I don’t know how it is in other states, but in New Mexico…the Pueblo indians have prime farm land along all the rivers and the Apaches have their ancestral lands which is some of the prettiest and best for cattle ranching in the state.

The Indians that have the poorest land in New Mexico are the Navajos…I think the main reason was because they were hunters, raiders (of Pueblos) wanderers that didn’t have strong ancestral lands like the Pueblo tribes.

Except for the Navajo…the rest are doing great. Nice homes and cars with their children going on for graduate degrees.

“…we get into slavery. I think you should worry about your own natives…I saw some pretty sad incidents when we were there, especially in the Ayers Rock area…the guide didn’t have anything good to say about the your government’s treatment when it came to it’s native people…you are way behind us…

Agreed things are still not what they should be for our First Nations. But on a personal level our family has been involved in Land Rights and Reconciliation. One of our sons in particular both as an activist and in his field of art as a glass artist. It took a Commonwealth Labor Government to give an Apology to the Aboriginal Nations for the treatment they have received from the colonisers. One that the previous Liberal, that is really conservative in Australian parlance, refused to do.

Admittedly things are moving slowly and your guide at Uluru was quite right to be critical. This in spite of a number of successful Native Title Claims. However the mining and pastoral interests still hold a lot of sway with governments both federal and state, no matter of what persuasion.

“our native indian population is many times what it ever was before the white man arrived, they still own large amounts of land and”

Maybe so but they were pushed off the best portions, as happened in Australia

“…they are cleaning up in their casinos as the stupid among us give them their cake that they can eat too. What they are doing is immoral but they will have to answer for their greed when the time comes for them to meet their maker.”

That is just karma. The fact that the First Nations got done over by displacement, treaties and straight out theft has come back in spades. And every one has to answer for their greed whether First Nation or Wasi’chu

Because as we know it to be, the right wing singularists hope time does not exist beyond the boundary line.

In plain speaking terms the right hope that whatever they may have done before will be forgotten, will somehow disappear into a memory black hole.

We should fear the growth of the singularity. Just like in the new Star Trek movie we are edging towards the creation of a black hole and the planet caving in on itself due to the density of the right when it comes to deliberately ignoring the memory of things past. I’m not sure what can be done to reverse this. How can you explain the dangers to them when some of them don’t believe in science?

Let us not forget that one member of the Bush family Neil cost the US taxpayer at least $1.3 billion when his S&L Silverado went bust due to fraud & stupidity.

“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion,but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”

Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations: Bk.I, Ch.10.

Which is what more or less happened in the case of a certain five firms who went to the SEC and asked to legally violate existing net capital rules that, in the past 30 years, had limited broker dealers debt-to-net capital ratio to 12-to-1. Instead, the 2004 exemption, only given to these five firms, allowed them to leverage up to 30 and even 40 to 1. Not exactly about prices, but still something that has cost the US taxpayer dear and also those in the rest of the world.

Who were the five that received this special exemption?
 
Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley. The main protagonist in this push was was Hank Paulson of Goldman Sachs. And the result? Three of the five broker dealers have gone to the wall!

Who was the SEC boss who allowed this to happen ?

William Henry Donaldson appointed by The Faux Texan in February 2003. interestingly another Skull and Bones Man!

An allegation made by Lee Pickard, a former SEC official, is that the SEC at that time was really responsible for the Wall Street Tsunami. He says that the rule change in 2004 led to the failure of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch.

“The SEC allowed five firms, the three that have collapsed plus Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley , to more than double the leverage they were allowed to keep on their balance sheets, and remove discounts that had been applied to the assets they had been required to keep to protect them from defaults.”

Making matters worse, according to Pickard, who helped write the original rule in 1975 as director of the SEC’s trading and markets division,was a move by the SEC to further erode the restraints on surviving broker dealers by withdrawing requirements that they maintain a certain level of rating from the ratings agencies.

(Now the ratings and insurance shenanigans in this whole greedy and sorry affair are another entire story of greed and incompetence)

In that 2004 rulemaking, the Commission under Donaldson decided to rely on the firms’ own computer models for determining the riskiness of investments, in essence outsourcing the job of monitoring risk to the banks themselves. Donaldson and the other Commissioners who voted for the rule change were aware of the risks at the time, as indicated by the comment at that 28 April 2004 meeting “If anything goes wrong,” said Commissioner Harvey Goldschmid. who had supported Donaldson in voting for the proposal, “it’s going to be an awfully big mess.” How right he was!

A report by the SEC Office of the Inspector General after the near-failure of Bear Stearns stated that the standards the Commission adopted under Donaldson in 2004 were inadequate to warn of the firm’s impending crisis. For as Pickard has also said “They constructed a mechanism that simply didn’t work,” Pickard said. “The proof is in the pudding — three of the five broker dealers have blown up.”

So what about Moral Hazard, something else that Adam Smith also addressed in An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations?

This was nothing with which any of the former Masters of the Universe aka The Big Swinging Dicks were concerned. They knew deep down that there was none! They knew that any Administration whether Democrat or Republican would step in and save their sorry arses! Just look at the two previous Financial Fiascos both fine examples of Predator Capitalism, S&L and LTCM.

“ Privatis(z)e the Profits, Socialis(z)e the Losses”

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. or in the words of another great Scot, David Byrne “Same as it ever was”

“Hey…if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck…its a duck.”

See? Now you get it!!!

No matter how hard you try to rewrite what has happened (and your obvious love for the man will make you try) the fact is that even with the large scale assault by those on the media tour Bush will still go down as

The.

Worst.

President.

EVER.

BTW, ‘Bush Hate Syndrome’? What, like the “Clinton Hate Syndrome” YOU show? Just like the “Kool Aid Drinkers” that O’Reilly and others on the right have tried to co-opt as their own this is a left wing phrase about right wingers. If you guys really had any better ones you would use them, but then you all think “Drill Baby, Drill” is a keeper.

Do you have access to Micheal Ramirez’s political cartoons? Check him out if you have a chance. He’s a genius.

Our local political cartoonist John Trever is a good friend. These fellows have extremely bright, fertile minds.

You’ve been infected by the ‘Bush Hate Syndrome’…the far-left media pounded those drums for 8 long years…yep…you’re infected.

Take ten laxatives…and pray for it to ‘all’ go away…just kidding! (my computer program will not give me a smiley face)