oneforall's Blog

It's not time to cut services but time to improve services and bring business and residents back to Philadelphia. SEPTA is doing their part by improving the public transportation. However, you are scaring away potential jobs and new residents by cutting needed services. You have a great historic city to promote. I agree that the casino needs to be in center city by the convention center. This should help the restaurants in Philly. Let's not forget the parking will gain also. The waterfront needs to be developed into a family vacation spot. No more housing is needed. We need to create jobs for our residents. You have a beautiful cultural spots to promote. It is too bad that this beautiful city has never been giving the proper respect it deserves.

There are those tha said let the family be forclosed on. They made the wrong decision in buying a house they could not afford. Now why is it different for the banks. Maybe because everyone of the stockholders who made huge amount of money is starting to loose some. Wow you can't let the rich loose money. Why is it that you can let the poor and middle class loose their homes?

Sounds a lot like what happen in the 80's. The greed took over until the government and the tax money had to bail the saving and loans.

I hear that Obama is not experienced or there will be a melt down in our national security if he is elected. I see he is the one we need to add a new view to the people in congress.

Greed caused the disgraceful corporate scandals that fill our newspapers. Greed is responsible for crooked cops and crooked politicians. Greed causes the constant efforts to destroy unions that protect basic worker rights.

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Printer Friendly Version E-Mail This Article     Published on Friday, August 20, 2004 by the Chicago Sun Times America's Disease is Greed by Andrew Greeley  

The most serious spiritual problem in the country today is reckless and untrammeled greed. Greed caused the disgraceful corporate scandals that fill our newspapers. Greed is responsible for crooked cops and crooked politicians. Greed causes the constant efforts to destroy unions that protect basic worker rights.

Greed has produced rash tax cuts that have given money to the rich and in effect taken it away from the poor. Greed has led to the immigration policy in which hundreds of poor men and women die every year as they struggle across the desert for the jobs that el norte promises them. Greed accounts for the efforts to take profitability out of the pensions and health insurance of working men and women. Greed is responsible for the fact that so many Americans have no health insurance and the fact that the recent reform of Medicare was a fraud. Greed causes newspapers to overestimate their circulation.

Greed is responsible for the obscene salaries of CEOs. In the '90s the ratio of CEO compensation to average workers' compensation was 250 to 1, meaning that the boss earned on his first day of work during a year as much as the worker did in a whole year. In European countries the ratio is closer to 100 to 1. Recent estimates put the current ratio at 500 to 1 -- the boss makes as much before lunch as the worker does all year. Greed is the cause of the high wages paid to the bosses even if the company is failing.

Greed is responsible for the endless stress and ruthless competition of the workplace and the strains and tensions of professional class marriages. Greed (in this instance another name for relentless ambition) explains much of the cheating on college campuses. Greed is responsible for outsourcing, which is incapable of comprehending that the employees who lose their jobs are also the consumers who sustain the economy. Greed generates the reckless ventures that in part caused the bubble of the late '90s. Greed causes expensive wars that shatter the budget. Greed is the reason that only the wealthy are benefitting so far from the economic upturn that is allegedly happening. Greed drives loan sharks. Greed is responsible for the success of big box stores that tax the poor with low wages to provide bargains for affluent suburban shoppers. Greed is the reason poor white Appalachians, poor African Americans and poor Native Americans must fight the wars that the wealthy start. Jessica Lynch joined the Army so she could go to college. Her Native American roommate, killed in action, joined so, single mother that she was, she could support her children. Greed is the reason why the country is being run by those whom the president has described, however inelegantly, as the ''haves and the have mores.''

No one said during the bizarre deification of President Reagan that he taught us that greed is good and that we should feel good about our greedy country. Greed is the reason that the country is being run by the insurance, pharmaceutical, weapons and petroleum industries. Greed causes worldwide sex slavery of women and children.

