THE YO-YO and THE GOSPEL OF WEALTH

GOD BLESS OUR TROOPS. Please contact your local USO and send CARE packages and letters to our troops as often as you can. They need our love and support and chocolate. Or Rice Krispie Treats, as one Marine told me. Also, Sgt. Timothy Deane is back home safely. Welcome home!!

God Bless miners who are trapped and the rescue workers who have died. It's odd that the news networks cover the mine tragedy 24/7, but never profile a single soldier who has died. We should at least have news coverage of the families of soldiers and how they cope with their losses.

This just added! IMPORTANT ITEMS from my friend Brad Friedman, investigative journalist of BradBlog.com: "There are -- far too quietly -- some of the most important decisions of our generation now being made in states and counties around the country. Again, over the past few days, we have been focusing on them at The BRAD BLOG. Here are links to some of our most notable reports from the last day or two, leading off with one stunning revelation concerning the 2000 Election...believe it or not...and how we got to this mess in the place.... -- Brad

DAN RATHER REPORTS VIDEO: 'The Trouble with Touch Screens' Will be HUGE Trouble for Sequoia, ES&S and Maybe the Republicans from the 2000 Election! Complete, Disturbing Investigative Exposé, Featuring Troubling New Revelations About America's E-Voting

NOTE: The original Google video of this report has been taken down for some reason, so we are making it available in full, in three easy to watch segments. FULL STORY, VIDEO OF RATHER'S COMPLETE INVESTIGATIVE REPORT:
BradBlog.com

Holy Cow! If you haven't seen this report's enormous news concerning Sequoia's apparent effort to create havoc with Florida's punch-cards in 2000, you must do so immediately.

Seven company whistleblowers, all interviewed on camera, and by name, reveal their repeated objections to the company's use of faulty paper and purposeful misalignment of chads -- specifically for Democratic Palm Beach County, FL only -- in the 2000 Presidential Election.

"Someone" at the company okayed the faulty ballots despite the objections of the employees, including the Quality Control manager at the factor who is also interviewed. Sequoia has yet to admit who that "someone" was.

The revelations here are remarkable and breathtaking, should earn "Dan Rather Reports" an award for investigative journalism, and have already led to a call for a full Congression Investigation... Companies, Now Available in Full Online... FULL STORY, VIDEO OF RATHER'S COMPLETE INVESTIGATIVE REPORT:
BradBlog.com
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Good news! According to the new book "Richistan" many of the new billionaires, the younger ones, are Democrats, eager to do good things in the world. There is nothing wrong with wealth or the American spirit of the entrepreneur. But as Hilary Clinton stated, the old Republican idea that "You're on your own" does not work in any society. As Hilary so brilliantly stated, "You're On You're Own" stands for "Yo-Yo". Think about it: someone is pulling the strings of the middle class, just like a yo-yo. Boy is she right. Kudos to Hilary for this great metaphor.

To repeat: the old Republican idea that "You're on your own" does not work in any society. The term "society" means we are social beings, interdependent, interconnected -- and we can not do it alone. No one does it alone. And it's our societal obligation to take care of widows, orphans, the elderly, the lame and the poor. Public education is in society's best interest. Most of these unfortunate people do not have equal opportunities in this new America, called "Richistan" by Robert Frank in his bestselling new book. http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2007/06/05/why-richistan-why-now/

By raising the standards of the poor and middle class, we create goodwill and harmony, thereby uniting America.

Andrew Carnegie, the wealthiest man in America at one time, wrote "The Gospel of Wealth," in which he stated his belief that the rich should use their wealth to help enrich society. In fact, he basically said that the rich have an obligation to help society with their wealth, which does not really belong to them, it belongs to the community which helped him get rich. In other words, 'you can't take it with you' as Shakespear said, so it's important for the mega-wealthy to teach their children good values of charity and generosity -- that no one can do it alone.

Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish industrialist, businessman, a major philanthropist, and the founder of Pittsburgh's Carnegie Steel Company which later became U.S. Steel. Carnegie is known for having built one of the most powerful and influential corporations in United States history, and, later in his life, giving away most of his riches to fund the establishment of many libraries, schools, and universities in America, Scotland and other countries throughout the world.

The following is taken from one of Carnegie's memos to himself:

"Man does not live by bread alone. I have known millionaires starving for lack of the nutriment which alone can sustain all that is human in man, and I know workmen, and many so-called poor men, who revel in luxuries beyond the power of those millionaires to reach. It is the mind that makes the body rich. There is no class so pitiably wretched as that which possesses money and nothing else. Money can only be the useful drudge of things immeasurably higher than itself. Exalted beyond this, as it sometimes is, it remains Caliban still and still plays the beast. My aspirations take a higher flight. Mine be it to have contributed to the enlightenment and the joys of the mind, to the things of the spirit, to all that tends to bring into the lives of the toilers of Pittsburgh sweetness and light. I hold this the noblest possible use of wealth. ”
Carnegie believed that achievement of financial success could be reduced to a simple formula, which could be duplicated by the average person. In 1908, he commissioned (at no pay) Napoleon Hill, then a journalist, to interview more than 500 high and wealthy achievers to find out the common threads of their success. Hill eventually became a Carnegie collaborator, and their work was published in 1928, after Carnegie's death, in Hill's book The Law of Success (ISBN 0-87980-447-5) and in 1937, Think and Grow Rich (ISBN 1-59330-200-2). The latter has not been out of print since it was first published and has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide. In 1960, Hill published an abridged version of the book containing the Andrew Carnegie formula for wealth creation. For years it was the only version generally available. In 2004, Ross Cornwell published Think and Grow Rich!: The Original Version, Restored and Revised, which restored the book to its original content, with slight revisions, and added comprehensive endnotes, an index, and an appendix.