Republican, then you may have never had one. Reagan had more debt than Bush as a percentage of GDP, though he did some vetoing. He also ran up the debt overall and we ended his reign with a stock market crash. It seems every time we cut taxes, the economy tanks. And Bush was definitely not a uniter. As soon as he took power along with his congressional porksters, the Democrats were slapped to the back of the room. Sure, he may have reached across the aisle on a bill or two, but his modus operandi while he owned congress was to steamroll the left. We couldn't even have Democratic lobbyists under his henchman, DeLay. Conservatives of all stripes have forgotten that compromise is how this country runs best. That is the secret to getting effective legislation…the classic "art of the possible". With 300+ million different opinions, you cannot expect to run a democracy like a dictatorship just because you have a majority.

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Bear Stearns, and how many airlines again? Oh, things are great when companies can tap the taxpayer well to stay in business...Oh, look at Lehman on deck...

Bush and Cheney conservative Republicans? You're kidding, right? Next you'll be calling them libertarians.

Had Bush been a conservative Republican, he would have vetoed every spending bill he got until they were trimmed back to pre-Clinton levels.

He would not have tried so hard to be a "Uniter, not a divider." Allowing the likes of Ted Kennedy to co-author his education plan.

Bush has proved to be more of a liberal "Rockefeller Republican" than a conservative Reaganite.

How is a ticket of conservative Republicans going to change a government of conservative Republicans? Bush, Cheney, Roberts and the rest of the Supreme Court, all the neo-con fan club members scattered throughout the various departments. Mr. Pot, I would like you to meet Mrs. Kettle. I am sorry but we are trying to trade a President some folks would like to have a beer with for an aging war hero and a hockey mom who has trouble remembering what she stood for regarding earmarks in Alaska and whose husband was a member of a fringe secessionist party that she addressed and thanked at several opportunities.

"nowhere do I see an increased role of govt ownership of private business/industries-the major tenet of socialism." Well for starters, how about the health care industry and oil companies. Since NObama will not explain his dubious change very much or how he plans to pay for it, I can only wonder what else he has planned. Typical that NObama doesn't lay the cards on the table because he wants everyone to get "excited" about "change" but is hiding his true agenda. We have heard it all before, once in office, "oh sorry, I take back everything I said and now I will do what I had planned all along". "You voted me in, remember?"

although the red lining laws have been used as a scapegoat for bogus loans.
The rush for profit was at the CMO level, and the more packed the packages were that were sold to investment banks, the more money the brokers made. They would have done the same without any regulation…the instant money was too good. In a totally freewheeling economy, the collapses may have been worse since the investors and brokers were not working with their own money.
They just didn't care so long as they made their commissions, fees and bonuses for the non-existent quality on the investments. In a non-regulatory environment, the market does catch up, but usually way too late. Even, as you stipulate, the government regulations let them do this (which is a stretch), there is no reason a financial institution should entertain such a risk for long term lending, other than total fiscal irresponsibility.

Mortgage lenders are heavily regulated, and those regulations have forced them to make a lot of loans to people they ordinarily would not have extended credit. Regulations set the equity level at which documentation of income and credit-worthiness cannot be required. In a rapidly rising housing bubble, almost everyone had enough equity to obtain a no-doc loan.

Further, the final lenders were required to do business with outside mortgage brokers over whom they had little or no control.

Finally, guarantees of bailouts of depositors (but not investors) made putting money into mortgage banks seem safe to people when it really was not without those government guarantees, thus eliminating the last line of defense for market forces. Without government interference, lenders and depositors would not have been so reckless with money they could lose.

Government is the problem, not the solution.

but getting out of the way is what has brought us problems. Republicans, and Bush in particular, want to emasculate any regulatory efforts and give the market a completely free reign, and that just does not work. Unregulated or unenforced mortgage lending is the fault, not the borrower. An institution should not, I repeat, should not be able to lend your or my money to a person, entity, business that cannot repay, period. Mortgage lenders did this, got paid fees, package worthless CMO's and sold them to other investors. Large corporations and multinationals are just as bureaucratic and often as inefficient as governments and the trouble comes when they run rampant in the schoolyard. Without some supervision, people get seriously hurt. Like it as not, effective, regulatory governance is a part of modern, industrial societies...otherwise it is just wild kingdom all over again.

It is unrealistic to believe that any given indicator would be more than 10% different today if Gore had won in 2000.

High oil prices are a worldwide problem and have dragged down the economies of Europe every bit as much as hours. We might have wasted money chasing climate control instead chasing jihadists, but it would still have been wasted. No politician of either party forced anyone to refinance their home in the midst of a bubble with variable rate loans.

The problem is not who is in the White House, or even who is in Congress. If any Republican or Democrat suddenly decided to adhere to the spending authorizations of the Constitution, we would vote him out at the next election. The problem is us. We have started to believe that the resident of the White House is responsible for our prosperity, when at most he can help by staying out of the way and insisting that Congress do the same.

Our unrealistic expectations are the problem.

Why the personal attack on Mr. Markowitz? Being realistic does not mean one is depressed. I think he shows great courage as apposed to those that bury their head in the sand.

Have you read his book "Dreams From My Father"?
Vice pulling a Joe Biden and using Obama's quotes as my own, maybe you should read it?
If you want my copy - I'll sell it to ya...capitalism at it's best, bro.

CB many of us do not want to go down the road of the tried and tested failures of our current POTUS and his style of governance. Obama is not a socialist. What nonsensical drivel flamed by nothing but opinion. Please do tell us just where does Obama want a Chavez style govt for our country. I am very curious to see it because I have looked at both candidate's proposals and in some areas they are very close in others very apart but nowhere do I see an increased role of govt ownership of private business/industries-the major tenet of socialism.

With the empty change that NObama promises, it is apparent that the only difference between NObama and Hugo Chavez is Chavez has worn a uniform. Even Chavez's own song of "free everything from the government" was voted down by the "critical" capitalist thinkers. We do not need to go down that path of tried and tested failures of over government.