If you did not see his segment this last Friday, you should.
Here is a link to the segment. I especially liked his ending
remarks.

BILL MOYERS: Quality, affordable health care's on the
critical list in America. And so is the newspaper
business. So maybe it's not surprising that one of
the most powerful papers in the country attempted an
unholy alliance, trying to turn a profit from its
newsroom's coverage of the fight for health care
reform.

You may have missed the story because it broke on the
eve of the July 4th weekend. The publisher of THE
WASHINGTON POST, Katharine Weymouth - one of the
most powerful people in the nation's capital -
invited top officials from the White House, the
Cabinet and Congress to her home for an intimate,
off-the-record dinner to discuss health care reform
with some of her reporters and editors covering the
story.

But she then invited CEOs and lobbyists from the
health care industry to come, too - providing
they fork over $25,000 a head, or a quarter of a
million if they want to sponsor a whole series of
these cozy little get-togethers. And what is the
inducement she offers them? Nothing less than -
and I'm quoting the invitation verbatim - "An
exclusive opportunity to participate in the health
care reform debate among the select few who will
actually get it done." The invitation reminds the
CEOs and lobbyists that they will be buying access to
"those powerful few in business and policy making who
are forwarding, legislating, and reporting on the
issues."

Remember, the invitation promises this private,
intimate, and off-the-record dinner is an extension
"of THE WASHINGTON POST brand of journalistic inquiry
into the issues, a unique opportunity for
stakeholders to hear and be heard."

Let that sink in. The "stakeholders" in health care
reform in this case do not include the rabble -
the folks across the country who actually need
quality health care but can't afford it. If any of
them showed up at the kitchen door on the night of
this little soiree, a bouncer would drop kick them
beyond the beltway.

In other words, before you can cross the threshold in
Washington to reach "the select few who will actually
get it done," you must first cross the palm of some
outstretched hand. The dinner was canceled after the
invite was leaked to the website politico.com -
by a health care lobbyist, of all people. But it was
enough to give us a glimpse into how things really
work in Washington. A clear insight into why there is
such a great disconnect between democracy and
government today, between Washington and the rest of
the country.

According to one poll after another, a majority of
Americans not only want a public option in health
care, they also think that growing inequality is bad
for the country, that corporations have too much
power over policy, that money in politics is the root
of all evil, and that working families and poor
communities need and deserve public support when the
market fails to generate shared prosperity. But when
the insiders in Washington finish tearing worthy
intentions apart and devouring flesh from bone, none
of these reforms happen. Oh, they say, "it's all
about compromise, all in the nature of the
give-and-take of representative democracy." That,
people, is bull - the basic nutrient of
Washington's high and mighty.

It's not about compromise. It's not about what the
public wants. It's about money, the golden ticket to
"the select few who actually get it done." And
nothing will change. Nothing. Until the money-lenders
are tossed out of the temple, and we tear down the
sign they've placed on government - the one that
reads: "For sale."

I'm Bill Moyers.

[Emphasis mine]

And that's the whole point. We need to throw the money changers out
on their ear. And the only way to do that.outside of an armed insurrection,
is to refuse to play their game.

C

Apparently Morgan Stanley has discovered the Wall Street
philosopher stone and can now turn garbage into gold.

Morgan Stanley plans to repackage a downgraded
collateralized debt obligation backed by leveraged loans
into new securities with AAA ratings in the first transaction
of its kind, said two people familiar with the sale.

Didn't this blow up in their faces a few months back ??

C

As I meditate on Robert Reich's latest blog, I think back to
growing up in the 50s and 60's. Imported products were
rare. Nearly everything was made in the good old USofA.

The cars and trucks, TV's and radios, clothes, shoes, washers
and dryers. Even the plumbing in your house and the pumps
if you had a well.

Your bicycle, sled, balls and bats and marbles. The music you
listened to on the radio and TV programs. Sinks, stoves and
Bar BQ grills. The furniture in you house and the furnace that
heated it in the winter and the fans (or if you were very well off
AC) in the summer.

I remember my grandfather showing up once driving a VW micro
buss. He had a small Japanese TV that would run off the car
battery. Looked nifty but I wondered why anyone would want to
watch TV in a car.

What changed ?? Or rather what didn't change. As the imports
were progressing, American products were not or not very fast.
By the 1970s American car companies were still making 1950s
cars but with a different wrapper while the imports were getting
better. Better gas millage, better handling, longer lasting.

Import electronics where becoming or rather had become transistorized -
solid state but American electronics were still vacuum tube.

American clothes still looked frumpy and imported clothes were new and now.

In short American industry was still stuck in the past. Where as the
American consumer had moved on. American industry was still
trying to sell propeller airplanes in a rocket ship world.

It will take a very long time for this country to catch up, if we can.

C

It's rather a shame that photographer in question manipulated
the photos in that NY Times article because this is a story
that should be told.

Here in Florida we are fairly use to housing developments
that never really made it. I remember when my family came down in
the early sixties seeing the remnants of the the last real estate boom
that went bust. Passing a large cleared area with a large faded bill
board announcing some new subdivision or other with only paved
streets and heavily over grown lots to show for it.

But now this seems to be the current artifact of this latest down turn
and they showing up all over the country.

A good accurate photo essay on this would be very appropriate right
now. 

C

Frank Rich really nails them today. I especially like the last part.

Gorn writes that the current economic crisis helped
him understand better why Americans could root for a
homicidal bank robber: "As our own day's
story of stupid policies and lax regulations, of
greedy moneymen, free-market hucksters, white-collar
thieves, and self-serving politicians unfolds, and as
banks foreclose on millions of families' homes,
workers lose their jobs, and life savings disappear,
it becomes clear why Dillinger's wild ride so
fascinated America during the 1930s." An outlaw
could channel a people's "sense of rage at
the system that had failed them."

As Gorn reminds us, Americans who felt betrayed
didn't just take to cheering Dillinger; some
turned to the populism of Huey Long, or to right-wing
and anti-Semitic demagogues like Father Coughlin, or
to the Communist Party. The passions unleashed by
economic inequities are explosive because those
inequities violate the fundamental capitalist faith.
It's the bedrock American dream that virtues
like hard work and playing by the rules are rewarded
with prosperity.

In 2009, too many who worked hard and played by the
rules are still suffering, while too many who bent or
broke the rules with little or no accountability are
back reaping a disproportionate share of what scant
prosperity there is. The tepid national satisfaction
taken in Bernie Madoff's terminal prison
sentence should be a warning to the White House. In
the most devastating economic catastrophe since
Dillinger's time, many Americans know all too
well that justice has yet to be served.

Even Barny Frank know how much people hate these Wall Street
slime. However Obama still seems oblivious to this. Not good.

C