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Strategies & Market Trends : The Epic American Credit and Bond Bubble Laboratory -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Little Joe who wrote (105129)	9/16/2009 12:18:10 AM
From: Gib Bogle	4 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 110194

There's no reason why it should offend me. I do know that the issue of precisely what should be considered to be "speech" is contested, and that the modern interpretation, which is extremely corporation-friendly, is seen by many as far from what the original framers of the constitution had in mind. What outsiders find striking about the US is the amount of influence exerted by corporations. The growth of this influence over the past 25 years or so has been pretty obvious, and the way this was achieved - by buying politicians and by control of the media - has also been plain. It just seems that by clinging to an inappropriate concept of free speech, one that strengthens the powerful at the expense of the weak, people like you are left without any feasible path for reform, and so instead you pin your hopes on totally unrealistic "solutions" like throwing them all out. There is zero chance of getting rid of the government (even if it were desirable), and politicians will always act according to the incentives they are presented with, i.e. changing the faces can't be relied on to achieve anything. It's the institutions that must be reformed, i.e. the laws within which politicians act. If you think it will ever be feasible to record and make public every conversation that every politician has you have a very different concept of feasibility than I do. Likewise if you think such a measure has any chance of being passed into law. BTW I am not a US citizen, but lived in the US for 13 years.