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These days America is looking like the Bernie Madoff of economies: for many years it was held in respect, even awe, but it turns out to have been a fraud all along.

Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Blackwater...their fraud has been rewarded with continuing contracts in the billions, despite fraudulent billing, armed forces endangerment, defective parts in military equipment, overcharges, double-billing, murder, etc.

money finance economics finances justice economic fraud corruption financial industry banking system ponzi

Includes videos of debate between Senators Rockefeller and Bingham over how much of a premium dollar should be used to pay for healthcare; discussions of Inginex fraud; debate over unwarranted subsidies given to health insurers; lack of federal oversight of insurers; etc.

I was tooling around the internet for awhile yesterday, looking for a transcript of the Congressional hearings that featured Goldman Sachs executives and traders as the star witnesses, before I realized that nowhere in print was there any real sense of what had gone on. Congressional hearings may have been effective at some point in the past, but these days, the witnesses are usually far too polished and used to dissembling for hours at a time to be of any real value, and the senators and congressmen who are asking the questions are usually too polite to do more than ask questions of little or no value. Senator Carl Levin tried to deviate from that formula on Tuesday. He was harsh, unyielding and relentless. "Your clients lost. Goldman profits" rang out several times during his opening address. But Senator Levin didn't have enough of an understanding of the business to really pin back the ears of any of the witnesses, including Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs chairman. I couldn't figure out for the life of me why his staffers didn't line up a few disgruntled traders and insiders to give the senator a three or four day crash course on the business. His gambling analogies were something that might appeal to my grandmother, who puts gambling of any kind up there with the cardinal sins, but missed the mark when it came to characterizing Wall Street's shenanigans.

Victoria Collier, you're the daughter and niece of James and Kenneth Collier, authors of the book  Votescam: The Stealing of America , a chronicle of their 25-year investigation into how elections are rigged by computerized voting machines. Victoria is the editor of www.votescam.org.  I've run across a number of your most recent op ed pieces including What To Do When They "Let" Us Win Elections and Why Americans Viciously Protect Their Hub Caps But Not Their Ballots: A Thoughtful Exploration of Modern Democracy. 

"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. "

"The Illusion of Money Liberation from subservience to Wall Street begins with a recognition that money is just a number of no intrinsic value. "

The U.S. spends 50% of total of all global military spending. War oligarchs are in control of the nation.

In 2005, former CIA director 2005 approved a decision by a top aide to destroy dozens of videotapes documenting criminal torture of two detainees.

"The business of America is big business with a strategic long-term plan for co-opting world governments, waging permanent wars for profit, dominating everywhere militarily, ending social safety net protections, crushing civil liberties and freedom, tolerating no concern for human rights, controlling global markets and resources, turning workers everywhere into serfs, and extracting, unimpeded, as much public wealth as possible."

"Why is our economic system consigning billions of people to degrading poverty, destroying Earth's ecosystem, and tearing up the social fabric of civilized community? "

"Until early Wednesday morning, Greg Smith was a largely anonymous 33-year-old midlevel executive at Goldman Sachs in London. Now everyone at the firm - and on Wall Street - knows his name. Mr. Smith resigned in an e-mail message to his bosses at 6:40 a.m. London time, laying out concerns that Goldman's culture had gone haywire, putting its own interests ahead of its clients."

Citigroup's Shocking 'Plutonomy' Reports -- h/t Michael Moore

If anyone still believes we must drill, baby, drill offshore -- aside from Bill Kristol, that is, who wants to sink wells even closer to precious coastal wetlands -- then perhaps it is time to consider again the potential benefits of nationalization. After all, there is one country that has established an unrivaled record for environmental safety while exploiting its offshore petroleum reserves. That would be Norway, which created the company now known as Statoil Hydro as a fully state-owned entity and still controls nearly two-thirds of the company's "privatized" shares.

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.

The federal Minerals Management Service gave permission to BP and dozens of other oil companies to drill in the Gulf of Mexico without first getting required permits from another agency that assesses threats to endangered species - and despite strong warnings from that agency about the impact the drilling was likely to have on the gulf.

""Information is the currency of democracy." Thomas Jefferson"