Greed drives the murders of the narcotics world. Greed is responsible for the exploitations of teen sports stars by colleges and for the mess in the pro sports world. It is also the cause of the use of performance drugs by young athletes. Greed is responsible for the bad advice lawyers gave the Church years ago to beat victims of sexual abuse into the ground. It is behind the scam artists who steal from the elderly.

Greed may have been a more serious problem for Americans, say, in the era of the robber barons. But the Garys and the Morgans and the Carnegies were a small bunch of men. Now their greed has seeped down to a much larger segment of the population.

The Catholic Church speaks of four sins that cry to heaven for vengeance. Two are cheating workers out of wages and exploiting widows and children. Both happen every day in our greedy country.

Ambition is not evil within limits. The struggle for success is not bad within limits. Hard work and fair rewards are good within limits. It is not good to take from the poor and give to the rich, and that's exactly what this country is doing today.

Don't let anyone tell you that lust is the most deadly of the deadly sins.

Copyright 2004, Digital Chicago Inc.

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No matter if you are Republican, Independent, or Democrat you must always remember that  blind faith in your leaders doing the right thing for you is going to hurt you. You must become involved and question them.

Secondly, don't say that your vote don't count. In reality, if it didn't matter the candidates would not be spending millions of dollars to get your vote. Don't listen to your neighbors or the news media. Everyone has their own opinion on the candates and why they prefer one over the other.   Take your time to research each candidate and see how their plans help you.

No matter how low the oil prices go the damage to our economy is already done. Too many unemployed people and no sign of a rebound in real estate. It's not a pretty picture when I know so many unemployed people. It used to be one or two not a dozen or more. In addition i also hear of more layoffs coming. If gas would drop back below $3 a gallon there would still be less demand for it. As the world falls into a recession I hope some good comes from the past two years of misery.

We have been in Iraq too long. Country the size of Rhode Island and we still fighting a battle there. It should have been just like Desert Storm in and out. Sadam had no WMD's so that shows we did our job the first time in.

After nearly a year of saying that we need to conserve and not open up more public lands to pumping Borack now thinks pumping more oil possibly might help us. What took so long for you to realize that the American people are hurting?  Atleast Bush knew it but told us straight up 'no I will not help you'. Mr. Obama you come up with one idea after another and it never gets anywhere. I'm worse off now than I was 6 months ago. Don't give me false hope that you might be able to help me. Only the President can open the reserves and we know his answer.  

When you become president tell me you are opening the reserve to combat oil prices. It's obvious that President Bush do not believe it will make any difference and refuses to touch it. It's obvious that his plans have failed. It's obvious that his all administration is a joke. It's obvious I made a mistake voting for him. Why should I vote for you?  When someone explains that you might be wrong you flip from your previous belief.

Why don't we bring back the glass bottles?  Everything taste better in glass.

I  always pay more for a soda in a glass bottle than that in a plastic bottle. I believe it tastes better. The cost of glass has to be similar if not cheaper and better for the enviroment. 20 years ago soda started being packaged in plastic bottles. What a shame..

Our "representatives" in Washington don't understand what it's like to struggle everyday to put food on the tables and pay back student loans. It's not their faught they came from "old money". They didn't have to watch their parents struggle to pay for their education. They didn't have to pay back their student loans on minimal salaries.  It's time to hold open discussions with the basic family and find out about their daily struggles. How was the economy of the 1990's compared to now. What was good or bad? The constitution was written by ordinary folks. There were military men, inventors, small business owners, and towns people. You can tell what was written then is still good for today.

I hate to see us being called whinners by the people we elect to represent us. These people in Washington don't even need to do their own cooking or driving. They don't understand.

You can only buy what you can afford to pay for. 

Commission programs need to be regulated on a $35k house or a $350k house.  Too many mortgage brokers were threaten to loose their job if they kept selling smaller mortgages and that was not fair to anyone. Why not sell the larger mortgage that they new the person could not afford?  It is call sales and the bottom line was sell them or loose their job.  i don't feel pity for the mortgage broerages I feel sorry for the buyers that were preyed on like animals.

