... response from Longnholding/FAX to original post  ... with permission

I had two cousins who ran a legal loan shark operation, called something like "Payday Loans" or similar. Anyone with a car title could hock their car for a high interest loan, and often lose their car - which often was a junker worth a little more than the pitiful amount they'd loan on the title. I asked them once about why anyone would be willing to borrow money at such a usurious rate and whether people would get mad when their cars were taken and sold at auction.

The cousins told me, "We screw over them, and they thank us for it."

They said they were the nice guys, they only took their cars. The other lending sources might break their kneecaps.

While living in New York, one afternoon there was a police commotion at my then girl friend's condo complex. One of her neighbors had spotted wires coming from under his car.

The police traced the wires to a quarter pound charge under the driver's side. The policeman said, "This is a Mafia past due notice. The next time he won't see the wires."

My cousins catered to an uneducated, impoverished clientèle. The man in the New York condominium was neither impoverished nor uneducated; but obviously financially irresponsible.

The adopted daughter of an acquaintance over in Florida who recently moved back in with her birth parents had a child out of wedlock, for purposes of income enhancement in her fifth or sixth generation welfare extended family. She was a well educated private school student, to all appearances a bright normal child, until at age 15 she left the home of my acquaintance, dropped out of the working middle class and into the dependent class. She apparently could see no advantage in postponing her life and hormones to complete her remaining six or ten years of education.

I have a black friend whose forces his children to study as hard as do the kids in the Chinese restaurant during the slack hours. We've talked about his reasons, and agree that his kids as adults won't be competing economically only against American whites. They'll be competing with the entire world. His attitude towards black welfare families is that they've traded "Ol' Massa" slavery for Government slavery.

I wish there were a governmental or private sector cure for the spreading underclass blight in the U.S., but there isn't.

Whatever we may say to the effect "this should be done," "It's wrong that nothing is done", "This that and the other has been tried and has failed", "evil __________ is to blame" there is no macro solution.

The only cure rests on the parents and their children. When no advantage is seen in the pursuit of a middle class life, there will be no pursuit of a middle class life.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=s7hu5sVWSl4 ... Ron Paul

-30- ... Longnholding/FAX ... JD once asked if I were your brother ... yes, in a past life, and damned proud of it