Vincent Paiano's Soap Box

'I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.'

- Thomas Jefferson, 1802

"Fascism, like socialism, is rooted in a market society that refused to function.

A financial system always devolves, without heavy government control, into a Mafia capitalism -- and a Mafia political system.

A self-regulating market turns human beings and the natural environment into commodities, a situation that ensures the destruction of both society and the natural environment."
 

Who is this speaking?

It is the Hungarian intellectual Karl Polanyi, author of the influential book The Great Transformation (1944).

Polanyi fled fascist Europe in 1933 and eventually taught at Columbia University.

Presently, almost all of our consumer products are made over seas with cheap, and sometimes even prison and child labor. If something unforeseen was to happen and the flow of these products was interrupted, we could be in a very uncomfortable position.

A lot of our fresh produce is being shipped here from foreign sources. The official reason given is "consumers want fruit and vegetables all year around and at a low price". But, local production of food would not incur shipping and handling costs, and with modern hydroponics methods, could be of a higher quality and produced anywhere, all year around.

More jobs, greater security and less pollution are but a few of the advantages of producing what we use locally. I personally feel, that by going back to cottage industries, like what our country was built on, would return us to a more creative society, where artists, craftsman and engineers have a greater chance to interact.

Distributed energy production and product manufacturing, small independently owned stores and service shops, schools where everyone knows each other, with intimate political debate over issues that concern the citizens.

I'm not against the existence of big corporations; it's just that the political system has failed us. It seems almost everyone knows it, but it never gets repaired. It may be as simple as publicly financing our elections. It's hard to tell because money has such a corrupting influence, probably due to the Supreme Court decision in Buckley v. Valeo, making money equal speech.

More coming soon!

check out my daughter's tunes
http://www.myspace.com/ginapaianomusic