The Multi-trillion-dollar Embezzlement and Fraud that Wall Street and Washington are Committing

     It is rare for me to reprint articles written by others.  I usually research my articles and cite several useful articles in the process.  The following article, though, deserves to be reprinted in full, with only a few added comments from me.  I've taken the liberty of highlighting important passages.  

US lawmakers are accomplices to financial industry’s immorality

Political ‘donations’ — more appropriately, legalized bribery — are fueling the injustice wrought by financial institutions and their selfish excesses

By Thomas Friedman / NY Times News Service, NEW YORK

(reprinted in the Taipei Times, November 2, 2011)

     Citigroup is lucky that former Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi was [allegedly] killed when he was. His [alleged] death diverted attention from a lethal article involving Citigroup that deserved more attention because it helps to explain why many average Americans have expressed support for the Occupy Wall Street movement. The news was that Citigroup had to pay a US$285 million fine to settle a case in which, with one hand, Citibank sold a package of toxic mortgage-backed securities to unsuspecting customers — securities that it knew were likely to go bust — and, with the other hand, shorted the same securities — that is, bet millions of US dollars that they would go bust.

     It doesn’t get any more immoral than this. As the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) civil complaint noted, in 2007, Citigroup exercised “significant influence” over choosing US$500 million of the US$1 billion worth of assets in the deal and the global bank deliberately chose collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs, built from mortgage loans almost sure to fail.     According to the Wall Street Journal, the SEC complaint quoted one unnamed CDO trader outside Citigroup as describing the portfolio as resembling something your dog leaves on your neighbor’s lawn.

     “The deal became largely worthless within months of its creation,” the Journal added. “As a result, about 15 hedge funds, investment managers and other firms that invested in the deal lost hundreds of millions of US dollars, while Citigroup made US$160 million in fees and trading profits.”

     Citigroup, which is under new and better [better for whom?  Don't forget that this article was written by a hack for the corporate-owned media.] management now, settled the case without admitting or denying any wrongdoing. James Stewart, a business columnist for the Times, wrote Citigroup’s flimflam made “Goldman Sachs mortgage traders look like Boy Scouts. In settling its fraud charges for US$550 million last year, Goldman was accused by the SEC of being the middleman in a similar deal, allowing hedge fund manager John Paulson to help choose the mortgages and then bet against them without disclosing this to the other parties. Citigroup dispensed with a Paulson figure altogether, grabbing those lucrative roles for itself.” 

     (On Thursday, the US District Court judge overseeing the case demanded that the SEC explain how such serious securities fraud could end with the defendant neither admitting nor denying wrongdoing.) [The American Action Report's Realistic Dictionary says that the name Goldman Sachs came from the words gold + man + saxophone.  It's an instrument, mostly brass, so that banksters can have congressmen dance to their tune.]

     This gets to the core of why all the anti-Wall Street groups around the globe are resonating. I was in Tahrir Square in Cairo for the fall of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and one of the most striking things to me about that demonstration was how apolitical it was. 
     [In a large part, that's also true of the Tea Parties and the Occupy Movement.  Pompous asses in the corporate media never seem to tire of ridiculing the protesters for their lack of expertise in economics, business, political science, and other fields.  The protesters do know, however, that they're hurting, where they were kicked, and who kicked them.  Pompous asses like Peter Schiff are telling them, in effect, "Since you're not experts as I am, you must not have a problem.  Go back to sleep."  Hell, the "experts" are the ones who caused the problem!  Oh, one more comment on Schiff's pomposity.  He seemed to be implying that the Wall Street protesters could be part of the 1% like him, if they only followed the "free market system."  The truth is, the Wall Street protesters have no hope or desire to be reincarnated as part of the inbred Schiff, Rothschild, and Warburg families.  Take a look at this marriage announcement from 1916 here. That should reveal the hypocrisy of the Rothschild who has infiltrated Ron Paul's campaign as an adviser.] 
     When I talked to Egyptians, it was clear that what animated their protest, first and foremost, was not a quest for democracy — although that was surely a huge factor. It was a quest for “justice.” Many Egyptians were convinced that they lived in a deeply unjust society where the game had been rigged by the Mubarak family and its crony capitalists. Egypt shows what happens when a country adopts free-market capitalism without developing real rule of law and institutions.

