Dear Spot,
My friend says that the rich steal from the poor. My Daddy says, "It's only 'stealing' if it's illegal and that the rich can afford their own laws." Then Mommy says, "Do NOT let Daddy talk politics!" I am confused. Can you help?
sincerely
Virginia

Dear Virginia,
Many questions in politics and economics are very complicated and require long complicated answers. Fortunately, yours is not one of them. No, Virginia, the very rich do not steal from the poor - they hire others to do that for them.

When you see someone on TV saying that they won't work as hard if taxes go up, that person is telling the truth. You are listening to one of the people hired to make sure the rich keep getting richer. If they don't do that, they will be fired and forced to survive on the paltry millions they have accumulated for themselves.

best regards,
Spot

by Cappy Rudyard

Ah was reading the good R. Ailes’s description of the possible third party candidate Mayor Bloomberg:

Yes, what this country needs in a time of recession is the leadership of an equity trader and head of a financial services software company, one who spent close to $75 million of his own money to become a friggin' mayor. Only Rich Uncle Pennybags can save us now. Perhaps he can sell us to the Tata Group.

Bloomberg is said to be worth some 20 billion dollars, and it put me in mind of the third party candidate a century ago. . .

Eugene Debs, the Socialist candidate, won 2.8 percent of the popular vote. Debs was a fireman turned union organizer and was one of the founders of the International Labor Union and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).

Then I thought of a couple of other sharp contrasts:

Who won the Michigan Republican primary?

Mitt Romney headed the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic Games Organizing Committee, but is worth 200 million dollars because he founded a private equity investment firm that specialized in leveraged buyouts.

versus

William Howard Taft served as the Solicitor General of the United States, a federal judge, Governor-General of the Philippines, and Secretary of War before being nominated for President. He is remembered as a “a pioneer in international arbitration and staunch advocate of world peace.”

Who governs California?

Arnold Schwarzenegger, steroid-fueled bodybuilder and action movie actor, who is worth over some 800 million dollars.

versus

George Pardee, native Californian medical doctor and Mayor of Oakland. Promoted conservation and education, successfully rebuilt San Francisco after the earthquake and bucked the influence of the Southern Pacific Railroad on state politics.

I'm just an old sea salt, but it doesn't seem like things have gotten better in politics over the last century!

As power shifts from government to corporate hands, elections will increasingly become the domain of the vain rich and celebrities. Save us all, we're being sucked into Waveland.