The political Left has two basic positions regarding business in America.

1) If a company is making a profit, they characterize the company as evil, and demand that their profits be taken away, so the government can use the money instead (this is known as THEFT in the non-socialist world, but you aren't supposed to think about that). It goes without saying that the bigger a company's profits grow, the MORE evil that company becomes. This means that Exxon-Mobil is the DEVIL INCARNATE.

2) If a company stops making a profit and loses money, the Left will subsidize the company (the Right tends to join in on this part too - Let's privatize profits, socialize losses, and join me on my yacht this weekend, old chum. Life is good).

The above is a twist on Reagan's old joke about government power: If it moves, tax it; if it keeps moving, regulate it; And when it stops moving, subsidize it.

A good example of #1 is Barack Obama traveling around the country telling everyone he wants to take the profits away from those evil oil companies (who, btw, enable our economy and society to function at a post-19th century level that keeps us off horseback and stagecoaches, but you aren't supposed to think about that. Just keep repeating to yourself - 'Oil Is Evil, Oil Is Evil', like Nancy Pelosi (D-Venus) and Harry Reid (D-Mars) do. It's easier than thinking about things.

A good example of #2 is the taxpayer bailout of the mortgage mess, which included bailing out faltering companies like Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac. Those are private companies, aren't they ? Sure they are. Sort of. But talk about connected. They're practically a branch of government.

As far as I can tell, the following industries comprise the liberal Axis Of Evil Corporations: Oil companies, pharmaceutical companies, and insurance companies. I provide this list as a public service, so you lay persons out there can know who you should hate. Financial companies used to be on the Axis of Evil list too, but they lost so much money recently that they are no longer evil. Now, they must be subsidized.

The mantra the Left uses to demonize profit goes like this: How dare those greedy so-and-so's at the (fill-in-the-blank) corporation make so much money, when that money could be used for a) a government program, or b) the children ? 'The children' is practically foolproof as an excuse for the government to steal money from the private sector. An autocrat can justify anything if it's 'for the children' You aren't supposed to think about the fact that business profits enable people to have jobs, get paid, and become prosperous. You aren't supposed to realize business profits are the reason you live in a house, have an automobile, a refrigerator, a stove, a television, a phone, electricity, heat, and food. You aren't supposed to realize those business profits earned in a free market made the United States the world's leading superpower. Again, thinking is your enemy. Just keep saying to yourself, 'Profit Is Evil, Profit Is Evil', like Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barack Obama (D-Cuba) do - and Karl Marx did.

Our Glorious Exalted Leader Obama has even taken it a step further. He has proposed a windfall profits tax on the Devil Who Is Called Exxon and the other oily devils, and wants to hand $1,000 of the Devil's profits directly to each American, so Obama can literally buy your vote, er, help you combat the high costs of energy this winter, costs that Obama and friends won't do anything to help lower for maybe 20 years, and only then if the requisite alternative energy miracle happens in the meantime (except for that nifty 'inflate your tires' tip. That was quite helpful. Thanks, BO. If you were running for gas station attendant, you'd definitely get my vote).

The Left hates profit because America isn't perfect. There are still problems here, unlike all those other utopian socialist paradises, like, um, well, uh……….er, never mind. There must be some somewhere. I just can't think of their names right now. Even though we spend nearly $2 trillion each year on some type of entitlement program, the Left reasons that just isn't enough. Not even close to enough. Ever more and more and more money must be spent by the federal government, and ever more and more and more of your money must be stolen through taxation. Then someday, when NOBODY has any money left and the government is our supreme overlord and master of all things, that perfect socialist utopian nirvana will be achieved. I think it says exactly that on Obama's website, because his answer to absolutely everything is for big government to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on it. I guess that's easier than thinking too.