     However, then, what happened to us? Our financial industry has grown so large and rich it has corrupted our real institutions through political donations. As US Senator Dick Durbin bluntly said in a 2009 radio interview, despite having caused this crisis, these same financial firms “are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they, frankly, own the place.”  [No, they share ownership with a criminal syndicate blasphemously calling itself Israel.  The Israeli regime, which has no need of foreign aid, is the world's largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid.  Add to that the trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives America has lost fighting wars under false pretenses, benefiting no one but the Israeli regime.  America's "best friend in the Middle East?  Not hardly.  To read about Israel's covert war against the United States, click here.]

     The US Congress today is a forum for legalized bribery. [That's only the tip of the iceberg.  Those crooks are continuously passing bills that siphon money from the Treasury and into their business interests.] One consumer group using information from Opensecrets.org calculates that the financial services industry, including real estate, spent US$2.3 billion on federal campaign contributions from 1990 to last year, which was more than the healthcare, energy, defense, agriculture and transportation industries combined. Why are there 61 members on the US House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services? So many lawmakers want to be in a position to sell votes to Wall Street.

The US can’t afford this any longer. It needs to focus on four reforms that don’t require new bureaucracies to implement:

1) If a bank is too big to fail, it is too big and needs to be broken up. We can’t risk another trillion-US dollar bailout;

2) If US banks’ deposits are federally insured by US taxpayers, it can’t do any proprietary trading with those deposits — period;

3) Derivatives have to be traded on transparent exchanges where we can see if another AIG is building up enormous risk;

4) Finally, an idea from the blogosphere: US lawmakers should have to dress like NASCAR drivers and wear the logos of all the banks, investment banks, insurance companies and real-estate firms that they’re taking money from. The public needs to know.

     Capitalism and free markets are the best engines for generating growth and relieving poverty — provided they are balanced with meaningful transparency, regulation and oversight. The US lost that balance in the last decade. If it doesn’t get it back — and there is now a tidal wave of money resisting that — it will have another crisis. If that happens, the cry for justice could turn ugly. Free advice to the financial services industry: Stick to being bulls. Stop being pigs.
     [The author of this article is giving Congress too much of a break.  Congressmen are not just accomplices; they're perpetrators.  Take the 2009 Bankster Bailout Bill, for example.  The bailout, which saved no homeowner's home, and for which the banksters lost nothing, was a theft of $700 million.  The bill ended up costing $1.2 billion because congressmen festooned the bill with funds earmarked for investments congressmen had made.  That amounts to a $500 million embezzlement benefiting no one but the congressmen and their cronies.  To see how your congressman voted on this criminal act, click here.]

Outsourced Brainpower: An Untapped Resource for Opinion Molders

     Common sense incorrectly suggests that we should always think for ourselves. Actually, we often outsource brainpower for valid reasons, usually to friends, spouses, and other family members.

     Let’s say your teenage son is fascinated with computers, and you’re just barely computer savvy enough to be reading this article. Of course, you’re going to direct computer questions to your son, but there’s more to it than that. Your son knows that you expect him to know, so he’s more motivated to learn. In fact, each family member outsources some of his brainpower to other family members.

     In a recent study, married couples competed with paired individuals who didn’t know each other, in a Jeopardy-style contest. Consistently, the married couples scored significantly higher than the paired strangers. That's because close acquaintances have a tendency to outsource some of their memory and other brainpower to each other.  Each knows what interests the other has, so each outsources responsibility for finding out about those areas to that person.

     Most people rely on brainpower outsourcing when they vote. The good news is, they don't outsource their brainpower to the corporate media.  For people who “don’t have time to keep up with the issues,” as they say, that’s not really a bad strategy because most people who employ that strategy are outsourcing their brainpower to people they know, trust, and respect.

     People like that are called mavens—people who eagerly acquire information and share it with others. Because others recognize political mavens as such, they willingly outsource their political brainpower to them, which, in turn, further encourages them to keep up with the issues. In many cases, these mavens are also connectors: people who seem to know everybody and everybody seems to know them.

     Compare that arrangement to the people who tell you, “Oh, I just wait until the campaign season and listen to each candidate, and I make up my mind based on what each one has to say.”  People like that should stay home on Election Day.

They really should. Most elections are won or lost within a range of three percentage points. A switch of 1.5% of the vote can change the outcome of most elections. At the same time, think of how many people are still undecided when they arrive at the polling place—probably more than 1.5%. That suggests that most elections are decided by shallow, uninformed people who decided how they would vote only on the spur of the moment.

     Is it any surprise, then, that most congressmen are better looking and have more hair than the average people in their age groups? It’s true. Check out “How We Created the Mess in Washington, Part 1.”

