Mr. G :

Once and a long time I feel compelled to offer some gentle 'correction' to those who continue to put forward half-truths on the basis that a lie repeated often enough, sooner or later, actually becomes "the whole truth".

You wrote in a response to someone's POST that the situation we face with the "financial industry" is a result of what happens when the government gets out of the way.

You should be aware that the initial "move" by the financial industry into mortgages that would be latter defined as "sub-prime" was not by choice. In fact, government legislated and INSISTED that such loans be made, using CRA Credits and other to further incentivize banks to lend on a higher risk level in the interest of 'expanding home ownership'.

Years later, the SAME government, through OFHEO, the regulatory body controlling Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, ORDERED these institutions to "invest" in these mortgages. Up until this time, Fannie and Freddie dealt almost exclusively with loans where there was 20% equity, loaning no more than 80% of a home's value AND requiring that those loans be backed by borrowers with reasonably good credit, stable jobs and not too much debt.

This is not to say that "Wall Street" didn't pick up the sub-prime ball and run with it (to excess), but at the end of the day, if you look at the whole picture, our Government was directly involved with CREATING the financial crisis.

I find it interesting that you cite the Tenessee Valley Authority as an example of a "good government program", but cannot think of even one example where the politicians have gotten it wrong. On balance, government gets it wrong much, much more often that they get it right. Agreed that no goverment is not a good idea, but we don't need more, and more and more, and that's what we keep getting.

One need not look further than the success of welfare reform to understand that there has to be a balance between the government's ability to give away other people's money and a free market approach.

I'm not a fan of corporate welfare either, but our two-party system as it stands polarizes everyone, and makes everyone with common sense choose one extreme or the other.

When YOU parrot offensive, hate speech calling those who reasonably protest the closed-door, bureaucratic takeover of health care by calling those folks "tea baggers", you lose ALL credibility.

It is ironic that you caution the person you were responding to not to go into a Senior community and talk about the end of Social Security. Yet, you denigrate that very audience, since Seniors are OVERWHELMINGLY against the very initiatives that spawned the Tea Party protests in the first place.

Jefferson said that dissent is the highest form of patriotism. Too bad the same folks who plastered their cars with those bumper stickers in the 2000's cannot understand why the same quotation from one of our Founders doesn't equally apply today.