Color me skeptical. It seems like $2 trillion per year should be plenty enough to keep people out of poverty, to keep them from starving. Yet somehow, it isn't. Could the problem be the government itself ? Nah, that can't be it. Impossible ! It must be the Republicans fault. Dick Cheney must be taking that money and giving it to Halliburton or something. It's a conspiracy of some sort. I know it, even though I have no proof whatsoever. I mean, c'mon, that Cheney guy just LOOKS evil. He's all old and corporate and white and stuff. Who needs proof ? And Cheney shot his buddy on that hunting trip. Don't forget that. What more is there to know ?

An old and very wise saying about democracy goes like this:

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising them the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over a loose fiscal responsibility, always followed by a dictatorship.” - John Tyler

That was written in 1770, but it sounds pretty relevant to what's going on today.

Think of that when Barack Obama vows to steal someone else's money to give it to you, or to tax the hell out of the rich as if that won't affect you. It certainly will. We are just finishing with one president who didn't care much about fiscal responsibility, Dubya. Dubya was irresponsible on the spending side. Why on earth would we elect another president of "loose fiscal responsibility", but this time, on BOTH the taxation and spending sides ? $3 TRILLION per year should be plenty enough to run the federal government. Far more than enough, in truth. The tax and spend buck must stop here, or we will suffer serious consequences, the very ones John Tyler warned about back in 1770. Barack Obama wants to declare war on profits. I want to declare war on Barack Obama and all of his socialist/communist/totalitarian ilk, before it's too late.

In the political wars, Democrats like to paint Republicans as white male chauvinist christian bigots who are in the pocket of rich people and don't give a single crap about the poor. Democrats paint themselves as the compassionate good people who are fighting for the rights of the little guy against those same evil Republicans. On this battlefront, the Democrats are winning (though not as much as they were when they controlled ALL the media), because that perception is pretty widely accepted. But who really helps the poor the most ? Painting with the broad brush, and granting that there are many exceptions, the solutions of the two parties to poverty are these: Republicans believe economic growth leads to expanded opportunity, for the poor along with everyone else. It's the principle of the rising tide that lifts all boats. The Democrats believe in more government intervention in the form of government programs to assist people out of poverty. I'd say both sides believe education is key to lowering poverty.

In 1965, president Lyndon Johnson launched the War On Poverty. 17.3% of americans lived below the poverty line in 1965, according to the poverty tables of the US Census. In 2006, 12.3% lived below the poverty line. So, poverty dropped by 5% over 41 years. It's good poverty dropped even a little, but I'm not sure whether I should laugh or cry, because a 5% drop doesn't sound like a real victory in the War On Poverty to me. That sounds like it's gone about as well as the War In Iraq the last few years, only marginal improvement. Plus, since we have more people now than we did in 1965, we actually have MORE people living in poverty. In 1965, there were 19,141,300. In 2006, there were 29,645,000. That's over ten million more people living in poverty than when the War On Poverty started. I'm also thinking that the estimated 12 million illegals aren't all showing up in the Census data either, which would drive the poverty number higher yet.

The question to ask is: Did all those Great Society social programs have any effect on poverty, or was it the opportunity in the Land Of Opportunity that caused the percentage drop ? Of note is the fact that the numbers of americans in poverty was dropping sharply before the big government Democrats began their 1965 round of big government programs. According to the same Census poverty tables, in 1959, 22.4% lived below the poverty line, so in the six years BEFORE LBJ's Great Society program began, the poverty rate dropped by 7.1%, more than it has in the four plus decades since. To me, those numbers say that it was the opportunity from economic growth that decreased poverty the most, not any big government anti-poverty programs. I would explicitly exempt educational and job training programs from that judgement, because those ARE valuable. Education IS the key.

We all know what was accomplished by those other types of government programs that were supposed to help the poor by subsidizing them with our tax dollars. The welfare state was created, which not only didn't help people out of poverty, it kept them mired in it for generation after generation. We gave the poor food stamps, virtually free housing, assistance with utility bills, a monthly stipend. We increased the stipend for each child the poor had. In short, we removed individual responsibility, promoted irresponsibility, destroyed the work ethic of many, and it wreaked havoc. The family unit disintegrated, out of wedlock births soared, crime became rampant, drug use skyrocketed. Those 'compassionate' Democrats had created an unmitigated disaster. The Democratic response to the nightmare they had unleashed on the poor communities ? Why, MORE government programs, of course. Some people never learn.