     Let’s get back to the mavens to whom people outsource their political brainpower.

     Candidates for public office, as well as political pundits such as I, should take the education of these mavens more seriously. Most people think that the opinion molders are all famous people such as Scott Pelley or people in respected positions, such as ghetto ministers. In a way, they are because the mavens do pay some attention to what those people say. For 80% to 95% of the people, though, the mavens are their most important sources of actionable information.

     The late political strategist Lee Atwater once engineered an election victory in Charlotte, North Carolina, by surveying voters in key areas and asking them which of their acquaintances most influenced them in their voting habits. Then he focused on those very few people, often in underhanded ways.

     Let me stress here that the mavens can be anyone—the mailman, a mechanic, a barber, or even a minimum-wage hamburger flipper at McDonald’s. If you want to go the route of influencing the mavens, keep an open mind as to where you’re likely to find them.

     There’s a touch of irony here. One of the chief arguments against relying on blogs such as this one for your information is that “professional” news sources—simply because they’re “professional”—should be considered more reliable. My counter argument has been that paid witnesses are less reliable than volunteers. Just consider who pays them. [Click here for the inside story of how Fox News withheld life-and-death information on Monsanto, due to advertising pressure.] The mavens who are the subject of this article are a slam dunk. Even before there was an Internet, it was the mavens—not the corporation-paid talking heads—who had the most influence with most people.

     To most effectively influence the mavens, somebody who is more computer savvy than I am will have to identify three types of people in the neighborhoods. According to Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, those three types of people are mavens, connectors, and salesmen. While you’re at it, read the book. Like most important books, it’s a small book, so it won’t take long to read. I’ve already read it twice, and I’ll probably read it again.

     If we’re serious about taking our country back, we shouldn’t neglect the largest pools of outsourced brainpower and political influence in America. As a resource, they’re virtually untapped. We can change that equation. 

     Here's a parting thought for you: Why do you think that there are very few minorities at Tea Party rallies?  No, it's not because Tea Partiers are racists or because Tea Party issues don't matter to minorities.  It's because it's nothing new to minorities.  They've been lied to, cheated, and stepped on for more than a hundred years, and you haven't seen many white people at their rallies.  The Tea Parties came about because white people have suddenly realized that the same stuff is now happening to white people.

     We're all in the same boat now.  It's time to identify their real opinion molders, as opposed to the talking heads that get interviewed by the corporate media, and start rowing.

"The Dating Game" and Public Elections

Most of y'all remember The Dating Game, a television show that aired in various forms from 1965 on and off through the 1990's. I couldn't help thinking of The Dating Game when I watched a presidential “debate” between George H. W. Bush and Jack Kemp in 1988. They even sat on stools like Dating Game contestants.
That's how we choose our elected officials these days. Does it work any better for Dating Game participants than it works for American voters? Whether it does or doesn't, what does that mean for voters today? Let's see.
Imagine you're watching a segment of The Dating Game back in the 1960's or 1970's. “Bachelor Number Three” is someone very much like you. “Bachelor Number Two” is a basketball player and college senior named Tom Selleck—before he became the star of Magnum, P.I. “Bachelor Number One” is Rodney Alcala, an accomplished serial killer, rapist, drug abuser, sadist, and psychopath with a criminal record as long as your arm.
In reality, Tom Selleck and Rodney Alcala never appeared onstage together. Tom Selleck appeared on The Dating Game in 1965 and again in 1967, both times as “Bachelor Number Two.” Rodney Alcala appeared as “Bachelor Number One” on The Dating Game in 1978.
Tom Selleck wasn't chosen on either occasion. Rodney Alcala was chosen on the one time that he appeared on The Dating Game. How did that happen? It happened the same way that candidates for public office get elected or defeated.
Rodney Alcala carefully studied the answers of winning contestants on The Dating Game, and that's the kind of answers he gave when his potential “date” on the show asked questions of him. Tom Selleck probably gave sincere answers and may have come across as a less interesting person than the winning contestants.
Candidates, if they're to succeed, study the kind of answers that get votes and those are the kind of answers they give the voters. It's no coincidence that, if you place Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign platform next to Barack Obama's 2008 platform, you'll see striking similarities. It's no coincidence that both platforms lay unused after the election. Obama ran against Bush's policies but, once elected, follows the same policies, allowing for a slight compass correction.
Rodney Alcala, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and our congressmen were chosen largely on their words and not on their deeds. Don't just read their lips; watch their hands.
What Rodney Alcala did with his lips on The Dating Game is completely at variance with what he did with his hands. He didn't just rape, torture, and murder his victims; he tortured them until they passed out; then he revived them so he could prolong their agony. After at least two such murders, a woman on The Dating Game, going by his words, decided that Alcala was someone she wanted to date. That sounds a lot like Bush, Obama, and many of our congressmen.
Bush spent $3 trillion of our money on a war based on lies, killing over a million Iraqi civilians in the process. Obama, with his lips, ran on a platform promising to end the genocide of Iraq. With his hands, he continues the genocide. In so doing, Bush and Obama rival Cambodia's Pol Pot. Congress, whom we elected, is supporting all that. Now they're getting ready to support an Israeli invasion of Iran, a country that hasn't started a war with another country in 360 years. We can end this madness by voting those accessories to mass murder out of office. In the meantime, we can contact our congressmen and tell them to back away from starting another war.
Bush spent $500 billion, borrowed against us, the taxpayers and our descendants, for a “bailout” that didn't save even one homeowner from foreclosure but protected the ill-gotten gains of Wall Street banksters, with no transparency or accountability. Obama multiplied that amount until it totaled several trillion dollars. Congress approved all that. We should hold our congressmen accountable by voting them out of office. Don't forget that there's a presidential election in another two years.
Recently, Congress approved a bill that's supposedly for “affordable health care.” It doesn't make health care affordable for even one American, but it enriches Big Pharma and insurance companies by trillions of dollars over the next ten years, at our expense. Congress, whom we elected, approved all that. Click to see how your senators and congressman voted.
If we base our electoral decisions on what our congressmen tell us in the heat of a campaign, we'll deserve more of the same. Check up on your congressman and senators and see how they voted on the issues that most matter to you. If you're still in doubt, vote him out.

