[paraclete]

I couldn't get your column to load but nice to know we're spreading a disease. We love you, too.

Hi speech one too many http:// apparently a function of the software here but the article was apparently written by a yank so Tom tells me. We have lost the ability to fix these things after posting.
http//www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/economic-epidemic-avoid-american-diseaselike-plague-20120420-1xcn1.html

[talaniman]

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/societ...420-1xcn1.html


Try this one

[speechlesstx]

Seems this guy has been reading a little too much Paul Krugman...

Here is how I define it: an ideology based on a phantom idea called the "free market", whose purity and virtue can only be realised by tearing down any regulation deemed "anti-business", cutting every tax ever conceived and shovelling most of the wealth created in society into the hands of a few.

As opposed to redistributing what is rightfully mine and bankrupting the country so a few wealthy leftists can be nanny to all of us? I'll take my chances on a free market, I don't want no stinkin' nanny telling me what I can eat, what I can drink, what medical care I can have and forcing me to fund some coed's carefree sex life. You can have that down under if you like, but it isn't welcome here.

[paraclete]

Seems this guy has been reading a little too much Paul Krugman...

As opposed to redistributing what is rightfully mine and bankrupting the country so a few wealthy leftists can be nanny to all of us? I'll take my chances on a free market, I don't want no stinkin' nanny telling me what I can eat, what I can drink, what medical care I can have and forcing me to fund some coed's carefree sex life. You can have that down under if you like, but it isn't welcome here.

Now you have had you little rant, speech, let us be sensible, our sitituation is far from the one you depict. You can have whatever health care your want as long as you are prepared to pay for it but the disadvantaged are entitled to a certain high standard minimum and it is not free, you pay for it in a tax levy, no one tells me what I can eat or drink and as far as sex life is concerned, we all have one so we have been through the stupid end of the argument lets go through the other end. If a medical fund covers abortion that is for the fund otherwise it is elective surgery and you pay for it. The state provides what the free market will not, in some cases that means roads, railways and regulates prices to keep the ripoff merchants in check. Over there you seem to have thrown the baby out with the bathwater and lurch from one absurdity to another. This is what comes of listening to minorities for too long or listening to the mean end of town

[tomder55]

Yeah we're mean .

regulates prices to keep the ripoff merchants in check.

Usually" rip off merchants" as you call them have government approval . They are the businesses the government allows in the market in a controlled economy. In a freer market prices would find their own level because the "rip off merchants " could not compete against those that charge a fair price. Essentially the "rip off merchants " are part of the government approved cartels .You are smart enough to know that price regulation also brings shortages to the market .

[talaniman]

So Bernie Madoff, and Enron should have been left alone, or are you implying they had government approval?

[paraclete]

So Bernie Madoff, and Enron should have been left alone, or are you implying they had government approval?

Well Tal they are part of Tom's free market, he thinks these things desirable in order for capitalism to exist and of course they are capitalism in its pure unregulated form.

[tomder55]

Not quite ,to say we want a lawless society fails basic reasoning. I would also argue that Enron was as much a part of crony socialism as the Solyndras of the world are today .

[talaniman]

I listed in another posting the other loans by the energy department, besides Solyndra, and I wonder if you did your reseach on them as well. Or did you just stop at the one that was tauted by your fellow conservatives, as an example of cronyism? That's okay, I don't expect you to distinguish between free market capitalism, and extractions practices, and out and out fraud.

Nor do I expect you to acknowledge the role of crony capitalism practiced on the right to manipulate and stall the American economy NOW. Is it just blindness or another agenda that keeps the right on the same course of austerity that is failing in Europe despite FACTS, and has pushed the Brits into another recession?

Can I also point out that where republicans have pushed their agenda of attacking workers and their rights they have amassed far more debts, and unemployment than when they took office? While democratic governors are creating jobs and operating within budgets? No all these things are passed over, and ignored by conservatives who wish to extract more than their fair share of economies at the expense of the poor, unemployed, middle class.

I mean the same nanny state that the right hollers about is but a construct of right wing policy, and agendas, that you blame on the left, yet perpetrate on the right. I mean why else would they oppose critical infrastructure and energy policy projects, just to save billionaires from a .05% tax hike. I mean guys like the Mittster still wouldn't be paying what a bus driver pays, I mean if that's not an example of crony capitalism I don't know what is.

But of course the right will never call out there own for such a clear, and obvious transgression. That would be too much like fair and honest wouldn't it?