[mburbank]

"Does Soros have any idea of what kind of society he wants "
Probably, since he's offering matching funds for small donations as opposed to a huge block grant. Tell you what, enter his name in Googol with the words ca,paign donations and I bet you'll come up with some news on what exactly he believes. You think that any time someone disagrees with you, they don't really want or believe anything important. That's because you are intellectually stunted.

"That is something that could have been in a Red paper."
Red. What are you, 1950's boy? Is there enough air in your bomb shelter? Soviet Russia is gone. The Cold War is over. The Evil Empire is gone, and the new big deffinable enemy are 'terrorists', not 'communists'. Red. Jesus Christ on a Crutch. I don't even know if there is a 'red' paper commly available in the US anymore. Who knows, maybe it is, but my point is it's too marginal a viewpoint for even me, a big big Liberal progressive to give a little tin crap about.

I believe in class warfare. It's going on all the time. The rich and powerful class, a tiny minority will always want a huge minority in thrall to them. It's almost impossible to get brich without a small horde of people working for you. They want more wages, better helath care, and the upper class wants to keep more money. Maybe warfare is to stark a term. How about struggle? I'm not accusing republicans of engaging in this struggle which is an omnipresent socital dynamic, I'm accusing them of lieing about it. .Both sides belive in wealth redistribution. The only disagreement is which direction the money flows. The main function of taxes IS to redistribute wealth amongst society. Taxes have been used throughout history to move money. It is my point of view (not some object truth, mind you, but my pint of view) that there should be a lot less disparity between the hourly wage of a janitor and a CEO. There should be some disparity, sure, maybe even a lot. But not this much. Thnigs don't need to be this hard for this many people while I tiny percentage of the population wallows like hogs at a golden trough. Jesus wouldn't have liked it.

"The stats are unavoidable that the rich pay per their income vast majority of taxes while people who make little pay little. "

Did you never get to percentages in math?

"When taxes are increased on corporations, they just raise the prices of their products and let the consumer absorb the costs. "
Only because the rich fight so hard against price caps. California's false eneregy crisis might never have happened if W. had been willing to cap his Enron buddies shameful, criminal earnings.

"It is horrible that the gap between the "rich" and "poor" has widened. "

If you believed that even a tiny little bit, your first answer wouldn't have occure to you. You don't think it's horrible at all. You make it quite clear you think the poor deserve it. hey don't work hard. They don't have new ideas. We know this becuase really smart people don't lie or cheat to make their money or engage in insider traiding or stock manipulation, and they never, never get things they didn't earn through rich friends bailing them out of their costly failures. No one knows that better than our President.

"Could it be that it is the poor themselves that will not want to read, work hard and absorb education and opportunites that are presented to them?"
See? It's not horrible at all. They deserve what they get, they should be hungry and their children should be born into poverty as punishment for the sins of their parents.

"Hell, I've had a roomate that wouldn't read a book or do anything outside of school work if you payed him a grand. "
Oh, for the love of God, not another roomate. Did you live in a hotel?

"if he is poor in his life, that's his problem, not mine."
Jesus could not have said it better. You ever read a Christams Carol? Bet you hated it, Scrooge.

"If you want taxes reduced for everyone, you have to get rid of the govt spending we have now"
I don't want taxes reduced on everyone. I'm fine with the taxes I pay. I wish less of it were spent on war, but hey, that's America. I vote with my vote. I want a parger percentge paid by the ultra wealthy becuase it won't hurt them to have one less yacht, one less mansion, a few less cars in thri fleet, etc.

"Their ideas are great in the Ivory Towers, but they don't resonate with the common Joe, but rather with the common illegal immigrant Hector."

I'm glad you're certain of that. But last election the majority of common joes didn't agree with you. You were lucky on the distribution and you won. That's my principle problem with the right wing. The country gets split down the middle and Bush acts like he had some sort of landslide mandate. You folks are so busy screaming about how you know what the common joe wants, you can't hear commmon joe worth a damn. That's why W. is a fear mongering, little tin despot.