Finally, in 1996, something positive happened. Bill Clinton, after twice vetoing welfare reform packages from his Republican congress, reached a compromise agreement with them and signed welfare reform into law. It was Clinton's greatest achievement, and to accomplish it, all he had to do was agree with what Republicans were saying all along. Liberals widely denounced Clinton at the time for being a sell-out, because, well, they're liberals, they're wrong about almost everything. Immediately, the poverty rate began to drop, particularly among black people. In 1995, the poverty rate among blacks was 29.3%. By 2001, it was 22.4%. In 2006 it still stood at 24.3%, and that was after a recession, 9/11, Katrina, and war. Now that the success of welfare reform has been so obviously displayed, liberals like to pretend they were in favor of it from the start, because in addition to being nearly always wrong, they are also shameless liars. Liberals also never mention that it was the Republican congress that initiated welfare reform. They like to pretend it was all Clinton's doing, since he's a Democrat. Like I said, liars. Shameless. They never met any history they couldn't try to reinvent.

In the end, what is best for the poor is also what is best for the rest of the country. A strong economy, a good educational system, low taxes. That leads to opportunity, and opportunity is what lifts people out of poverty. The endless attempts of the left to foment class warfare and division among us in order to consolidate their political power and push socialism is counterproductive. Everyone believes in a safety net for the poor and unfortunate, but that safety net shouldn't become a way of life, it should be a transitional period. We should always take care of the disabled and the elderly. I don't think anybody disagrees with that either. But if the big government cradle-to-grave nanny state policies were going to cure poverty, it would have already happened. They aren't going to, so let's try to minimize them as much as we can, leave people's money in their own pockets rather than the government's pockets, and go about the business of creating good jobs and prosperity. That will be more effective than any of Hillary's million hare-brained wealth redistribution schemes.

Now that Bush's veto of the Democrat's S-CHIP expansion has been upheld, and the Democrats have had their hissy fit on the floor of congress yesterday, with one highlight (lowlight) being nutjob Pete Stark (D-Cal) making absurd comments about Bush "killing innocent people for his own amusement", maybe now the Democrats can quit playing political games and a reauthorization of S-CHIP can be worked out. I'm pretty tired of the Dem's tactic of using families that are already covered under S-CHIP as human shields to prevent any real dialogue from taking place on the issue. This vote on the veto override should have taken place two weeks ago, but the Democrats wanted to play the 'Republicans hate children' card for all it was worth, so they delayed the vote. I can see why the Dems mantra for S-CHIP has been 'For The Children', because their behavior has been totally infantile.

Democrats were so busy calling Republicans mean and hateful, that they pretended not to notice that Republicans are announcing an alternative S-CHIP plan today. The tenets of the Republican plan follow:

- Reauthorize SCHIP for eligible children. The bill would continue to cover kids in families with incomes at or below 200% of the federal poverty level.

- Enact a child health care tax credit. Rather than putting more people on a government-run program, the bill would offer tax credits to families with incomes between 200% and 300% of the poverty level. This would cover the population targeted by liberals with their bill, but instead of forcing them to drop their current coverage, it would provide assistance to keep their current insurance plan.

- Adopt a "federalism" health-care initiative. The bill encourages greater experimentation at the state level to expand health-care coverage.

The idea of a health care tax credit is far preferable to signing up millions of kids into an expanded government program funded on the backs of smokers (the Democrat plan). A tax credit offsets the cost of health care insurance for working families, plus it puts worker's wages back in the hands of workers where they belong. The idea in health care is NOT to fill the government coffers and then have the government decide how to spend it. The idea is to make health care insurance affordable. The tax credit helps. I think it would be a good idea if all health insurance and out-of-pocket medical payments were tax deductible. Hopefully, the Democrats will go along with this idea IF THEY CARE ABOUT THE CHILDREN, as they claim to. We'll see if they care about the children as much as they care about consolidating power unto themselves by taking all our money.

