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As of mid-August 2009, there were six (6) lobbyists per single (1) member of House and Senate (Bloomberg News). That's 6:1, folks. Just for healthcare reform. For financial industry reform, there are 2,400 lobbyists in play. The Chamber of Commerce spent $26.2 million--in the first 2 quarters (6 months) of 2009. Clearly, private industries and their foot soldiers on K Street/Capitol Hill influence/dictate American policymaking. No matter who's 'voted in,' it's the influence machine that rules Washington. Worse, there's a good chance that the Supreme Court will grant corporations (as 'fictive persons') to spend unlimited dollars in funding electoral campaigns. Is there hope that this country will be a democracy one day? Or is it doomed to become increasingly, irrevocably plutocratic?

The Obama administration will largely preserve Bush-era procedures allowing the government to search (and copy) -- without suspicion of wrongdoing -- the contents of a traveler's laptop computer, cellphone or other electronic device, although officials said new policies would expand oversight of such inspections.\n\nThe policy, disclosed Thursday in a pair of Department of Homeland Security directives, describes more fully than did the Bush administration the procedures by which travelers' laptops, iPods, cameras and other digital devices can be searched and seized when they cross a U.S. border. And it sets time limits for completing searches.\n\nBut representatives of civil liberties and travelers groups say they see little substantive difference between the Bush-era policy, which prompted controversy, and this one.\n\n"It's a disappointing ratification of the suspicionless search policy put in place by the Bush administration," said Catherine Crump, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union. "It provides a lot of procedural safeguards, but it doesn't deal with the fundamental problem, which is that under the policy, government officials are free to search people's laptops and cellphones for any reason whatsoever."

"The government, and the politicians who pretend to represent ordinary Americans, are a wholly owned and operated subsidiary of the corporate state. " Corporations, as they endlessly scheme for complete control over the planet's finite resources, will order the planet's social order into whatever structure is necessary to insure corporate dominance over the individual. Orwell recognized the corporate entities driven ambition to abolish represenative government in favor of corporate oligarchy. For anyone who isn't blind it's easy to recognize that representative democracy in the U.S. has been cast aside

Can Greece pay its debts? What about Portugal or Spain? Can a new prime minister reduce Britain's gaping budget deficit? Will the crisis rocking Europe spread? And what about the American economy?

Americans want government off our backs ... that is, until a folding crib crushes the skull of our baby, Toyota accelerators speed us to our death, banks blow our savings on gambling sprees and crude oil smothers the Mississippi. Then, suddenly, it's, "Where was hell was the government? Why didn't the government do something to stop it?"

Clearly, the only thing that limits the power of the banking lobby is the anger of American voters that the very banks that drove the economy over the cliff and were bailed out by taxpayers are now spending lavishly to block reforms needed to insure this doesn't happen again. That popular anger makes legislators reluctant to appear in the banks' pockets in public.

"little wonder with such insular backgrounds that justices of the Supreme Court should be tempted to lay down the terms of existence for 300 million Americans. "

"the American political machinery, most likely had its fingerprints on all four deaths, the King, the Prophet, the Rebel, and the Reformer, and of course, countless other citizens who also resisted the naked aggression by the powers-that-be were murdered as well. This sinister conclusion about the nature of the current US government cannot be explained away as another rendition of defunct conspiracy theories. "

"Journalism, the counterbalance to corporate and political power, the lifeblood of American democracy, is not just threatened. It is in meltdown."

A federal appeals court on Thursday rejected an effort by environmental and Native American groups to stop exploratory oil drilling off the coast of Alaska that could begin this summer.

Paul Krugman on continuing bank and mortgage fraud, with help from American government and U.S. politicians

White House Spin on Cave-In: In Securing this Bipartisan Deal, the President Rejected Proposals that Would Have Placed the Sole Burden of Deficit Reduction on Low-Income or Middle-Class Families: The President stood firmly against proposals that would have placed the sole burden of deficit reduction on lower-income and middle-class families. This includes not only proposals in the House Republican Budget that would have undermined the core commitments of Medicare to our seniors and forced tens of millions of low-income Americans to go without health insurance, but also enforcement mechanisms that would have forced automatic cuts to low-income programs. The enforcement mechanism in the deal exempts Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare benefits, unemployment insurance, programs for low-income families, and civilian and military retirement.

Most Americans, regardless of political party, don't understand how we can ask a senior citizen to pay more for her Medicare before we ask corporate jet owners and oil companies to give up tax breaks that other companies don't get. How can we ask a student to pay more for college before we ask hedge fund managers to stop paying taxes at a lower rate than their secretaries? How can we slash funding for education and clean energy before we ask people like me to give up tax breaks we don't need and didn't ask for?

Bruce E. Levine is a clinical psychologist and author of Get Up, Stand Up: Uniting Populists, Energizing the Defeated, and Battling the Corporate Elite (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2011). www.brucelevine.net.

Political and financial Masters of the Universe make it clear who "matters" -- and it's not the American people