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Where then. I guess we decided the best place to drill for oil is in a country who hates us. Why not give all of our money to these rouge nations that would like nothing better to see the United States fall apart. We made ourselves the world police and these nations hate us. Honestly we cannot function as a nation or a society without oil for fuel. We known this for decades. These nations have known this for decades. What these nations don't know but can only speculate on is how much oil reserves we have. What will we do next if there is no oil to have on the market. We internally fight with each other over where to drill or not to drill. Presently we need to drill where the oil is easy to get to. Sorry but if we have to evict a Polar Bear or two we have to. This nation has to survive. I don't like it but I know what will occur if we don't. Once these rouge countries know we can sustain ourselves with oil maybe they will re-think their plans. Iran showing that they have missels yet we cannot do anything because they supply 10% of the world's oil. Scary to think we have to concede to this country because we can't drill and pump oil in an area that we utilize for fishing. Think about alternative sources of energy but realize they are decades away. I would like to think that we have something for the near future but in reality we don't. We have our oil and natural gas reserves. The government has to do what is in the best interest of the survial of this nation. We must keep the role of the "World Police". If we cannot fix this energy issue quickly the lives of millions of innocent people will fall under the tyrant rule of these nations. Why? Because they drill for oil in their own back yards...............

It is becoming more apparent that the prices will not come down. We have left our country vulnable and the other countries know this. Saudi Arabia has also told us they will not help us. Do you think China cares what happens here? It is up to us as Americans to stand up and take control of the issues with fuel. Immediately start pumping for oil. Begin drilling new oil wells. Do not lease these out to foreign countries. Require all companies that bid on these wells to hire only American workers.

On this 4th of July let us take a oath lie our fore fathers to this great nation....

Not one analyst agrees with each other. My head is dizzy. Is gas and oil coming down or is it going up? I see $4.09 and am sick. I can't travel anywhere but to work and home. My wife car has sat for so long it was hard to start. I don't see friends or family. We talk a lot on the phone about the gas price. Family garherings have been put on hold this summer. Too expensive to fly or drive. I feel like complaining but everyone has already heard all of this. Really  I hated the summer get togethers with my family. I walked to the grocery store with the push cart the other day and remember my childhood doing this . What a great memory? I was on a Septa bus for the first time since 1992. My daughter thought I was kidding. It was nice to let someone else do the driving for a change.

My wife and I decided to buy a puppy for the family. Before we would not buy one because of the responsibility when we were on our family trips. We decided since they were out of the question we had the time and the chilldren would appreciate him more. Several years a go the corner deli closed but just last week someone re-opened it and I walked there for a gallon of milk. What memories that brought back.

Thank you OPEC. I am glad you made me understand what I am missing. Forget about the gas prices enjoy your family like your parents and grandparents did.  I know I am...

Where in the world do you have the right to oppose drilling for oil in our country. You need to go Ms. Pelosi. I have not seen you do one bit of good for anyone but yourself since you have been the one in charge. What is your net worth? You must be making a huge profit in the oil business also. I have a family and I cannot continue to make ends meet and the one sure way to help the situation you oppose. I want a re-vote on you.

All truckers need to go on strike now and shut this country down. Let them in Washington see where their future will be. It was done once before by your fathers it is your turn.

Strike. Strike Strike......    Everyone will support you. 4 Days is all it will take...

It's amazing that we know oil is there but we don't touch it. Should we have an obligation to help the people in this country? I believe so, however, we don't. We are dependent on oil for now so why should we give this money to another country who uses it to hurt us. In those two states there is enough oil to supply the world  even with the growing demand for a 100 years. This does not include the oil in Alaska or off the coast where there is another trillion barrells of oil at minimum. The problem is going to come when the other countries run out of oil and know we have this reserve and don't touch it. Although we do not want to be dependent on oil we need to make things better but we can't do it when we are all hurting. What are we waiting for?