LOU

Free marketeers, please explain, just as one example:

What is FREE about our pharmaceutical market that has taxpayers funding most of the research for new drugs but getting NOTHING on their investment, since drug companies have no responsibilities to pay us back once they've secured their copyright. THEN, they pay off our legislators to make it illegal for us to buy drugs off the GLOBAL FREE market, thereby keeping prices artificially high and ensuring windfall profits. This is for MEDICINE, people.

There is no free market. American capitalism has always been about regulation of markets, it's just that now all regulation is done to accrue benefit to the corporations, not the consumer. "We, the People" are an insignificant glitch in the grand protectionist scheme of American capitalism.

Corporate shareholders have every right to exercise their rights as citizen-individuals, no more or less than any other citizen. The corporation itself has no rights (or should not) or function other than as a profit making device. Thomas Jefferson specifically warned against ever allowing these behemoths to overwhelm government of, by and for THE PEOPLE.

Mike, I never question American ability to innovate. But, with the hostile takeover of our government by purely profit driven corporate interests, there is no national will to solve the BIG problems - energy, health care, securing our borders, the two tier economic divide we're developing. It's not that we lack the ability, we lack the leadership. And this is by design, because short term profits are king now and the common good is an anachronism.

As for education and communication, sorry that it comes off like a diatribe. But surely you have noticed the nonstop assault by the right wing on both Public Education and the Media. Do you honestly beleive they want a well informed electorate. Because those two areas are key and all it looks like to me is they want to intimidate them, gut them and manipulate them. In fact, it seems a key strategy.
LOU | 08.30.06 - 6:03 am | #