SNIP
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>i think that at the moment the person in charge cares more about other things than poverty. one of the problems i have with politicians these days is that they spend their first term trying to get reelected and the second making sure their successor gets in, no one ever stops to make the hard decisions. the marketing campaign that is politics is a sham in itself and in a comercial world is never really going to help those least fortunate.

Hi Mark,

Here I go again on a very unpopular theme...
It is the "commercial world" that is totally in control now, and it started to get dangerous as soon as the big Communist Bloc fell.
The "person in charge" is but a mouthpiece for business. This was so with President Bush Sr., President Clinton (though he offered tid-bits of "care" once in a while) and continues in spades with President G. W. Bush.

The very first thing to go, even before business got nasty about things, was "welfare". While the U.S.S.R. used "we don't see people living on the streets here like in the U.S." the western governments had to take steps to keep such to a minimum. They also had to keep the masses from being too envious of Communism, so labour etc. policies had some goodies in them for the masses.

Why is business rushing to China?... because there they already have what business is working hard to achieve over here - a subservient work force that works for pennies a day in whatever conditions prevail.

Here unions are losing ground (membership) and consistently taking wage CUTS in new contracts. Business got away with that in the early 90's (when the economy turned bad) and laughed when things got good again and unions asked for make-up pay rates.

Soon there will be 5 corporations controlling virtually all of the world economy. The most critical right now is the media, because they set the prevailing societal 'attitude' about most everything. They, more than any other entity, have succeeded in changing general attitudes such that we all basically believe that buying is pleasurable in itself, corporations can operate with a different moral compass that people do, poor service is perfectly acceptable and especially so if such service is rendered by some contractor, demonstrating is a bad and ineffective action and practised mainly by the poorly educated or lazy 'professional demonstrator', etc, etc ad infinitum.

Jim

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>>Tom