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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Srexley who wrote (83926)	11/21/2000 6:52:52 PM
From: Mr. Whist	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

O.J. hired the best lawyers he could and got off. Charles Keating of S&L scandal fame essentially did the same thing. No difference. Was "justice" served in either case? I don't know. Whose allegedly criminal activities hurt more people? How many people have chucked their lives, in one form or another, because of being swindled out of their life savings? The S&L scandal was just as heinous as the knife slayings of O.J.'s ex and her boyfriend. Perhaps more heinous. Gore's argument about the top 1% benefitting the most from the Bush tax cut strikes at the matter of fairness. Re: workplace fairness, this goes back to a question I have asked before here: Who built the transcontinental railroad in 1869? The millionaire fat-cat businessmen in New York City or the Irish and Chinese laborers who drove in one spike at a time? Many GOPers on the board would argue for the former; I would argue for the latter. When a company profits, many factors have to come into play: Wise management, wise utilization of resources, the hard work of the rank and file. To assume that a company succeeds in spite of its workers is nonsense. It's a team effort; the businessperson assumes risk, but so do the workers who agree to work for a company. Lots of American workers in the early '80s had such faith in their companies, only to see their pension plans raided through legal corporate greed. Likewise, I can dig up stats, too, comparing how salaries of CEOs and top execs have risen the past 10 years compared to the wages of the common working man and common working woman. The gap has intensified. Used to be a CEO made 20 or 30 times what a union floor worker made in a year; now the multiplier in some cases is as high as 600X. Main point: There are times when it is proper and necessary to pit one class of people vis-a-vis another if one of these two classes is getting shafted. Notice I said "vis-a-vis," not "vs." or "against." I see nothing wrong for Gore to point out that the ultra-rich will profit greatly under the Bush tax-cut plan. Re: vouchers: I think that the votes in California and Michigan took a lot of steam out of the voucher movement. Voucher initiatives in both states lost 70 percent to 30 percent. What the public is saying is "Fix our schools ... somehow, someway." I would go so far as to say at times throwing money at a problem is indeed a wise thing to do. Try out some ideas, see if anything sticks to the wall, then move on from there.