Taking Politics out of Political Issues

The crooks in Congress can be replaced only if a majority of the voters vote to replace them. That goes without saying, but I’m saying it anyway because too many people seem to have lost sight of that obvious fact.
The Tea Parties, GOOOH (Get out of Our House), and other such groups don’t seem to have that majority—not yet, anyway. From time to time, Tea Party members will point out that there are smatterings of liberals in their movement. Just as many Tea Party members, however, hysterically “warn” anyone who will listen that liberals are “trying to infiltrate” the Tea Parties. It’s almost as if they’re determined to keep the Tea Party movement so small that victory is impossible.
GOOOH, with hundreds of GOOOH groups in over 90 cities, seem unconcerned about the political affiliation of their supporters as long as they help rid the U.S. Congress of all 417 incumbents (That’s 435 minus the 18 who have decided not to return to the scene of their crimes.) GOOOH would probably tell us something like, “It doesn’t matter if the cat is tabby or calico. As long as it catches mice, it’s a good cat.”
Tea Party members, though, are trying to come to grips with the presence of demonstrators who don’t possess the requisite conservative or libertarian credentials.
What will it take to get a majority of voters to sweep the rats out of Congress? What if every conservative, libertarian, moderate, and liberal voter wanted to sweep the rats out of Congress? Would that be enough? No, I don’t think so.
If you’re wondering why not, go to a web site called Google Trends. Google Trends measures Internet interest, especially interest over time. Millions of people do web searches every day. People’s interest can be measured by what key words or names they use when conducting Internet searches.

Let’s key in Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, and Sarah Palin to see which one generates the most searches in the U.S. over the last 12 months. (Be sure to separate the names with commas.) It’s Sarah Palin by far. Maybe it’s the $150,000 wardrobe; I’m sure it wasn’t the wink. Hillary is practically flat lining. So the cleavage bit isn’t working out very well for her.

Since Sarah Palin has generated the most interest, let’s compare her with Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. Most of the time, Paris Hilton is about even with Sarah Palin; but Britney Spears is the clear winner most of the time. (In the photo above, I think Sarah is telling her chances of becoming President.)

