"And when I get into high dudgeon, I don't understand why some of my best friends are so damned conservative, except they are middle-class struggling for upper-middle. My truly wealthy friends are much more liberal. On my better days I realize this is only one aspect of people, and everyone does their best to take care of themselves. Seems to be narrower for some folks than others, but they can still be super people in other areas."

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Interesting "wealthy friends are mopre liberal". Note also that the very rich like MA senator John Kerry, hollywood personalities, etc. all favor big govt and the consequent taxes. They have sufficient disposable income that they do not need to "save for retirement" like real working families. They have lawyers & accountants who can use their expertise to minimize taxation. Perfectly OK, but think about what it means to heartland working families.

Interesting aside John Kerry was embarrased years ago when his tax returns showed $0 (That's zero dollars) for 2 years on charitable contributions. At the time he was single and claimed that his $120,000 was inadequate for him to have enough money for charity. He was re-elected in Democratic MA. So $120K is not enough for these folks under our system of taxation but now that he married $600,000,000 of the Heinz money, hey let's tax the working class to pay benefits to our voters. This speaks volumes for the man's true character, but hey the last 8 years showed us how little we value personal character today. I'm not saying Kerry's a bad guy, he isn't as far as I know, but he's not someone I admire or respect.

Basically, these pols deliberately scheme to come up with programs that take $ from those working and xfer them to "programs" for the "needy". As long as you get folks believing that they're net recipients vs donors, this ponzi scheme works. It makes it very difficult for those who have no govt benefits or pensions to succeed financially without finally succumbing to the siren call of govt largesse and the ensuing govt dependencies.

-p