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hey smooth, great post (#154) ! Why does it so often seem that "what everybody knows", and what "most people think" is so distant from what should be so obvious?

Examples are the impact of 18 recent years of conservative republican presidential judicial appointments to federal appeals courts and to the supreme court, vs. an 8 year opportunity for one centrist democrat to make those appointments...... the impact of "white flight" from public schools and from former "near urban" residences to gated communities far more distant from urban areas than formerly.......the loss of corporate "give backs" to the local community, a phenomena of similar concentration of wealth and power that leaves us with just a few major banks and telecom, or media, or pharmaceutical companies.....a trend of concentration that leaves the bottom half of the US population in ownership of just 2-1/2 percent of total national assets, with many experiencing a negative net worth.

Must what "everybody knows", remain in such a misguided state, until, say.....
50 percent of total wealth is owned by the top one percent, and 30 percent by the next top nine percent (the top ten percent "owns" 70 percent of everything, now, and unionized private sector jobs have slipped under ten percent)...... before "everybody" shifts to "knowing" that violent revolution is the next "order" of political business in the US?

Why are we so dense? Why the extreme shift, in less than 2 generations, from union jobs encompassing more than 30 percent of all private sector jobs, and a top tax bracket of 89 percent, to.....this, and why is there still no recognition that clamoring for more....a "Fair Tax", entrenched anti unionism, advocacy for "support for business" that has reunited much of ATT's former monopoly, and permits Salem Comm. to own 1200 radio stations....a clamor that results in nearly 50 million Americans with no health insurance?

Why is all of that new concentration, new disenfranchisement, considered beneficial, or positive, by so many, when the constituency for what is happening should be no more than 20 percent of our adult population, if everyone acted in their own best interests?

Everyone agrees that the "robber barons" of the late 19th century, went "too far", and that it was necessary for government to "reign them in", to break up their predatory monopolies of railroads and fuel, but no one seems interested in even defining what "too far", is....now. Must it be "in your face"....a phenomena such as the recent manipulation of gasoline price to a low, just before the mid-term election, last november.....just 20 weeks ago, of $1.90/gal in my area, to $2.80, today? How can anyone plan or invest in alternative energy sources, with the risk of such dramatic, swift price shifts, of vital motor fuel?

The silence, the complacency, the advocacy for such a broken system, is deafening.......and I've not even mentioned the liquidity "crunch" that is tightening lending standards and will bring down housing valuations to unanticipated low levels, after too loose lending policy drove housing prices, artificially, to levels that priced honest first time mortgage applicants, out of half of local housing markets.

Must it take until we "don't got mine", anymore...before we question what "we know"? That question will be answered, proabably for many, in the next 48 months, and it will be an ugly era.

Why the denial that $850 billion trade and $500 billion federal budget annual deficits, are unsustainable, and will destroy the buying power of the national paper currency?

IMO, we have no hope of reversing socio-economic inequity and injustice. We are plummeting quickly into a time when scrounging for basic necessities will consume the attention and the strength of most of us....no way to stop where we're heading, now.....