According to Google Trends, Tea Party Movement gets about three fourths as many hits as Vincent Price, the camp horror actor who died 17 years ago, a seventh as many hits as Nancy Pelosi, and a twelfth as many hits as Elvis Presley.
Do you see where this is leading? Somehow, the Tea Parties, GOOOH, and others will have to gain the votes of people who are more interested in Vincent Price and Britney Spears than in Tea Parties and Congress.
The good news is that everybody is interested in politics; they just don’t know it. To most people, politics is something other people choose to discuss for no apparent reason. It’s something that happens to other people. If it happens to them, it’s not politics; it’s life and death.
People are still more interested in the price of venison than they are in Vincent Price. Britney Spears is someone they watch or hear, but asparagus spears are more important to their health.
According to one survey, 30% of all homeowners are unable to sell their homes because the mortgage is worth more than the home. That may be politics to 70% of the voters, but it’s life and death to the other 30%.
People need long-term solutions to immediate problems. Even if they’re angry enough to remove their congressmen from office, they’re not angry enough to stop looking to Washington for help no matter how angry or distrustful they are. Why? Because Washington is still just about the only game in town. Until people are able to see local solutions to local problems, they’re going to look elsewhere. Like teenagers with hand-held video games, they’ll turn on to them without giving it a thought.
Non-political people—that’s most people—are more influenced by caring people than they are by carefully written speeches; but if they don’t see the deeds they’re likely to fall for words or stay home on election day.
A friend of mine has a people-to-people, grassroots diplomatic initiative to promote peace among nations by by-passing the diplomats. Within the borders of the United States, we need similar initiatives bypass the politicians and bring people together. That’s what non-political people understand; that’s what people of all types understand.
From time to time over the next few months, I’ll make suggestions that are likely to surprise you. I ask y’all to make some suggestions that’ll surprise me. While it’s important to capitalize on voter resentment of congressional malfeasance, it’s even more important to get to the root of the problems. As the four-character proverb goes, “Cut grass; remove root.” On the positive side, there’s another four-character proverb: “Drink water; think source.” Remember that every political issue is a human need.

The Only Strategic Voting that Works

All of us are familiar with the Goldilocks Dilemma of election voting: Three candidates are running for the same office. One is too hot, one is too cold, and the other is just right. We'll call that one Baby Bear. The problem is that Baby Bear can't win.
"How do you know that Baby Bear can't win?"
"Uh, well, I don't know—everybody knows he can't win."
"How does everybody know that?"
"Well, uh, well, look at all those gaffs he's been making."
"Oh, you mean the things he's been saying?"
"Of course."
"Well, do you agree with the things he's been saying?"
"Yes, but he shouldn't be saying them because saying them will lose support."
The conversation on that one keeps going around and around. In the end, everybody knows that Baby Bear can't win, but nobody really knows how they know. I learned a long time ago that the things “everybody” knows but don't know how they know, and that no one should question, are the very things you should question.
Here's how that scenario plays out: A lot of people who support Baby Bear would take think of Mama Bear as the lesser of two evils, and Mama Bear can't win without the support of Baby Bear supporters. The “reasoning” goes, a vote for Baby Bear would divide the lesser-of-two-evils vote and cause Papa Bear to win. Thus, we're told that a vote for Baby Bear is a vote for Papa Bear, and we shouldn't do that. Why shouldn't we? Because that's what somebody named Conventional Wisdom tells us, and we should always do as we're told—without question. Or should we?
I spent 20 years active in politics, 10 years involved in political action groups, and I helped plan and manage a few political campaigns. One of the first things a political strategist does in a campaign is check to see how people voted in past elections. He rarely examines the reasons they voted that way; he's interested only in how they voted. This helps him to plan a winning strategy.
The results of each election tell future election strategists what voters are willing to accept in the next election. Whatever gets the most votes in one election, candidates will promise more of in the next election. Whatever doesn't get votes is not even mentioned in the next election.
That's one of the reasons voters are being offered fewer and fewer desirable options in elections. When you vote against Baby Bear, you're voting against his policies. When you vote against Baby Bear's policies, you give future campaign strategists a signal that Baby Bear's policies don't get votes. It doesn't matter that you voted the way you did because you thought Baby Bear couldn't win. You voted against what Baby Bear was offering, and you won't be offered as much of it—if at all—in the next election.
There's only one kind of strategic voting that works, and that's voting on principle. Vote for Baby Bear, even if you think he can't win. You may be surprised at how much support he really has, and you won't really know until the votes are counted—assuming that they don't use Diebold vote-counting machines or the easily rigged touch-screen voting machines.
If Mama Bear's goose gets cooked because she took Baby Bear's supporters for granted, she's going to be courting them in future elections. If you want proof of this, just look at the 2008 presidential election.
In 2008, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham made a speech in which he said that old-line conservatives and libertarians had no place in the Republican Party. To him it was a neo-conservative party, and that was that. He told them in so many words to leave the Republican Party. In many states, Republican organizations violated party rules, state laws, and even federal election laws to ram their candidate through the convention. As a consequence, libertarians and old-line conservatives took Graham at his word, left the party, and the Republicans got their clocks cleaned that November.
At the same time, Libertarian Party presidential candidate Bob Barr, another neoconservative, effectively shut libertarians out of their own party.
Today, millions of Americans from across the political spectrum (including liberals who feel that they've been shut out of the Democratic Party since 2009) have formed loose-knit groups called Tea Parties. Lindsey Graham, Bob Barr, and other Establishment stuffed shirts are trying to court their votes.
Regardless of how you feel about libertarians, conservatives, or the Tea Parties, the bottom line is this: They are now riding high because they stood by their principles. On principle, they were willing to take a hit in 2008; and now they're in a stronger position for 2010 and 2012.
Stand by your principles. Vote for the person you believe should win, even if you don't believe he will. It's the only strategic voting that works.

