Originally Posted by Brian Austin Whitney

We desperately need to wipe the slate clean of all these people and get CITIZEN politicians back in power. People who have lived and still live REAL lives in the communities they come from. Politicians were never intended to be life long scam artists. They were supposed to serve and then go back to real life making way for the next one. Brian


This has worked well in Oregon, the state where I was born and spent most of my life. We have had a lot of good governors who had real lives before they took office and real lives when they left. The one that I think should be running for president is John Kitzhaber who was elected governor of Oregon after having a career as a physician. I met him in a 10K roadrace in Roseburg, Oregon the year he was elected. He's just a smart guy who noticed that most of Oregon's health care funding was going to people in the last weeks of their lives and that children's immunization, prenatal care, and a lot of basic health programs were being short changed. His ideas to reallocate funding got a lot of resistance from the AARP and a lot of "end of life" doctors and healthcare workers. But he told the truth, was a true public servant, could have been elected again after the 4 year separation of his two terms but chose not to run. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kitzhaber

I think Oregon is way ahead of most states when it comes to being "green", progressive, and fair. Eugene, where Nike Corp was born, has a lot of great businesses that are all American and pay well. It has the largest Public Utility co-op in the nation. Power is 6 cents per kilowatt hour. It's a Co-op not big government- that is what we need more of. The linemen are paid more than $40.00 an hour. Symantec, the software company, is headquartered there. My wife's best friend 10 years ago was making 8 bucks an hour at a discount store, moved to Symantec and today makes more than $100,000 a year. She has no college education- she was trained by Symantec. It actually pays to play and pay fair. I have a lot of friend who work at Costco in Oregon and they are all paid extremely well. Guess what company is actually doing better in this economic climate? Costco. Sam's Club tried to copy the business model but they pay crap so the result is that Sam's club has twice the number of stores and half the business.

That is the sad thing about the greed that drives very large banks and businesses. We could be riding on a tide that lifts all boats by rewarding the productive work force. But short sightedness, selfishness and lack of vision has left us in the shallows. Big business treat people like a commodity! It has no soul. But we have good role models. We have Costco. We have Symantec. We have South West Airlines and a lot more. All of them are doing well and at the same time treat their employees well. Duh! What else do these sleazy Wall street and big bank bastards need to know?

I'm not at all pessimistic. We need to purge the economy of the "skimmers", the unproductive banks and financial machinery that fouls up real production. Banks were hiring mathematicians and physicist to devise financial "instruments" to make transactions opaque! They should be figuring out the calculus of the tidal waves to harvest energy! I head today that more than 20% of our economy is based on the financial sector. That's crazy. It's like a big Casino and the bankers are the House!

We are probably going through a purge and a lot of people will lose their job but a lot of those jobs were worthless and pointless anyway. If your job was to sell sub prime mortgages to the poor and gullible, are we going to mourn that loss? What we are going through is healthy. It doesn't feel like it but it is.

" There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries ".. W. Shakespeare