<p>FREE LUNCH: HOW THE WEALTHIEST AMERICANS ENRICH THEMELVES AT GOVERNMENT EXPENSE (AND STICK YOU WITH THE BILL.)</p>
<p>Accrording tothis book Republicans an democrats both are helping rich americans cheating the poor guys. According to author both parties are corrupt. </p>
<p>This frightens me that what if Obama and Mccain may not do any thing to help us and just play politics to get elected and help only the people who gave them money to run for politcal office.</p>
<p>Does my post show up as the first post for anybody else?</p>
<p>Back to topic, i find ti weird that this guy won the Pulitzer and Polk awards yet he cites the Bible as an authority for why taking from the poor to give tot he rich is wrong.</p>
<p>“Oh, you’re from the New York Times. You must be, you know, pro-Democrat or liberal or whatever.” I’m the guy who broke the story and reported on the fact that Bill Clinton gave the super rich, the 400 highest income people in America a big tax cut. They were paying 30 cents out of each dollar of their income to the federal government when he came into the office. When he left, it was down to 22. Bush has lowered it to 17. Now, first of all, notice you’re probably paying more than 17 cents. May well be paying more than 22. But Bush gave them an eight cent tax cut-- I’m sorry. Clinton gave an eight cent tax cut and Bush only gave them five cents."</p>
<p>" new rules that have come about in the last few years help Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers, MBNA, that’s the big bank holding company, and Citibank exploit the poor, the unsophisticated, and the foolish because these lenders can now charge rates and impose penalties that were illegal, even criminal, a generation ago. "</p>
<p>And we debate about subprime mess. Forget religion, it is now affecting this whole country.</p>
<p>"Art Modell said back in 1996 when he was manipulating Baltimore and Cleveland into a bidding war for his football team? He was asked how he felt about taking money for his out of-- for his own pocket at the very same time library funds were being cut. Remember what he said? </p>
<p>DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Oh, yes. The pride of having a professional baseball team is worth more than 30 libraries."</p>
<p>"BILL MOYERS: But did you notice what happened when the Democrats briefly toyed with the idea of removing that tax break from the hedge fund and private equity managers Congress thought very briefly about removing it. And then the industry held a big party for-- Harry Reid, Senate Democratic majority leader down in Las Vegas, and he came back from that big party and said, “I don’t think we’ll be taking that up anytime soon.” </p>
<p>DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: The problem of the political donor class’s outsized influence and its grip on Congress is bipartisan. There’s one party in Washington. It’s the party of money. It has different wings and factions. But Washington is the party of money. And the wealthiest people in America, the large corporations in America, are busy milking the government for everything they can get. And you are paying the price of their free lunch."</p>
<p>afruff -you are changing the topic of discussion. Forget usury. Why theese rich people need a tax break so no libraries are built but webuilt stadiums for professional sports lteams. Let meask you why it is the right of the rich to have tax breaks over not building libraries for kids so that these kids can get better education and study and make thier life better.</p>
<p>Why politicans (democrats and republicans) are helping rich in every way while giving them tax breaks for the sports teams which are not necessary and ruin the life of thousand of kids by not providing them educational supports</p>
<p>Imagine with these tax breaks,they are even notpyaing to support stateinstitutions and thus raising tutions for state universities. When these kids come out with a higher loan,how they will start the life?</p>
<p>It is going to be a vicious cycle of lowering the middle class and both parties are culprit. </p>
<p>Raplh Nader is suddenly smiling on our stupidity to help elect corrupt politicians. Senate majority leadres Harry Reid is even in this circle even though he try to show himself as a democrat. What a joke!</p>
<p>That’s the Democratic Party’s biggest secret: They’re as deeply tucked into the hip pockets of the rich, big business, and the finance industry as the Republicans. They’re just better at hiding that fact.</p>
<p>I was referring to post #6. The guy was talking about how high-interest loans are exploiting the poor.</p>
<p>As for the baseball stadiums, I never said subsidies for these teams are right. I have another question for you though: “why it is the right of the library-users to have libraries over not letting taxpayers keep their money?”</p>
<p>It started as a religious decree. Just like how prohibition and creationism are religious-based laws, so is usury.
</p>
<p>And the guy referred to the Bible other times in the interview as an authority.</p>
<p>And at what point is it objectively a usurious loan? All usury laws are merely one person’s subjective preference (i.e. 59.999% is not usurious, but 60.000% is usurious). It is clearly not a law rooted in logic and reason.</p>
<p>OK, I know “usury” began biblically, but it is not a “religious statement” to talk about the usury laws - that’s the correct legal term.</p>
<p>And statutes are not “one person’s” subjective preference; they are the consensus of the law-creating body of the state, and if you’d ever tried to get legislation passed (and I have), you’d know that how it starts out is not how it ends up. </p>
<p>Any statute that allows a behavior or creates a classification based on a date will be, to some extent, arbitrary. What’s the difference between a person who is 17 years and 366 days old, and one who is 17 years and 364 days old? The former is a legal adult and the latter is a legal minor. What’s the difference between Dec. 31 and Jan. 2? The former is in one tax year and the latter is in a different tax year. What’s the difference between driving 66 miles an hour or 64 miles an hour on a road with a 65 miles per hour speed limit? The former is speeding, which is illegal, and the latter is not.</p>
<p>Unless you wish to make all aspects of a particular behavior legal (i.e. all loans are legal regardless of interest rates, or any speed is legal), or ban it altogether (i.e., no loans can charge interest, and driving is illegal), there will always be some degree of arbitrariness in any cutoff.</p>
<p>You type as if the law-creating body has its own opinions. These are subjective preferences of lawmakers.</p>
<p>
Bingo.</p>
<p>It’s not the fact that it’s a subjective preference that makes these laws bad. but the fact that it imposes these preferences onto other people.</p>
<p>For example, it’s okay to set your own interest rate (which is a subjective preference) but when you impose this onto other creditors, that is wrong.</p>