Americans are Coming Together

I recently read an email from a neoconservative, would-be Paul Revere. Or,at least he seemed to be riding on Paul Revere's horse. In his post, he breathlessly warned everyone interested in reading his screed that “liberals” were “infiltrating” the Tea Parties as part of a “divide and conquer strategy.”
Let’s back up a few years—say, about 46 years or more. In 1964, there were two main branches of the Republican Party: Goldwater Republicans and the Rockefeller Republicans. Outside the party were the unabashed liberals.
The liberals embraced Tea Party issues even back then, although their views on the matter were somewhat inchoate.
As of 1988, when the elder Bush ran for President, Rockefeller Republicans became known as neo-conservatives. The neo-cons are now found in both major political parties. Henry Kissinger (Republican) was a protégé of Nelson Rockefeller; Zbigniew Brzenzinski (Democrat) is a protégé of Henry Kissinger. It was the Rockefeller Republicans (neocons) who were most responsible for giving the Republican Party its reputation for being a party of the rich at the expense of the poor.
We were all foolish in those days—most of us, anyway. Liberals tended to condemn any corporate profit as fascism, regardless of how honestly the profits were obtained. Conservatives would roll their eyes and praise any profit making, and call it free enterprise, regardless of how much of it was profiteering at taxpayer expense. No matter how many billions were stolen by the malefactors of great wealth, it was excused on the fraudulent rationale of free enterprise. On the other hand, any welfare mother who kept her small bank account a secret from the Welfare Gestapo was a “welfare queen.”
Now, both liberals and conservatives are faced with blatant fascism on a multi-trillion-dollar scale. Remember, the liberals were the first to cry, “Fascism,” and, “Corporate Welfare.” Now that the Tea Partiers have taken up the cry, do you see them telling the liberals that they’ve seen the light? No. Many of them are letting the Rockefeller Republicans con them into telling the liberals to stay away from “their” party.
I'm not saying that liberals and conservatives are acting from the same motives. Take the attempted healthcare overhaul for example. Conservatives oppose it mainly on the constitutional ground that healthcare is not a federal issue; and on the free market ground that, for all its faults, America's healthcare system is still more efficient than the government healthcare system found on Native American reservations. Liberals oppose it because it appears specifically designed to shovel billions of taxpayer dollars at corrupt corporations in such industries as Big Pharma and the health insurance monopolies; and that it would bring American healthcare down to the level of that which is found on the Native American reservations.
Either set of arguments flies very well, but the liberals, having the more populist argument, have the best chance of resonating with American voters. It is any wonder, then, that the Rockefeller Republicans and Rockefeller Democrats are so eager to keep the liberals away from the Tea Parties? Talk about “divide and conquer!” It's the neocons who are desperately trying to keep Americans divided against one another.
Apart from one another, the liberals and the conservatives can do little to sweep the rats out of Congress. The numbers of either group are too small, especially if liberals and conservatives work against one another. Together, we can do it; and together we must do it!
The one issue that unites us is whether our congressmen represent us, their constituents; or the banksters, war profiteers, and other scoundrels of their ilk. We have just over 200 days between now and the 2010 congressional elections. I'll try to share as much as I can to help you decide—no, I won't decide for you—whether your congressman is one of the few honest men or women remaining in Congress and deserving of re-election. Of the 345 members of Congress, I seriously doubt that there are more than 45 honest men and women; the rotten barrel has spoiled that many apples. If in doubt, vote him out.
In a future article, I'll share with you the results of several polls that show that, for the first time in memory, we can change Congress. We can drive the money changers from the temple and replace them with honest Americans. But, to do this, we must work together.