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Letters to the Editor


Tuesday July 20, 2010




Wall Street Crooks;Nuclear Weapons Are History;New Ghandi?; Loss of City Revenue; Deflation;;Down with Voting Machines ;Tea Party is even Worse Than You Think;End Corporate Influence;Reduce Oil Addiction through Livable Communities Act;Cell Phones;

 


Wall Street Crooks

 



Goldman Sachs has agreed to pay $550 million to resolve a civil fraud lawsuit over selling a mortgage investment that was established to fail. It was representative of everything that investment banks, in general, were into for the last twenty years, but also because it was a special case, because Goldman is politically connected in a way that no other company in America really is. The penalty is only one-twentieth of the $10 billion in bonuses the firm handed out last year. 

 



     "I want to bet against this stuff. Can you make a deal full of, you know, credit default swaps, or a synthetic credit default swap, full of subprime-referenced entities that I can bet against?"  If you defraud somebody, just somebody off the street, if you’re a con man and you defraud somebody out of a thousand dollars, $50,000, you’re going to jail. I mean, it’s not like, you know, you’re going to have to pay the money back and you can walk on your merry way. That’s not the way it works. But on Wall Street, if you commit a massive crime, if you steal not a thousand dollars, but a billion dollars, you get to walk away from it.

 



      They began stealing from each other the things that belonged to others or tricking them out of some of these things so they themselves could have more. But there will be no escape for them as there'll be no place to go and nowhere to hide, as they can't stop the world and get off as they'll wish they could!

 



Ted Rudow III,MA

***

New Ghandi?

 



It may well be more difficult for Israelis to comprehend the idea of Palestinian non-violence than for Palestinians to do so. For many Israelis, the very thought of non-violent Palestinian protest goes so far against the grain as to be incomprehensible, lethally suspicious, a violation of a bedrock narrative. ;

 



In many cases, Israeli media have actively ignored or obscured non-violent Palestinian protest. Last month, hundreds of Israelis and Palestinians marched together through the streets of Silwan, East Jerusalem, protesting a plan by Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat to evict Arab residents and raze 22 houses for a settler-oriented tourism project.

 



At a time when use of overwhelming force has cost Israel dearly in its world standing, what will it take for Israelis to rethink the idea that what they have can only be maintained by force? A new kind of leader. A Gandhi, a Dr. King. The only way the Palestinians will ever get their independence is with the help of outsiders.

 



The U.S. never could have won its independence if it hadn't had the help of several other European nations, particularly France.;

 



Ted Rudow III,MA

 



***


Deflation

 



In the great economic depression of the late 20's and 30's , they had no economic guarantees on wages.The auto business was one of the first places where people cut their spending, because it's a luxury to buy a new car. ;       It was a vicious cycle, a downward spiral that just couldn't stop, and industry kept cutting prices to where people could afford to still buy. This was the deflation. Inflation at home mostly hurts the rich, but it mostly helps the poor, except for those who are on set incomes, like pensions. That's why the rich are trying to bring about deflation. The very rich, however, profit from the deflation, because their dollars grow in value even though they're doing nothing with them.    ;        We're on a crash course to bankruptcy again, but they think they're going to patch it all up instead of curing the disease: which is that they're hanging onto their riches instead of putting them into circulation. In the past, deflation and depression have frequently led to a vicious circle of nationalism, xenophobia, the disintegration of states, and even war which is happening today.
Ted Rudow III,MA