he hadn't been born into a family of privilege and entitlement.

There is something uniquely American about the self-made man, a woman who sacrifices to build a company or a practice or someone inventing a key advancement.

But there is absoluty something wrong about a tax code that punishes work and benefits investments.

When I was growing up, I was taught that intellectual ability, willingness to work hard and access to investment funds were essential to success under our economic system.

It wasn't a guarantee, but it would surely be the foundation on which success is built. Especially when they were all weighed in equal parts.

an incentive based social tinkering, touchy feely kind of program

The very stuff that drives conservatives wild when it comes to handing actual funds to those in need.

But they never once consider the opportunity, funds, lost by all that carved out of the taxes paid by encouraging behavior deemed beneficial to the overall economy.

It isn't really a matter of fairness; it is a matter of entitlement for those who fancy themselves as more important to the economy than consumers.

Now again, I have been preparing taxes since 1986 and have seen so many changes in the tax code.

The overall result has been an increase in reckless economic activity, the glorification of the guy who is willing to do whatever it takes to squeeze the last available dollar from an investment and, most important to all of us who aren't full time "investors", less money available to the federal government for public investment.

The result of this is an increased private sector solution to stuff such as roads and schools that should be public investments.

The deficit has been used to scale down the scope of government, which, I believe, will ultimately set up a society that is divided between those who own and those who do not. Kind of like midlevel Europe.

The serfs, most of us, will be there simply to serve the needs, wants, and desire of the owning class.

Is it time our society to finally view criminal activity as a matter of justice instead of, as it is in so many cases, seeking revenge?

If we can get passed this point, I think we can make a giant step forward toward a moral based society that deals equally with all kind criminal behavior.

Think how we treat the situation when murder is the crime. What I want to focus on now is the questions asked after the verdict has been adjudicated.

There is always the feeling that somehow justice is served if the death penalty is handed down.

You can gussy it up anyway you want but the eye for an eye path is seeking revenge. Now that we have a judiciary that is set aside from the individuals involved, which should not even be a consideration.

The bottom line is that the person has been killed and that no matter what we do to the perpetrator, that murdered person is not coming back.

Then again, I like the idea that the punishment must fit the crime.

Nevertheless, is the state killing to satisfy a personal, and I would add, as well as a societal revenge justified?

I am sure there will be people who will not be satisfied unless a life is traded for a life. And often times I feel that way as well. It's instinctive I guess.

I just want to put forth this idea of vengeful justice versus indifferent or rather impartial punishment.

What about the corrupting influence the changes in the Capital Gains Tax did to the Investment Class, those in and supporting it...

It is pretty simple to me, the GOP, no matter how many Black People they can parade on stages, are, at heart, racial.

Not so much the people running the show, they are more calculatingly cynical, but the majority of the rank and file.

The Board was depolitisized starting in 2002...

I served as a Board Member in 1995-96 and we were mainly dealing with tech issues since it was when everything was going digital.

The percieved problems in the counting in Cuyahoga Country was a flub of double counting absentee ballots in a few precincts. As soon as they discovered it happen, the numbers changed in these precincts and people just went with it.

Also, they had consolidated a whole mess of precints in the early part of the 2000's. There was over 2200 precincts in 2000. I believe they got it down to about 1700 for the 2004 election. This was mandated by the SOS. But each board was responsible for their actions. Many of the precincts were dead due to massive populations shifts. 2004 was the first election with all the new precincts in so there were several areas that were not allocated the correct nember of machines.

Also, Cuyahoga County is so dominated by democrats, no one in their right mind would believe that the GOP would be able to manipulate voting. There would have had to have been unprecidented cooperation between the party's and that wasn't going to happen.

I had a thread on DU that explained how it happened. It's probably still over on DU2.

You have to remember that the Boards of Election were hyper partisan. For every democrat there had to be a republican. It was crazy. So there was always one person watching another person all the time.

The corruption in the County is strickly about people doing favors for other people. It's as simple as that.

I know most of the major players and was in fact Dimora's treasurer for the party and his political accounts.

I quit in 2001 so what ever happened after that....

Anyway, Dimora just got greedy. He was drunk with power being a commisioner and the chairman of the party.

I ran into him about two years before the scandal broke and he had become a real self-important jerk. I'm glad I got out hen I could.

So the stuff that happened in the county as of late had nothing at all to do with the stuff that happened at the BOE in 2004.

Yea, it is as simple as that.

In a society that is completely over run by "what's in it for me" mentality, what does anyone expect?

How is it possible that any candidate would be completely in tune with all of any persons particular set of issues?

But the truth is you need to get one more vote than the other guy in enough states to cobble together 270 electoral votes.

Last time I looked that means satisfying millions of people with thousands of stands on issues.

So yes, I have voted many times for the lesser of two evils in my life.

But I have never voted for a republican and I am certainly not going to start at this late time in my life.

Especially since my dad's republican party left his slightly conservative mind set back in the 1980's.

So yes, I support president Obama, warts and all.

Beside that, he is the most normal person to sit in the Oval Office since 1980...

I graduated High School.

I did not understand the futility of death and more important, the non-importance of life itself.

I laughed so much, I was brave, the man who faces his death with a futile smile upon his face.

And yet the absurdity of life was pointed out to a lonely 17 year old who had no idea of love or death or even all the inside upper east side New York jokes that are played upon a level of social stratification that is not possible to understand until you have been stripped of the trappings of life to lay low the absurdity of an existence that is doomed from the start...

Anyway, the toilet jokes were very funny.

Good has to play fair, evil does not.

This is a quote from, of all places, a new ABC show called once Upon a Time.

It is about a town that populated by fairy tale characters who were cursed to live in the real world and not know about their former manifestation.

But the quote made me think about the real world and why democrats always seem to be on the short stick when it comes to politics.

We have an overall principal to try to do the best for the least among us, to strive for granting rights to all and to promote justice no matter who is involved.

The Republicans, well they seem hell bent on being elected in order to help their patrons.

That is all that they care about. They will say anything and do anything to be elected and then, well, all we have to do is look at what happened when George Bush was in charge.

Do not get me wrong, I am certainly not some naive Pollyanna. I know that there are a whole lot of Democrats who behave like Republicans and the other way except that it is getting harder and harder to find these days.

Evil does not play fair. Evil stacks the deck. Evil cuts corners. Evil does whatever it takes.

If you are looking for proof, why do so many republicans hide behind the cloak of inclusion by painting all politics as corrupt. That way, their politicians are excused from bad behavior.

By money, I mean the money I can spare to spend on candidates.

In previous years, before the internet, I would send my entire political budget close to home.

I never had a lot of money, but I would volunteer and help set up databases and take care of the books, that kind of stuff.

But now that I am pretty much on the sidelines, I skimp and save so that I can send off a couple hundred dollars.

I fancy myself as the WCGreen PAC for America and send out $25.00 here, $15.00 there.

It's not much, but come this November, I will have been a part of campaigns all over the country.

Montana, Ohio, FLA, Nevada, Wisc, MA and the big guy himself BO.

It's a wonderful thing this internet. It makes an ordinary fella feel like he is hob nobbin with the pooper smoochers.

And, it makes things interesting on election night.

So make way Kock Brothers, WCGreen is throwing some chips on the table.

build the greatest economic expansion in this country.

But it did more than that.

It delayed the entry into the job market for millions of people coming out of the service.

It also decompressed them from the hell of war by going into another set schedule that was not live threatening.

The GI bill created the professional class that was previously only open to the sons of the traditional wealthy.

And I really don't think Eisenhower wanted to see another Bonus Army situation happening again.