One more thing I should mention with all this 'Republicans hate children' crapola being thrown around by the Democrats regarding S-CHIP. The S-CHIP program was started in 1997 as part of the Balanced Budget Act. Two of the Act's three sponsors were Republicans (Gramm and Rudman. Hollings, a Democrat, was the other). The S-CHIP program was passed by THE REPUBLICAN CONGRESS, and then Clinton signed it into law. So, the next time you hear Democrats lying through their teeth about this issue, let them know you are onto them. The next time you hear the Democrat's propaganda arm, the mainstream media, distorting the truth, let them know too.

On John Edwards website, he says he wants to get rid of those Two Americas he's always talking about. The site says "Building One America will take strong, bold steps, not incremental steps and half measures. Edwards has proposed detailed plans to put Washington back on the side of regular families".

Okay. So what are these "detailed plans" ?

Here are Edwards' proposals to eliminate poverty and make schools better:

- Force every american to buy health insurance, and
have the government subsidize those who can't afford it.
- Increase the minimum wage to $9.50 per hour.
- Triple the earned income credit.
- Eliminate the marriage tax penalty
- 'Invest' in rural community colleges
- Create a new Labor Taskforce to oversee business
- Create a million voucher for low-income people to move into good neighborhoods
- Phase out housing projects
- 'Invest' in refurbishing decaying neighborhoods
- Create a new $500 tax credit for low-income people
- Expand the child care tax credit up to $5000 per year
- Subsidize bank accounts for working families (I have no idea what this means)
- Create a home rescue fund for borrowers that get behind on their mortgages
- Shed 'excessive' mortgage debt through bankruptcy
- Create a new Family Savings and Credit Commission to protect families from abusive
financial products
- Create a late charge penalty grace period for credit cards
- Cap interest rates on payday loans
- Encourage low or no-interest loans
- Create a million jobs for the poor
- Enact universal government preschool
- Shrink classroom size
- Pay teachers more
- Make curriculum more challenging (finally !, something that doesn't cost taxpayers or
the business sector money)
- Giving bonuses to middle class schools that enroll low-income students
- Double federal magnet school funding to attract middle-class suburban students to
high-poverty urban neighborhoods
- Create second chance schools for high school dropouts
- Enact a College for Everyone program to pay public-college tuition, books and fees for
students who agree to work part-time during their first year at a school
- Encourage father responsibility by increasing child support collections
by $8 billion over the next decade
- Fight teen pregnancy
- 'invest' in home visits by registered nurses to low-income parents
- 'invest' in family literacy programs
- enact the Employee Free Choice Act to increase union membership

And how is Edwards going to raise the trillions and trillions of dollars
required to do all this ? Well, let's go to his tax reform plan and find out:

Edwards will:
- Raise the capital gains tax to 28%
- Repeal the Bush tax cuts for the highest income people
- Keep the estate tax
- Crackdown on offshore tax havens
- Improve IRS service
- Audit corporations and wealthy people more
- Increase taxes on hedge funds, private equity firms, and executive pensions

Wow. I guess those million new jobs for the poor will all be government jobs, because this would be the biggest government increase since the Russian Revolution. When I think of the net effect of all Edwards' policies on our economy, one word comes immediately to mind: CATASTROPHE. Edwards' policies will increase the price of every good that every consumer buys, stifle investment, raise unemployment, drastically expand government spending, drastically increase government bureaucracy, make US business less competitive……….If you wanted to draw up a recipe to destroy the US economy, I doubt you could do much better than John Edwards has, unless your last name was Castro, or maybe Kucinich. Now I understand why Edwards pays $1200 for a haircut you can get anywhere in the country for $20. That adds up about the same as his economic designs for the rest of us. Keep your hands on your wallets, and don't elect John Edwards.